The events that unfolded at the Senate grounds on May 13 had me sitting and watching live feeds more than I usually need to: this is both the good and the bad of the present.

Live video feeds are great for credible media coverage that seek to show us what is unfolding, with whatever facts are available at that moment. Even with TV and radio, live coverage will have a particular audience that wants to know what is going on, even if undestanding it usually takes a while, given the multiple things happening beyond what a camera can capture. But media pieces these things together for us, given what information they have, and even as they go and try to get answers to questions that were left hanging — this has always been what credible media has done for the public. (It is also what pseudo-media content creators cannot do, even when they are given access to Malacañang and government events as the Rodrigo Duterte government did.)

Now, the Senators, going live on their Facebook pages — that part’s new, isn’t it? For whatever reason, for this particular incident, the newly-self-installed Duterte Senate majority’s impulse was to go live on their Facebook pages after they hear shots being fired. This is why they cannot fault any of us for wondering about what really happened here. There was nothing normal about Senators going live on Facebook after an incident like this one, as opposed to, say, waiting for security to declare the whole building as safe, step out with dignity from the Office of the Senate President, and tell the people what they know so far about the incident.

Instead, what we got was a particular way of framing the incident. APCayetano’s “the Senate is under attack” and Imee Marcos’s “Senate siege”, while they were in darkness inside the Office of the SP was in stark contrast with the bright lights right outside, in the halls of the Senate, where the Office of the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms and other Senate security simply asked media to move farther away from where the shots were being fired, and the media scrambled to find hiding places while figuring out what was happening. While the Mark Villar said they were “trapped” — we were seeing movement right outside.

The impulse to do a timeline was borne precisely of this stark difference between how the Duterte Senate majority was framing the incident, and what it was we were actually seeing, thanks to credible media practitioners. Because you know what fear looks like, and it is in those members of the media who were experiencing this first hand, with no protections, right at the other end of the hallway where shots were being fired. The Duterte Senators, meanwhile, were framing the gunshots as “an attack” or a “siege” while also bringing into the discussion the articles of impeachment being delivered (the Senate majority were “told” it was being delivered that’s why they were there), the flood control cases (“flood control na naman ba?” asked Imee Marcos), and saying that “some” people were told to leave but they were left there (according to Cayetano, Legarda and the Senate Secretary received warnings about “magkakagulo diyan”; and that their team saw the staff of other minority senators leaving). All those additional … things … just don’t make this purportedly “trapped” majority any more credible than they were on Monday, when they decided to harbour a fugitive-Senator and take over the Senate that was set to receive the Vice President’s Articles of Impeachment. (more…)