EDITORIAL - ABS-CBN did its part. What about the PNP?

ABS-CBN finally did the right thing by firing two members of its tv crew and the driver of its car that figured in a vehicular accident, and then in a subsequent brawl, with a drunken police officer. All eyes are now on the police and what it is going to do with that police officer, Senior Inspector Jose Liddawa.

But first, because the incident not only became very controversial but highly-charged as well, there is a need to recap the story as how it truly happened, to put things into proper perspective, and make the public understand the real issues involved.

Sometime early dawn last month, a drunken Liddawa, zigzagging across the road, crashed his car into an ABS-CBN pickup. An altercation ensued, and then a brawl. Liddawa ended up black and blue and had to be taken to a hospital. Who threw the first punch, we do not know. Who took Liddawa to the hospital, we do not know either.

But it does not really matter because the brawl is NOT the real issue here. Brawls often happen in the aftermath of an accident. What matters is that, Number One, Liddawa was drunk while driving, and that, Number Two, the ABS-CBN crew lied to the public when they first reported the incident on television.

Cutting away crucial footages from the video clip they themselves took of the incident, the ABS-CBN crew made it appear that it was only Liddawa who was throwing punches and that, when he fell, he fell of his own accord, whether out of his own drunkenness, or from sheer exhaustion.

But the injuries of Liddawa clearly showed he could not have suffered them by merely falling. He was clearly beaten up. That gave the cop's lawyer ammunition to demand that the tv network show the entire footage. And there it was found out that there was more to the video clip than what was first reported.

Again, the brawl is not the real issue here. Indeed, when the entire footage was eventually shown and Liddawa was seen this time getting beaten up, audiences mostly said he got it coming. He was drunk. He caused the accident. And he still had the gall to insist he was a police officer. As they say in Cebuano - mirisi.

Yet the worst that can be said about Liddawa is that he is a misfit in the force. But for ABS-CBN reporter Ramil Paican, cameraman Joel Noel, and the driver, they committed a far more serious ethical breach of journalistic principles - they connived to knowingly distort the facts to report an entirely different version of what happened.

When this disturbing truth finally came out, all of Cebu media bled in anguish and in shame, a dark day for an institution that has always prided itself in upholding the highest standards of the profession. Thankfully, ABS-CBN swiftly rectified the wrong. Now it is the turn of the police to show the public the true measure of its mission.