Category Archive for: social media

komentaryo

Social / media bias #Eleksyon2016

If I were the Liberal Party, I’d be congratulating myself. After five years they have successfully dumbed down public discourse, selling us the true, the good, the beautiful about matuwid­ na­ daan, making us believe that it is all we need, handling criticism and crises via spin, always using notions of anti­corruption and transparency to respond to anything at all. (more…)

kultura

#womensmonth2016: censoring our words, our bodies

the trailer of the movie “Ang Taba Ko Kasi,” a trailer that has been online since February 1, a good month and half ago, has been deemed by the Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) as unfit for public exhibition. lead actress Cai Cortez posted the MTRCB decision on her instagram, obviously and understandably exasperated by the decision.

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komentaryo

Deserving Duterte

If there’s anyone that I am now afraid might win the 2016 elections—because who knows what kind of electorate we have at this point—it is Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

Yes, there are pros and cons for all the presidential candidates and the possibility that each will win. But what Duterte promises are such simple, commonsensical things. What he promises are things that all presidential candidates should be promising, and they should be promising it with a progam to back it up. A holistic take on peace and order and public safety that need not fall back on action star rhetoric, and need not mean committing every human rights violation imaginable. (more…)

komentaryo

Of silence, Paris, the Lumad

The month’s been long and it isn’t even over yet. Much of my mind and heart have been taken over by Lumad stories, ones that we rarely hear about first hand, and so it’s been critical (at least for me) to hear the Lumad themselves speak.

But of course this came with the realization of distance. How far is a land like Mindanao to Luzon, how far is Surigao, Davao, CARAGA, SOCCSKARGEN, from Manila. If the silence that surrounded the Lumad killings are any indication, it could be a continent, a country, a whole world away.

That it is like Paris, that it is not Paris, is precisely the point. (more…)

kultura

The portrait of a columnist as plagiarist

It has been confusing to say the least. But also it has been quite fascinating, this whole case of Ducky Paredes versus the broadsheet Malaya.

Because it’s such a public display of what goes through the mind of a man who has been accused of plagiarism, and the kind of defensive stance he’s decided to take. How the decision to turn this story around — in fact get ahead of the story — and claim that one had been oppressed and un-paid, therefore that would explain whatever actions he was to be accused of.

To be accused of. Because in fact we heard about how things went down between Paredes and Malaya only at the point when the paper found the need to defend itself against Paredes’s accusations as posted on Facebook.

That’s the thing: we found out about the story when it was deemed over by Paredes — he was moving on to the next thing. So the loudest voice we’re hearing is his, not at all acknowleding the serious allegation and crime that is plagiarism. (more…)