Category Archive for: media

komentaryo

Ghosts of August and Duterte’s drug war

There is much to be said about a properly envisioned, well-planned communications strategy, one that’s paid for by public funds and seeks to serve the whole country by providing us with relevant critical information about government. And then there is Presidential Communications according to Martin Andanar and Mocha Uson, which is to say no communications, no information dissemination. They serve only the President, and the rest of us can just watch as our taxes are wasted on an office that refuses to understand its job.

Ah, but it seems a year in we are benefitting from this utter lack of control over communications and Presidential articulations. In August, one major event that none of us should forget: the President himself admitting that contrary to his articulations about ridding the country of drugs, he actually cannot control the entry of drugs into the country.

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Mocha and the end of troll discourse

If there’s anything the past week has revealed it’s the slow death of troll discourse. It’s entirely possible the social media armies aren’t being paid enough, but it’s also possible that we just have ceased to be afraid of being bullied online. The latter is my more optimistic perspective, because it’s been a year after all, and now more than ever, this government’s strategies of silencing and skewing discourse have been exposed to be nothing more than bad communications and terrible damage control.

The only reason it requires mention at this point in fact, is the existence of one Mocha Uson, whose behavior has not evolved from being rabid Duterte supporter during the campaign to being a government employee whose salary is being paid for by public funds. The latter behooves us all to critique her and her actions — as we should all government officials, especially when they continue to be a source not just of falsity and hate, but also — and more importantly — the most terrible kind of propaganda that justifies the killings of thousands.  (more…)

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Common sense dictates: Confirm Judy Now!

Here’s the thing with DSWD Sec. Judy Taguiwalo’s pending confirmation at the Commission on Appointments: it makes no sense anymore to deny her this position, given that she has already been working the post for a year, has served in it effectively, with nary a controversy, no questions about her integrity, and having transformed our sense of what the Department of Social Work and Development is actually about.

It is relief goods and funds on-the-ready, in anticipation of that next storm. It’s the prompt release of goods for those affected by unexpected natural disasters. It’s assistance for families in idle and decrepit housing projects, for Lumad students camped out in UP, for the disenfranchised and hungry and in need in the Marawi evacuation centers. For once, DSWD is working at delivering services to the people it is supposed to serve, and there is little reason to believe any of this to be wrong — no matter what those Congressmen at the CA would like us to believe.

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Andanar’s PNA train wreck

This is all very simple, really. The Philippine News Agency (PNA) has made enough mistakes, has been in the news often enough for being nothing more than a laughable excuse for a newswire service, and ultimately responsibility falls on Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.

After all, I have personally heard him talking about how much he idolizes China’s Xin Hua News Agency, and how he would like to emulate its technology, its offices across the world, its professionalism. The fundamental problem with this of course is that Xin Hua is a state news agency in a country with censorship, where there is no freedom of the press, or of speech. And unless that’s what Andanar hopes for the Philippines, there is absolutely no reason to even think of emulating Xin Hua.

But PNA’s foreign news section is filled with news taken from Xin Hua, and that can only fall on Andanar’s shoulders. Why are you even thinking this news service to be credible source of news about China, and about the world?  (more…)

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#Andanar’s learning curve, social media user accreditation, #PCOO’s downward spiral

It seems the learning curve is steep for Martin Andanar — and everyone else on the Duterte communications team. A year in, and this week’s mistakes and mishaps can only be symptoms of the bigger crisis that is Presidential and government communications. We are also reminded (yet again!) that we are wasting public funds on the salaries of officials who have no idea what they’re doing.

After a year, instead of actually evolving in his knowledge of social media, Andanar is still stuck on his simpleton assessment of what social media is about. He’s still working with the nonsense of counting followers like it matters. Department Order 15, which seeks to accredit “social media practitioners” to cover PCOO and Presidential events even asserts that social media is where “the citizenry” might be “engaged” in order to “enrich the quality of discourse.”

Was Andanar in the Philippines the past year? At what point did partisan social media (that is, pro-Duterte and pro-Dilawan) “enrich the quality of discourse”?

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