Category Archive for: media

komentaryo

Ressa, Mocha, Fake News

The Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News website came out with an interesting piece about the state of discourse in the Philippines given mainstream media on the one hand, and the rise of fake news as propaganda on the other. Written by Senior Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, it had as headline a quote from Rappler’s Maria Ressa, saying that “Democracy as we know it is dead,” which first made me imagine that the article was going to talk about the urgent concerns of summary executions on the streets and drug-related deaths, or the continued control by big business, oligarchs, and feudal lords over government despite a President who seems to stand squarely for the people (if / when his pronouncements hold and given his pro-people appointees), or even just the continued verbal assault against free speech from the President and his men.

Instead Ressa – and this article – were referring to the death of democracy … in relation to fake news and people like Mocha.

Yes, I’m as stunned as you are. (more…)

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TIME 100 and Duterte’s communications

For a government – and a President – that has had a tendency to blame media, local and international, for covering only the drug war and not much else about what else is happening in the Philippines, it surprises that government even engaged at all with the Time 100 poll and the President’s inclusion in that list.

Because Time Magazine – as expected – has been at the forefront of putting the drug war in international news, and has been very very critical of it, too. Their articles on the drug crisis, and ultimately on President Duterte, both online and in print, have been far from flattering.

This is the frame against which the President is being measured by an international media outfit, and it should’ve been clear from the beginning that if and when he is included in that final list, it will only shine a harsher light on the drug war and its victims, and the summary executions on our streets. (more…)

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Duterte chauvinism: Sino bang walang babae?

A direct translation wouldn’t capture how offensive this rhetorical question is, coming from the mouth of any man or woman, as it normalizes and rationalizes the practice of infidelity and polygamy, because look, all men are doing it! And as long as these men can take care of the children they sire, from one, two, three women they keep in their beds, then they are doing the decent thing, they are doing what is right.

Wrong. Especially when these words come from the President’s mouth, and these statements that condone and justify men’s alleged precondition to treat women as objects to be collected – because women are their kaligayahan (happiness), because there are so many women so little time – are spoken publicly, to the laughter of a necessarily captive enamored audience. (more…)

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Portrait of a UP teacher as mining lobbyist

On Wednesday, March 29, GMA News Online ran a story about a UP teacher claiming two things: that Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) employees were ordered by an undersecretary to “find fault” in mining operations, and that students will not find good jobs in the mining industry after graduation.

These are University of the Philippines students, ones this same professor has taught, ones that taxpayers’ money has put through university education, and they are being told they will have no options outside of the current mining status quo.

The thoughtless statements, the baseless nameless accusations, this doomsday scenario, is unexpected coming from a teacher of the State University. But then again, we have heard this same professor at the Commission on Appointments (CA) caucus standing against the confirmation of environmentalist Gina Lopez as DENR Secretary, as we have heard him countless times defending the mining industry, while always falling silent on irresponsible mining projects and how these have wreaked havoc on communities and the environment.

I guess these statements shouldn’t have been such a surprise. (more…)

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That New York Times documentary: the photographer as hero

I am against the war on drugs and the way it is being implemented at this point. Where the lists of drug suspects remain questionable, even as inclusion in these lists is used as justification for many of the dead on our streets. Where the excuse of “nanlaban,” is used as a way for the police to justify killing a drug suspect, a justification that’s been built on the President’s pronouncements.

Where there is a lack of transparency about the drug war as a whole, and how while we are expected to get angry at media for that 7000 number, we are not allowed to get angry at police officials and government for refusing to provide us with credible numbers at any given point in time.

Where we are forgetting that even those summary executions are the responsibility of government and the police, and there are no claims to peace, order, and public safety that may be made given those killings. (more…)