Category Archive for: media

komentaryo

A year of anti-information

A year into this President, and after the epic failure that is this Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), I am now beginning to think that contrary to what we would like to believe, maybe what we’ve seen to be a crisis in communications IS the communications strategy.

After all, look at Martin Andanar, utterly silent, getting away with releasing badly-written, ill-conceptualized pro-Martial Law videos, being paid for the bad work of all the divisions he is in charge of – from PTV4 to RTVM, the Philippine News Agency and all other Presidential and Malacañang websites. Look at the official Facebook page of Andanar’s Assistant Secretary and find that half of her posts are marked as fake news pages by the fantastic Fakeblok app of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) and the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP).

Look at us, getting used to this state of affairs, including the utter lack of credible and relevant information coming from government, save for shameless and questionable numbers that contradict what we know is happening on the ground, and official statements that are denied altogether even with multiple witnesses, even when we all heard what they said, even when there are recordings all over the place. (more…)

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Terrible tourism

The Department of Tourism (DoT), under Wanda Tulfo Teo, is a gift that keeps on giving.

We all of course know how Teo tried to deny what she said in an interview on CNN Philippines, where she not only confirmed that the Nickolodeon project would push through in Coron Palawan, she also revealed that she was all for it because she was promised that the corals would not be affected.

Never mind that common sense tells us that any kind of development that will put a floating structure over the waters, or any development on land in fact, would affect the ecology of places like Coron. Never mind that we have seen how developments on land have adversely affected the waters in places like Boracay. Never mind that it only takes a Google search to realize that these planned developments are absolutely nothing to be excited about.

Ah, but Mrs. Teo was excited. Asked about the Nickolodeon project, she said: “They showed us the map.  It’s very big, it’s very big, and they’re also developing that area, in the land area, condos and hotels. It’s very lucky, very nice, it will be a theme park, so many developments.” (CNN Philippines, 1 June)

This was strike one. (more…)

komentaryo

Andanar sa PCO: Isang kasaysayan ng kapalpakan (2)

When 2017 started, Martin Andanar was on his seventh month in the Presidential Communications Office (PCO).

The Communications secretary wanted to welcome the year with a bang, so he decided to listen to pro-government troll discourse and be afraid of a yahoogroup. You got that right. A yahoogroup. In the year 2017. For what to him was a “national issue” involving the names of Filipinos in America and a staff member of VP Leni’s office, in purported conversation that was not only using a yahoogroup in the time of Viber and Telegram, but also apparently, a yahoogroup that could so easily be accessed or hacked.

This piece of “news” about a destabilization plot came from what we now know to be fake news sources, as fueled by pro-Duterte troll discourse. It is decidedly blind, it is fiction-writing based on the flimsiest of sources if not totally without basis. And the Communications Secretary was believing it, hook line sinker.  (more…)

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Andanar sa PCO: Isang kasaysayan ng kapalpakan (1)

Walang paglagyan ang disgusto at galit sa ipinalabas na video ng Presidential Communications Office (PCO) nitong May 31.

And then you realize that this is also absolutely no surprise. Under Martin Andanar, I went from being hopeful about the PCO (not once, but twice!), to utterly and absolutely dismayed and disgusted by the lack of vision, intelligence, smarts, and all-around common sense.

Early into this government, say August 2016, the policy seemed to be radio silence. I thought it was just Andanar trying to figure out what to do, two months in. At the same time, he needed to rise to the occasion of someone like President Duterte, who hit the ground running. Or whose mouth was — is — faster than his brain.  (more…)

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Demeaning human rights

It is clear that while we might laugh at the people behind Presidential Communications, and cannot even begin to imagine what it now becomes given the appointment of un-credentialed, anti-facts Mocha Uson; and while we might scoff at the social media army that are the ka-DDS – Duterte devotees – with an axe to grind against mainstream media, facts, data, and investigative journalism; here we are at a point when a Philippine representative – a Senator at that – can face the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and declare with a straight face that there is no new spate of killings under the Duterte administration, and that the international attention is all the fault of mainstream media’s coverage, that has bloated the number of dead, and has equated these killings with the drug war the President holds closest to his heart.  (more…)