A provincial newspaper publisher in the Philippines was shot dead after writing an article that alleged that there was official negligence over the recent discovery of a methamphetamine laboratory.

This is the first killing of a journalist since President Rodrigo Duterte's government initiated a violent war on drugs.

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The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemned Monday's cold blood murder of Larry Que, a publisher of a news site on the island of Catanduanes.

The NUJP said it had "challenged" Duterte to find the killers and urged to utilize the task force he set up to protect journalists.

In October, Duterte signed an administrative order creating a task force for ministers, police, defense, and justice officials to protect the media. The task force was also ordered to investigate attacks on media personnel and create an oversight watchdog to scrutinize probes.

"We call on this administration to walk the talk and prove its professed respect for press freedom, not only by quickly resolving these brazen attacks on press freedom but, just as importantly, by ending its penchant of falsely blaming media for deliberately misinterpreting its often inconsistent and incoherent messages," the NUJP said.

The journalist union said that Que had run the new publication, Catanduanes News Now, for only two weeks before he was shot in the head outside his place of work.

According to the NUJP, Que's article claimed that local officials were negligent when an illegal laboratory was set up to produce "shabu," a methamphetamine, that Duterte has vowed to destroy, along with anyone found producing or selling it.

The Philippines has one of the most liberal media environments in Asia, which is also one of the most dangerous for journalists. Many journalists have been killed in the country in the past 30 years. And investigations of the killings have often been inconclusive.

TagsRodrigo Duterte, Philippines