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Regine Cabato

is a freelance journalist primarily based in the Philippines. She was the Washington Post’s Manila reporter for over five years, and is currently pursuing an MSc in Politics and International Relations at SOAS University of London under a Chevening scholarship.

She has covered a wide range of topics spanning conflict, culture, and human rights, with an interest in disinformation and political influence. She was the first Filipino reporter to gain firsthand access to live work at a troll farm. For her coverage of how disinformation impacted the 2022 Philippine presidential election, she was a finalist for a Livingston Award and the Society of Publishers in Asia’s Young Journalist Award. She was a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford University, where she produced a project on how journalists can better cover and protect themselves from malign influence campaigns.

Her commentary has been featured on ABC, BBC, and CBS, among others.

Outside of journalism, her poetry has appeared in various publications across the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Her ten-poem suite "Notes from the Field" won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award in 2019.

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August 28, 2023 • The Washington Post • Co-writer

Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’

Martin San Diego for The Washington Post

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines — In a coastal city in the southern Philippines, thousands of young workers log online every day to support the booming business of artificial intelligence.

The Philippines’ drug war is putting more pregnant women behind bars. What happens to their children?

Hannah Reyes Morales for The Washington Post

MANILA — Rosemarie Santiago was four months pregnant when she walked into prison. She left more than a year later as a mother who had spent just one day with her child.

In Philippines, a child alleges abuse by Catholic priest — and tests Vatican promise for global reckoning

In Philippines, a child alleges abuse by Catholic priest_reginecabato.jpg

Hannah Reyes Morales for The Washington Post

CADIZ CITY, Philippines — The girl, her long hair in a ponytail, stepped into the cramped, dimly lit courtroom, her first time in such a place. Clinging to her mother, she scanned the dozens of faces assembled before her. The girl, then 5 years old, eventually pointed to a bald man in a striped shirt, his spectacles resting on his head.