you’ve got to give it to the Webbs, yes? I mean you may believe differently about Hubert etal getting that acquittal. you may want to read up regardless, because at the very least those in Bilibid Prisons need an open mind — your open mind. I believe that 15 years is enough, I even think that 10 is enough, even just one year, when there’s a slim slim possibility that anyone’s innocent, a teeny tiny chance that they aren’t guilty of the crime they’ve been accused of. to a certain extent, the shame, the lost years, the lost time, the sadness, the silence, is enough.

and it is silence that someone like Pinky Webb, politician’s daughter, media personality, sister of recently freed Hubert, knows to keep, and consistently. if there’s one thing that needs to be said a day after Hubert’s acquittal, if there’s one thing that we might want to see as one particularly bright light in all of this, it’s this.

in another media personality’s hands, this sister would’ve considered this her scoop, this would’ve been milked all it was worth, almost her chance at fame and fortune given the kind of media stardom that is now possible for members of the press.

especially in recent years when the media personality has made the news not necessarily for her professional achievements or public service, as it has been for the personal news that she herself feeds, Pinky is a breath of fresh air, one that’s surprising actually, but is such a measure of breeding. as it is of a clear sense of ethics that in this case is about the distance she keeps from the media spotlight that wants nothing but for her to speak of her private self.

this refusal to speak, the decision at silence, for me is just a wonderful example — one that we rarely see, yes? — of how the public media personality should handle any news related to her private life.

of course in third world philippines the extreme opposite of Pinky is the peg that Kris Aquino has created, also a politician’s daughter, also a TV personality, who likes to get the scoop, who uses her personal relationships as scoop, whose lack of ethics is most measured in instances when her own family is in the news — and they always are, not just because her mother was president, and her brother is now president, also because she likes to make the news. literally, she creates news about herself. case in point: if you saw that TV Patrol live patch, Ted Failon actually didn’t know what hit him as Kris just kept going on and on. making fun of others should be illegal in Kris’ hands; i wonder about the freedom of speech, too.

and it is because of Kris and every other media personality who has appeared in a magazine talking about her personal life, every media personality who speaks of personal things in 140 characters or less on Twitter, every media personality who has turned — quite shamelessly — into a lifestyle host in the guise of current events host. it is because of all these that we barely know to see Pinky Webb here, maybe because we don’t know how to deal with such class, such grace, such a display of press ethics.

sometimes and here, in the most tragically beautiful of ways, we are still surprised by members of our media. and in this horrid state of affairs when Kris and Boy are considered credible, and Korina and Noli can just go back to being “objective” newscasters, well.

thank goodness for Pinky Webb. may she be remain the peg for the right amount(s) of silence and quiet, the correct refusal to sell private self, that we so aspire for in the members of media. because that is a measure not just of their ethics, but also of their trust in us as audience who are mature enough to deal with media personalities without the personal. we get what we deserve, I know. and maybe Pinky Webb’s proving to us that sometimes we deserve the people with breeding and class, the ones who hold their privacies dear, because we all should, too.