Tag Archives: Philippine Daily Inquirer

komentaryo

State of blogging, microblogging, media #crisis

At the tail-end of 2017, Bebang Siy invited me to judge some 18 blog entries that talk about fake news for the Saranggola Blog Awards. While many of the entries were taking from the same sources and tended to be redundant, the more interesting ones were those that tried to bring into their writing the more personal effect of being bombarded with lies and falsity and exaggeration that take the form of the news. The two other judges, even when we didn’t sit down to deliberate, actually had chosen the same winners I did.

It was certainly an experience that gave me hope: both for blogging and for writing. Because it reminded me of a time when blogging wasn’t about keeping a Facebook Page and microblogging, that is, writing statuses that detail your activities of the day, i.e., Asec Mocha, and most other Duterte Diehard Supporter pages. Neither was it about keeping a blog site that’s nothing more than reactionary, living off what’s happening on social media, and leeching off what’s already trending, i.e., Jover Laurio’s Pinoy Ako Blog.   (more…)

kultura

Freedom of anti-information

A little over two months since we elected a new President, there is no day that I do not reel from the change that has come, for good, better, worse – depending on where you stand on issues.

It is the latter of course that has become the more critical question. “Where do you stand?” after all seeps into our daily engagements on social media: it is measured by the headlines we share on our Facebook walls and Twitter feeds, and what we refuse to speak about.

And while we like to be sure about where we stand, I have found freedom in being shaken by this President. By the fact that he requires that I read up on the South China Sea crisis on one day, and climate change on another; the drug crisis in the country on a Monday, poverty and oligarchs on a Wednesday, and then back again. (more…)

komentaryo

the eyes have it? patricia evangelista votes!

I have personally taken to ignoring Patricia Evangelista. now that she has gone up the ladder of media empire ABS-CBN as creator and producer of Storyline (which does romanticize tragedy in its writing, camerawork, conceptualization), there seems to be no stopping this girl. yes, even when half the time what she does in her Philippine Daily Inquirer opinion column is rehash what it is that has come out in her TV show. signs of these media times? there’s is no explanation for cheap thrills. or notions of credibility.

but it is precisely because she is in these positions of “credibility” that sometimesit is just difficult to ignore Patricia, lest she be under the illusion that she’s getting away with saying things that limn over the bigger issues of the day, as she passes her opinions off as political and correct and valid. at the very least, she passes them off as well-informed and well thought out, when really, they are far from it.

in her last column “Chiz Escudero 2010” Patricia spent most of her space rehashing what Chiz Escudero said at his press con announcing his defection from NPC, then she summarized it by saying that all Chiz did was to say that “a man running for president must not belong to a party, because to belong to a party is to give up independence of action”.

that this conclusion glosses over the other things that Chiz did say at the press con in relation to being freed from party politics is just so un-journalistic, and goodness, just downright uncritical.  this is a grave simplification of what it is that went on in that press con, an unacceptable display of an inability to see beyond one’s own biases – one that is for Noynoy Aquino (which we will get to in a bit).

so in the process of dissing Chiz, Patricia reveals that she can’t even respond to the more important things that he had raised: a brave stance versus contractualization and the oil deregulation law, versus the oligarchy’s ways of demeaning the jobs of those in the lower rungs of government service, versus the pork barrel, versus corrupt government officials. this is more than any of the presidentiables have dared say about their platform, about what it is that ails current politics, about what is all wrong here. an intelligent and critical reading of what went on at that press con would’ve meant looking not just at what Chiz announced, but at what else he did say.

and then Patricia reveals her simplistic analysis of Chiz’s defection: that since Chiz said that he has never been dictated upon by the NPC, this defection is meaningless. really now. to say that he has never been dictated by his party, doesn’t mean that there has never been any pressure to go with the party’s political flow and flaws. that Chiz has remained as part of the opposition despite NPC politics is a good thing, not a bad thing. that he now decided that he wants out, out of Danding country, out of party politics, is a good thing.

that in the process Chiz reveals the evils that exist in, the limitations of being part of, a party like the NPC is a fantastic thing.

was this all about him? absolutely. is it possibly about us too, as an electorate intelligently looking for options and wanting change? absolutely.

does Patricia know this? obviously not. in the end, she only revealed herself to be part of the youth who are closet-conservatives, unable to see the value of revolt, the importance of an ability to rebel, to break through the boxes that define who we are. these members of the middle to upper class youth are the scariest kind because they imagine themselves as intelligent voters, they imagine themselves critical, and the future of the nation. and yet when they are faced with the choice between revolt and compromise, change and the status quo, they will weigh things according to their own personal stakes: will i be able to keep my job, will i be able to keep my friends, will i be able to keep my reputation? and in the end they will choose the happy comforts of their old lives, stay where they are, blindly criticize those who shout based on the mere fact that they are shouting.

