Philippine News Media is a Load of Crap
As an advocate of mass media, being a graduate of Mass Communication (not pasang-awa, no failed subject, and definitely spent every day of it like it was the last), I should always be vouching for my own. I am supposed to be part of the cliche of trying to elevate the image of my profession (vocation) the way a nursing graduate would. But I am no self-righteous prick, and not that all other professions are.
There is really something so wrong with Philippine news media.
Regardless if I were a Mass Communication graduate or otherwise, there is really something wrong with Philippine news media.
First, it does not cherry pick the news. It puts into the spotlight everything and anything that happens. Yes, this is transparency and fair play at work, but to cover an event of Amalayer and makes it national news is so sickening it does not deserve a second of airtime. This is what the news media has become - a plethora of eggheads trying to sensationalize events that do not concern the general public.
Second, it does not have enough balls to keep politicians honest. Documentaries are my favorite part of it, local documentaries, I should specify. The I-Witness, Doku, The Correspondents. They focus on the lower class and try to highlight how they try to keep up with life. Along the way, they also manage to join them in a cavalcade of struggles to find food and alms, always trying to make sure the audience gets a first-hand look at how they become victims of their own mistakes. As they try to make the audience absorb the magnificence of poverty, in between the documentarist will try to inject a little emotional touch to it, a little tear in the eye or a dagger straight to the heart effect captured by the cameras before it fades to the tv show logo. All these are part of the entertainment that is Philippine documentary, then I realize, where's the morale, where's the tagline, where's the end outcome when the oppressed get to overcome their struggles in search of a life that the media indirectly tries to show them? Then every magnificence of it is a mistake because not only did it fail to help out in their fight against poverty, it does not offer the people the chance to make a choice, to at least tell the difference between surviving and struggling. At the end of every documentary is an open ended question. There's the lack of "keeping them honest."
I remember watching a news about a lost ring sent by a foreign fiancee to his Filipino partner. The post office is not able to give an explanation other than plain burglary. Local news was quick to question how they lost the ring. When they found out this was not the first time an incident of the same type occurred, they never had it in them to go back and ask the post master about it. All we saw from the news beat was a statement of the other victim confessing how the post master bribed her into not telling anyone and promised to pay the value of the lost item. As routine would suggest, even local police would not in its full capacity try and look at the other angle to balance things out. Talk about Serbisyong Totoo and Panig sa Katotohanan.
This is where the mistake lies. News media glorifies the oppressed and less fortunate and tries to make an entertainment out of it, instead of giving them choices on how they are supposed to get out of the hole. You see underage kids diving into the ocean with no complete apparatus and they run the risk of drowning, but the documentary does not even remind them and government the danger of such, much more the intolerance of the system that likes it more to have kids work than study.
The supposed responsibility of the news media to keep them honest is a paid one, a privilege given only to the privileged. News media hides behind the covers of being neutral, of not taking enough effort to provide choices. It stays in the middle because it's more self-serving.
Third, news organizations make news, not cover them. During and after the Yolanda typhoon, instead of encouraging other private and government institutions to donate and come up with relief help, they become the relief melting pot. How is this wrong? Because as news organizations, you are not to create the news; you are to cover one. Both GMA and ABSCBN and even TV5 had their own relief operations and it's nice to see that they care about the victims. But relief operations are not the responsibility of these organizations. If they suddenly jump into the bandwagon of asking for help and making their own news, it bounces back to them the overlap in three ways:
1) It overshadows their responsibility of balanced and fair news. As news organizations, they are expected ALWAYS to stay anonymous from an event, not becoming part of it.
2) News reporters ought to stay away from the emotional side of the news. Backstories are the only part where BTS and the news reporters' emotions are to be shown. But having them on the main news is so wrong.
3) It acknowledges the fact that the government is not effective, competent and mindful of the welfare of all its citizens.
I worry the most about number 3 because although this says what's obvious, do we blame it on the government's lack of effort or the news media's neutral attitude?
I still believe that Philippine news media is a powerful one, an entity that can dictate how tables are to be turned, but I do feel that while its benevolence is its strength, it lacks the courage to fulfill its duty, or at least tries to, even without pressure from the people.
In a country like ours where the only luxury for entertainment and information is our inability to separate the fact from the fiction, news organizations ought to have in them the ability to affect change, not to advocate hypocrisy and neutralism. It should try to protect or help develop the Filipino culture where it came from. I am starting to reaffirm now what I know before, that an apple tree only bears a fruit of its kind, but such analogy may suggest that the culture dictates the outcome of everything that evolves from it, news media being one of them. So instead, I'd rather that the culture we have is no way a victim of the endeavors that it catalyzed, much more the news media a victim of not trying enough to stay from the traditional for fear of conformity.
So in verbatim, Philippine News Media is a load of crap. All the pun intended.
