Martes, Oktubre 15, 2019
We have a saying that with great power comes great responsibility. Freedom of press itself is a great power that requires those to use to be responsible. There's the difference between the right to express your opinion vs. being opinionated. If you're going to be in the news then you ought to display facts as facts. You can have your editorials, express your views to why you don't like someone but if you're going to report then take BOTH SIDES of the story. Don't be like ABiaS-CBN like when they decided to only hear Jim Paredes' side of the story during his infamous EDSA bullying incident. That alone is proof that the Philippine press is INDEED partisan. They should have interviewed both the DDS Youth AND Paredes to get the real side of the story. I've noticed that ABiaS-CBN and Inquirer try to portray President Duterte in a negative light almost all the time. Is it EVEN important to report something so trivial like an earthquake hit when President Duterte arrived in Bali? That's really a very trivial detail if you ask me. So tell me how true is ABiaS-CBN's claims that it's non-partisan? How true is it then that CRappler and Very Evil Files are really into NON-PARTISAN fact-checking?
How did partisan media allow Filipino politicians to flood the free market of ideas with junk that would distract them? You can think of how VIVA Films presents a one-sided story. You can think of how often ABiaS-CBN itself has been trying to make it look like that Noynoy Aquino had indeed turned the Philippines into a first world country or Asia's next miracle. While Noynoy (according to the Asian Correspondent) did have some economic reforms but were they enough to turn the Philippines into a power? Do they even realize that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself had provided Noynoy some of the policies that helped improve the Philippine economy? I guess this is why the current Philippine constitution doesn't allow foreign media to operate on foreign soil. It's because many Filipino politicians rely on the mainstream media to make themselves look good! People in return get distracted with nonsense. Worse, you've got a generation of people whose favorite sources for the facts are komiks, pelikulas, teleseryes, and I forgot to mention dramatizations made by biased media!
Partisan media itself is a road to eventual dictatorship. You can think of how often it's easy to cry democracy is dead if it's not in your favor. Communist countries love to give special exemptions to news companies that are in their favor. For example. Mao Zedong's supposed quest to "abolish capitalism" was a failure because news companies that portrayed him positively. It's stupid to criticize the Marcos Years of extreme censorship when ABiaS-CBN too is being partisan. Only partisan networks that colored Ferdinand E. Marcos in a positive light were allowed to do business. ABiaS-CBN which was anti-Marcos was shut down and seized by the government. ABiaS-CBN has even become just as stupid as networks that once favored the Marcoses so much. It's because partisan media will eventually get into crony capitalism.
I would dare say that partisan media is a result of a lack of competition. What's the use of criticizing the Marcos Years of portraying nothing but Marcos on TV when foreign media aren't even allowed to operate in the Philippines? Allegedly, CRappler is in violation of that law too. After all, these medias are thankful to the political parties that set them into power. It's like ABiaS-CBN has that utang ng loob or sense of gratitude to the Aquinos for releasing them from the dreaded Marcos lock. Yet, they are even derailing competition which might be a good ground not to renew their license. Competition would have probably set up the local networks to be non-partisan and be more competitive. Unfortunately, the lack of competition too should be blamed for why partisan medias do what they do.