The safety in the cliche

MANILA, Philippines - In the recent hostage crisis, what indeed were “the familiar” and “the cliche” in news reportage? And what kinds of comfort, if any, did they provide?

The first cliche that I took note of was the spectacle that the media made of the tragedy. This they achieved as a result of the discomforting proximity that they enjoyed in relation to the different sites of drama and action. By now we are familiar of the angle that hostage taker Rolando Mendoza had acted calmly and respectfully to his hostages right until he saw and heard, through the aid of television from within the hijacked bus, the arrest of his brother and the wailing hysterics of his relatives — all under the bright lights of news cameras. Here the media were literally too close: reporters’ microphones hovered like vultures to the prone shirtless body of Mendoza’s brother and his wife, as they refused to get up from the ground and surrender to the police. Later, ABS-CBN’s Tintin Babao would also tweet how their GMA colleague Susan Enriquez supposedly ignored police cordons in order to get ‘exclusive’ updates. And, astutely, CSI fans pointed out on Twitter how tv cameras contaminated the crime scene in the aftermath of the tragedy. Surely, the philosophical norm of “proper distance” that Roger Silverstone requires for the operation of a moral media was unmet in how television became too close to the action and showed too much of the event. As ABS-CBN’s Tony Velasquez defensively replied to some Twitter critics, “Mabuti na yung sobra kesa kulang”. But again, surely they could have tried for moderation, for the middleground, for “proper distance”?

The second cliche that ran through the media story of what they called “the Manila Bus Tragedy” was the supreme autonomy and authority that journalists enjoyed throughout the day. The media in our country lack any significant regulation that impinges on media operations. The KBP, which intends to be a self-regulating mechanism for television networks, has no actual legal teeth, as any tv network could in fact choose to withdraw its membership from the body to avoid all sanction. With the exception of moralistic censorship of “sex and violence” coming from the hallowed halls of MTRCB, the media do not answer to government, even though they demand the government to repeatedly answer to them. During the crisis for example, there was Mel Tiangco’s knowing SWAT expertise: “Dapat kadena hindi lubid” when she saw how the rope intended to break into the bus spectacularly failed. And there was Tintin Babao again all passionate on Twitter: “Ganito ba ang training ng SWAT natin?” “SWAT: Sulong Wait Atras Tago”. There is nothing wrong with a critical media of course. But what happens if the media could only criticize others with little ability to criticize themselves?

This brings me to the third cliche. In responding to how their broadcasting of the arrest of Mendoza’s brother and their play-by-play coverage at the height of the shootout contributed if not caused the failure of rescue, journalists reverted back to its company line: “We were just doing our job”. The police, they said, should have made the decision to call for news blackout rather than they themselves making that assessment on their own. It was curious to see again on Twitter how this company line provided for journalists (otherwise unfamiliar and uncomfortable with fielding questions of media ethics) a true and unquestioned “safety in the cliche”. Journalists would tweet and retweet: “We were just informing the public.” “I hope the police do not blame the media.” “In the past people complained that the media were suppressed. Now people complain we give blow-by-blow coverage”. Indeed, what we should hope for in the coming days is not defensiveness but openness from our media, less adherence to company rules and more awareness of the ambiguous power of visibility that they wield and most tragically take for granted.

Indeed, the most tragic cliche yesterday was that the media did their job when they should have chosen not to. To have paused and questioned their own norms and standards would really have been the braver and more dangerous choice.