Patricia ends her tirade againstChiz’s defection from the NPC with

Mostly, I write this because, very frankly, I cannot trust a man whose mouth says one thing, and his eyes another.

now frankly, I wonder what it is that’s in Chiz’s eyes. or in Noynoy’s for that matter – he who is obviously Patricia’s candidate because, as she says, Chiz’s decision to defect is sold as

another touchstone of national change on the heels of Noynoy Aquino’s rise as the nation’s moral, if less articulate choice.

in the guise of being objective, i.e., acknowledging how Chiz’s defection is being seen, Patricia only reveals her own biases: that Noynoy is only a “less articulate” choice, and nothing else.

I wonder if she realizes that in the process of assessing Noynoy as such she has put her foot in her mouth, proving to us all that she has yet to even assess Noynoy as her candidate, over and above what he says.

oh, but wait, maybe that is the point: Noynoy has yet to have anything to say. At the rate the Aquino campaign is going, we’re hearing more of Kris. or is Patricia happy enough listening to her? and pray tell, what do Kris’ eyes tell her? and while she’s at it, since when were people’s eyes the reason for endorsing a candidate? this is not naiveté. this is carelessness. and irresponsibility.

go for it young media practitioner. there’s nowhere to go but up.

komentaryo

in defense of Nicole

This is a translation of the transcript of Joms Salvador’s comments on the unthinking and insensitive soundbites that have come out of Nicole’s last sworn statement.  Click here for the original Filipino version.

I could not help but respond to the views this note on Nicole’s “retraction” has elicited.

First, on the basis of what’s preferable or not, it is true that it would’ve been better had Nicole and her family not “backed out”, if they didn’t get tired and just pushed through with the fight. From any given perspective — as a woman, as a Filipino, even as a victim — no one can say that in the eyes of the public, it was better that Nicole had executed her last affidavit.

But on the point of what is right and what is wrong — a moralistic enterprise that has as its by-products the notions of whether Nicole is scared or brave, selfish or selfless, shameful or decent — this should not be an issue here.

The reason is simple: we are not Nicole, we are not the woman who has had to face the distaste and ambivalence of the public, we are not the Filipina victim who is fighting a rapist, protected by both the US and Philippine governments.

Also, given thatNicole has conceded, has backed out at this point, does this mean that she wasn’t raped at all? If we analyze her affidavit well, she did not say that she wasn’t raped. What she said was this: she wasn’t sure if a rape happened. She said that maybe it was her fault, maybe she did or said something that allowed for her and Smith to become intimate.

Nowhere in the affidavit did Nicole say that she was taking back all the circumstances that surrounded the rape in Subic on November 1 2005: Smith carried a practically unconscious Nicole from the Nepture Bar as if she were a pig; Smith raped Nicole inside a moving Starex van; after which, Smith left Nicole on the sidewalk of Alava Pier, with her pants down and a used condom sticking to her skin. No one has said or proven these to be untrue, no one has said that none of these instances didn’t happen.

The Filipina Nicole was raped on November 1 2005 in Subic Philippines.

American soldier Daniel Smith raped her.

The law and the decision of the Makati Regional Trial Court are clear about Smith’s verdict: Smith took advantage of Nicole’s drunken state. Physical and circumstantial evidence proved that Smith raped Nicole.

Or have people conveniently forgotten this so that they can continue to view and judge Nicole based on the stereotype they so wish her to be?

Lastly, in order to understand Nicole and this last decision she has made, it is important to understand what rape is, and what happens to women victimized by it, especially for the ones like Nicole, who was raped by a soldier of the most powerful imperialist country in the world, who holds the most puppet-government in Asia by the neck.

This is the thing to do, instead of brandishing moralistic rhetoric to blame the victim of rape.

between the Philippine Daily Inquirer, among other major newspapers, posting images of her for all the world to see and calling the affidavit a “retraction” which IT IS NOT; between the conservative old men who fight among themselves (wow, namecalling! how macho!) and who think they are more intelligent than the rest of us because they (1) love to quote from the law (as if this has excused the Americans from trampling on this country time and again) and (2) blame everything on activism (as if they know what it means, when all they prove is that it has now become fashionable to be America-loving anti-activist fascists), and the women and men across generations who have said that Nicole is a disappointment, a waste of our time, a loser. what has become clear is this: we do not understand. and like the American soldier Daniel Smith, we would much rather work on the presumption that Nicole was a woman who deserved what she got (oh, pray tell, which kind of woman is this?), instead of seeing November 1 2005 for what it is: the night that a Filipina named Nicole was raped by American soldier Daniel Smith, period.

rape has nothing to do with the social class, the career, the life of a woman — much less how much she drank — at that point of becoming victim. rape has everything to do with a man eaten up by hubris, and imagining that he can get away with violence.