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As the sad affair at the Manila Peninsula last Friday was moving to an end, the authorities turned their eyes to the press and the media. They were held in a holding area, “treated like rebels or criminals”, and some, if not all, of their equipment and media paraphernalia were confiscated. The ABS-CBN news crew and reporters were the first ones to be subjected to this treatment, as reported by Pinky Webb on live camera that night.
Some, despite presenting their ID’s and showing their other stuff to prove they were members of the press, were cuffed and were sent to Camp Bagong Diwa for questioning. Of course all the media and press outfits reacted against this act. Even some members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) were not spared the treatment, as they were there.
The government’s defense: it was the only way to sort out the legitimate members of the press and the media against those who were just posing as one. In DILG Sec. Puno’s statement, he even went to as far as blaming the media for obstructing the flow of justice.
“Where was the obstruction?” asks National Press Club President Roy Mabasa. “The press and the media were already there even when there were no police lines set up to keep them apart from what was going on.”
Ramon Tulfo has also a mouthful to say about the incident in Marcos and GMA regimes similar. Media lawyers also defended the integrity of the media person’s job in bringing in the news so the public can be informed and that they do not get in the way of justice. They were just following a lead and that in so doing, they are risking their lives in order to get a clear coverage of what’s happening.
Expect the authorities to throw in other issues at the press and the media, as: national security threat; critical information; cuddling a rebel; prevalence of the law over anything else, etc. They know that this is a defining moment for the media and the press. If media and the press get away with this, without yet ‘invoking’ the fourth estate context, the authorities know that it would take major precedence in how all affairs in news gathering and releases will be done from hereon.
I believe the Philippine press and media have come a long way in terms of maturity and responsibility in news handling. They always present both sides. It is not news if only one side is presented — that is purely PR, if one could read between the lines — and that has been the ‘norm’. And most of the time, the media and the press are not ’sympathetic’ to authorities for doing so would greatly jeopardize their calling. But that doesn’t mean they are sympathetic to rebels or anti-government elements.
They are just there to cover what is going on, to bring to the public the news as it happens. That is why press and media members and organizations smirk at the idea of airing or printing only good news about the government (if there is any) when Public Information Committee Chair Bienvenido Abante Jr. engages them to do so through a regular meeting (seminar-type, actually, as if the media and the press are told how to do their job) with press and media outfits until its culmination to a press/media conference at the PICC (?) this December (?) where they [media practitioners, press people, news orgs, pubic affairs associations, media bureaus, etc] will be asked to sign up to a (hold your breath!) “covenant on presenting only the good news”. A hu-what ? Censorship !
My die-hard, to-the-bones idealistic journalist friend was so enraged and disgusted when he attended that first meeting.
“If people like Abante in the government are only doing their jobs well, then this government will not have bad news coming out from everywhere,” my already red-faced friend said. “The news is not shoved to us for us to take it. We go there to where it happens and report it as it is. What his [Abante] covenant is offering is so insulting, not only to us but to the nation in general !”
“You know what a good news sounds like?” my friend continued, “returning all the cash gifts they got in a paper bag will be a good start.”
Meanwhile, as ABS-CBN’s footages of the Nov. 29 court walk-out could still be in the hands of the authorities, I will share some photos from the time the SWATs arrived that I have grabbed from ABS-CBN and ANC27 . Note: these photos are chronologically arranged; you may even see the timestamps on ANC27’s Breaking News.
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