Hide & seek, speak/no speak

For nearly a month, just about every TV station, online media group, show or program as well as every other radio program has hyped up their respective “job interviews,” panel or one-on-one discussions with various political candidates, primarily those running for president. It has reached a point where every other media practitioner has suddenly become a political expert, or copycat of internationally recognized broadcast journalists. It is what Philippine media does best: We recognize news value, inject branding, soak it in hype and try like hell to beat the competition and then pat ourselves on the back for imagined success and excellence.

But if the last two to three weeks of job interviews of candidates would be the basis of measure, it seems that the blockbusters people had hoped to see or hear turned out to be dull and disappointing. As they say, you cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip, and it is hard to get the truth from anyone who does not even want to be in the same room with you. Even the rare and controversial moments were short-lived by trolls and critics who drowned them out with revisionism or alternative realities. The worst of it all is when the absentee or non-participant starts throwing mud or accusations of bias as their excuse for their evasion and avoidance tactics towards media. It has reached the point where one candidate’s evasive or selective maneuvers have pitted one show versus another.

After two weeks of “hide & seek” people have started to get turned off by the “job interviews” and said that they are now less inclined to listen to the candidates who have been mouthing solutions and policies as their own, when most of them are readily available statements and solutions of others from here and abroad. All you really need to do is jot down what policies, solutions and political one liners certain candidates offer and Google them!

The current model of interviewing candidates is nothing more than a self-serving event that gives the candidates a platform to sell themselves, to make themselves look and sound their best and where the media get to “cash in” or create content for programing and promotion. While the public gets bits and pieces of information about the candidates, the God-honest truth is those hosting the events or taking part as interviewers cannot put out everything about the candidates because they have to play nice or be polite during those face-to-face interviews. It’s bad enough that we have “evaders,” those TV and radio programs certainly don’t want to trigger walkouts of candidates or worse, shouting matches between politicians and the media. So, let’s just be honest about it, for all the hype, we can only play tough and go so far. Then there is the time limit, vital information cannot be mined, not in a few short hours with so many participant-candidates and interviewers.

After several decades of campaigns, elections and failed leadership coupled with corruption and incompetence, many viewers have expressed a common thought: “Why do we even waste time putting up programs and interviews when we know that everything most of these politicians will say are recycled ideas, lies and broken promises?”

I spent a few days thinking about that while talking and listening to various reactions of broadcasters and journalists who were victimized by “No Shows,” Evaders, Late Comers and User-friendly politicians (friendly when “using” the media). Then it occurred to me: Instead of conducting job interviews or candidate forums, members of the media and the KBP should get together and do what they do best – host a series of talks and forums where veteran journalists and broadcasters will talk about what they know about the candidates, their track records, their accomplishments, their professional misconduct or incompetence or specifically what they are good at and what they cannot be counted on to do.

We in media always say that all those interviews, debates or panel discussions are meant to educate the public. That is not going to happen when the source is a self-serving candidate talking in order to get elected. If we want an educated electorate, it is the media who should educate them, NOT entertain them by hosting quiz shows and job interviews of candidates. Instead of being wrongfully accused as biased even before getting to see much less talk to a candidate, we should instead call in reporters, editors, program hosts and columnists and program anchors across the board in media and let them share what they know personally and factually about the candidates and present informed opinions based on years of covering, researching, interviewing or reporting about them.

For those who are newcomers, reporters and correspondents as well as research teams can conduct due diligence on them and this way, everybody, old and new, gets a full review and is presented based on what they have done, their conduct and their lifestyle and not on mere vision-mission that are a dime a dozen on the internet.

The big difference in this scenario is that professionally speaking, people in media have accountability as professionals as well as under the law. Any and all working members of media are accountable to someone above them. It may be a supervisor, section editor, news head, publisher or owner, and last but not the least our viewers and readers. Media cannot simply state or claim things and expect everyone to accept it as Gospel Truth. No, whatever the media present undergoes a process of verification and validation.

The positive aspect to such a program or presentation is that the track record and accomplishments and competencies are brought out or refreshed to the public, which is a good thing because we tend to remember the bad but forget the good things people have accomplished. At the very least, the media will not have selective memory as some candidates have. Last but not the least, when media does the talking, the politician can’t run and play hide and seek or play us against each other.