A comment on yesterday's pooled editorial

It’s the 18th anniversary of the Cebu media’s Press Freedom Week and yesterday, all the print media in Cebu came up with a pooled editorial entitled “Media at the Crossroads.” Allow me to add my 10 cents’ worth in this discussion. But first, let me reprint an excerpt from that pooled editorial to start off my observations.

“Five Presidents later, Philippine media are confronted with a paradox. It finds itself banging on the door of a government that is reluctant to advance the gains of EDSA in concrete standards of transparency and accountability. It is dismayed to see the Aquino administration and Congress dillydallying with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, which would make access to government decisions and records a matter of right, not just for a journalist but for any citizen.

On the other hand, the media operate in a society where people rapidly acquire greater access to information at their fingertips via the internet. Data, images, entertainment, and news can be downloaded with blurring speed on PCs tablets, smart phones, laptops and other mobile devices. What’s the problem here? Figuring out what people want to know and what citizens should know is one of journalism’s finest burdens.”

How things have truly changed 25 years ago after Freedom of Speech was restored with the success of the EDSA Revolt. Back in those days, the mainstream print or broadcast media couldn’t be trusted anymore because they were owned and therefore controlled by Marcos cronies. EDSA untangled this knotty web of media ownership. But then we might ask… why was ABS-CBN returned by then Pres. Cory Aquino, while the other “sequestered” channels like PTV-4, Channel 13 and Channel 9 were kept in government hands? Why weren’t these media outlets sold or bided out?

The reason perhaps is these broadcast companies were convenient tools for propaganda by the powers that be. Whoever was the President from Tita Cory down to Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did not bid or sell these TV networks as friends of the President would rather run these themselves. So despite the return of freedom of speech, certain elements in broadcast media are still being used for propaganda purposes by whoever is in power.

But compared to 25 years ago, technology has upped the ante as far as the mainstream media is concerned. Today we have the internet, smart phones, laptops, PCs linked to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to compete with mainstream media, which brought many doomsayers to predict the demise of print and broadcast media. But will the new technology really replace mainstream media?

In the USA, where many people are already wired in their respective homes, newspapers are now sold online, which has been hailed as a huge step in promoting the environment, after all newsprint comes from trees. The more people go on line, the lesser trees that need to be cut. Of course, there are still traditionalists like me who prefer the newsprint, although I can go online to see the newspapers that I need to read.

But will the internet totally replace newsprint? I think not. The beauty of newsprint is that, it can be passed from friend to friend and if there’s an article you like you can cut and preserve it. Of course you can also do that in a PC, but not on a smart phone. Perhaps the problem with print media, like Time Magazine, it comes up with a story, which becomes passé’

Last week’s Time magazine featured a front page report dubbed “The End of Al Qaeda?” But even before the magazine hit the stands, someone came up with YouTube documentary insulting the prophet Muhammad, and it resulted in massive and violent anti-US demonstrations in 20 nations that began with the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens, the US Ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans. Clearly, Al Qaeda is alive and well and continues on its destructive ways.

Open your television sets and you will see the world aflame because of this recent Muslim anger. With Syria still embroiled in a civil war, Europe experiencing grave financial problems, who knows where all this would lead the world? Here in Asia, China is not only harassing the Philippines in Panatag Shoal, but they are now eyeball-to-eyeball against Japan in the Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese call Diaoyu Islands.

Meanwhile, we await the promise of Pres. PNoy Aquino to pass the FOI bill because it is necessary for getting the truth into the business of governance. I just hope that PNoy will keep that campaign promise. In the meantime, I fully concur with the pooled editorial yesterday when it pointed out, “Figuring out what people want to know and what citizens should know is one of journalism’s finest burdens.” But media will survive…. Hopefully!

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