Child abuse

The on-going “network war” among the country’s major TV stations is undoubtedly heating up. Now there are three leading players vying for the biggest viewership obviously coming from the “masa”, the sector in our society easily enticed, impressed and convinced about what they see and hear purely because of their entertainment value. 

Thus most of the programs of the warring TV stations are primarily geared towards creating masa appeal or enhancing their entertainment value. A significant portion of these networks’ programming consists of shows that provide fun, fantasy and drama in the form of games, musicals, sit-coms and fictional soaps or “tele-novelas” mainly produced for amusement purposes.

Most of these shows have minimal, or are even utterly wanting in, educational and informative values that will help their audience improve their lives especially in forming good morals and right conduct necessary to become useful and productive members of our society. This is the alarming part here because of the tremendous impact and influence of TV on our family and society. Indeed, due to these TV programs, even notorious people involve in crimes and anomalies are lionized and have become instant celebrities. Some of them even used this instant “fame” as the vehicle to get elected to a public office and acquire power.   

Even the very terms used by their drumbeaters to describe and promote their stations, “kapamilya”, “kapuso” and “kapatid”, readily show that their target audience is the masa, without discrimination as to age sex and education, whether adults or young children, male or female, literate or illiterate. Obviously the main aim of protagonists is to win the ratings game and thus get the biggest slice of the advertising pie amounting to billions of pesos. In other words the war is fought along the profit driven front leading to too much consumerism and materialism that breed selfishness and greed and promote the interest of only a few at the expense of the many.

In this kind of heated competition therefore the warring TV stations lose nothing. All of them rake in profits although not equally but in proportion to their viewership ratings. The biggest losers are the TV viewers who are entertained by those profit driven shows that give them mere fleeting “feel good” moments but do not contribute at all to the betterment of their lives, materially and spiritually.

But the greatest danger here lies in the unwholesome influence of these shows on children of tender age and fragile minds. Unlike movies where there is prior classification or censorship, no such things happen in TV shows. Children can watch shows which are “for adults only; unless parents have enough concern for their welfare and keep the TV remote control out of their reach.

The impacts of these shows on the children are now clearly manifested in some TV programs where young children are used not merely as part of the live audience attending the show but also as participants dancing and gyrating like adults in adult shows.

Actually the competing TV stations are already airing for quite a time this kind of TV shows involving children especially at noontime. But the most recent one has caught the ire and the attention of a great number of Filipinos including the government authorities because of the inhuman way a young boy of 6 was used as a “macho dancer” in the show.

By now almost everybody knows that the boy’s name is Jan-Jan who appeared last March 12, 2011 in the TV5 “Willing Willie” game show which was televised nationwide on prime time. Reports have invariably described it, and the replay clearly depicted it as “despicable, a blatant sex exploitation, mind corruption and child abuse”. The particular scene shows the young boy gyrating in tears like a stripteaser as he is prompted by Revillame to earn a few bucks.

According to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), “the 12 March 2011 episode of this popular television program is deeply alarming. How cruel and insensitive can some people be in inflicting such traumatic humiliation to a helpless child?

The TV networks should be reminded that there is already a “Children’s Television Act of 1997 or Republic Act 8370. This law mandates that only the production of child-friendly programs without “elements that may result in physical, mental and emotional harm to children” should be promoted. It “recognizes the importance and impact of broadcast media, particularly television programs on the value formation and intellectual development of children and must take steps to support and protect children’s interests by providing TV programs reflecting their needs, concerns and interests without exploiting them.

For this purpose, RA 8370 created the National Council for Children’s Television (NCCT) to carry out the provisions of the Act. To assist the NCCT, the law also created an Advisory Committee composed of the heads of seven important government agencies among which are the MTRCB and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). The NCCT is an attached agency of the Department of Education. One of its principal functions is to “petition the proper government agencies and/or appropriate self-regulatory bodies to suspend revoke or cancel the license to operate of television stations found violating any provision of this Act and its implementing rules and regulations” (Section 11).

A significant endeavor of the NCCT is the BantayTV project. It is an interactive monitoring of children’s television shows by encouraging viewers to report immediately TV shows about exploitation of or discrimination against children either through text (0922-887-8252) or phone call (632-2306) or e-mail ([email protected]).

The ball is now in the hands of the MTRCB under its present Chairperson Grace Poe-Llamanzares, and the NCCT. It is now time for them to act with urgency so that this appalling child violence will never happen again.