Press secretary vows to be more objective, ‘sedate’

MANILA, Philippines — Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles has vowed to ensure a “more sedate” and “more objective” dissemination of information about President Marcos and to avoid injecting opinions that may confuse the public.

Cruz-Angeles said her office does not speak for the President, but clarifies or puts together what he has stated to make it clearer.

“For orderly dissemination of information, you don’t put any opinions there. That’s what I’d like to imprint in the style that we’re trying to show now,” Cruz-Angeles said in a recent interview with state-run People’s Television.

“There’s a lot of passion in the past administration. This time it’s more sedate, more objective. The President likes science and there’s a science to language,” she added.

Cruz-Angeles, a lawyer and vlogger, said a press secretary says what “advances the cause of the country.”

“When you’re a lawyer, when you appear in court, you can only say what advances the cause of your client. So it’s like on a bigger scale, you say what advances the cause of the country,” Cruz-Angeles said.

“So it doesn’t help, for example, if the public officials issue opinions that might run counter to existing policy... It makes for a lot of confusion,” she added.

Cruz-Angeles said the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS), the government’s lead communication arm, has a leaner staff but the entities under it are better organized.

“Actually, the President made things easier for us. The past administration had a large bureaucracy. It was the PCOO (Presidential Communications Operations Office). When it was converted to the Office of the Press Secretary, the PIA (Philippine Information Agency) is now under the OP (Office of the President), the RTVM (Radio Television Malacañang) is now under the PMS (Presidential Management Staff),” Cruz-Angeles said.

“So we’re left with a leaner and meaner, hopefully sharper – and I am sure they are – media... These are all now far better organized and more responsive to disseminating the information the President needs to get out well,” she added.

Last June, Marcos issued Executive Order No. 2, which renamed the PCOO to Office of the Press Secretary, the original name by which the agency was known. The order also transferred the supervision of RTVM and the PIA to other offices and abolished the Office of the Presidential Spokesperson.

In the order, Marcos said the communications arm of the administration has to be rationalized and consolidated for a “more efficient delivery of public policy to the general public.”

The entities that are attached to the OPS are the APO Production Unit, Bureau of Broadcast Services, Intercontinental Broadcasting Corp., National Printing Office, the News and Information Bureau and People’s Television Network Inc.