Filipino Voices

(Cross-posted from a personal blog post.)

Manolo Quezon and I had a rather interesting discussion via Twitter on traditional media outfits vis-a-vis the blogosphere, shortly after I had published my post Storm the Gates. Although we had a few disagreements on specifics (if they can be called disagreements — they seem to me more differences in perspective rather than outright conflict), it seemed to me that we were generally in agreement. One of his messages I agreed with wholeheartedly went:

(A)t the heart of this is (the) ancient debate (between a) professional priesthood vs. enthusiastic amateurs. (R)eformation redux. (Editing by JEM.)

Suffice it is to say that this summed up our common perspective on the matter of the relationship between traditional media versus the blogosphere.

However, upon reading the perspectives of respected journalists such as Professors Luis Teodoro of the University of the Philippines-Diliman Journalism Department and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (http://cmfr-phil.blogspot.com) and Chay Hofileña of Ateneo de Manila, as reported in the abs-cbnNews.com/Newsbreak story Journalists urged to blog, set examples online, yet again did I find my right hand moving to the hilt of my katana — figuratively speaking, of course.

(Piss me off even more, mainstream media. Really.)

Teodoro and Hofileña apparently are urging professional journalists to blog to “set examples”, implying that non-journalists who blog need the benefit of journalists’ examples, particularly in the realm of ethical conduct. To quote from the story:

Teodoro is proposing that “there should be a means of self-regulation” in blogs. “Journalists should be models online,” he said. Be it a blog on political opinion or personal lifestyle, “the principles of journalism should apply.”

“There should be verification and fairness even if it’s an opinion piece. There should be an effort to get the other side no matter how little the space you allot,” said Ateneo de Manila University communication professor Chay Hofileña, who agreed with Teooro that journalists can set examples online.

“Ethics should show in your blogs,” Teodoro said.

Hofileña stressed that journalists should be very careful because the “the standard for a news reporter is higher.” She said journalists should come up with more substantial articles online.

I have no beef with journalists who blog (well, most journalist-bloggers, anyway); in fact, I often prefer reading the blogs of journalists over reading their official pieces, as their blogs often have a lot of detail and backstory that their networks and their newspapers don’t have the time and space to cover. Jove Francisco of ABC-5, whose blog By Jove! is one of the many journalists’ blogs I find time to read, was quoted in the same story saying exactly why I and many others do so:

“TV reports usually don’t have replays. If it’s published in the blog, students can use it as reference materials. You can put the other details in your blog,” he said. Prime time TV news programs are about 90 minutes long.

If I have no beef with journalists blogging, what then is my beef?

These are:

- that Teodoro and Hofileña allude that citizen bloggers must conform to journalistic standards and ethics, and that Teodoro and Hofileña believe that blogs, whether op-ed blogs or personal lifestyle (online diaries, anyone?), must adhere to “the principles of journalism”

- that Teodoro alludes that applying some means of “self-regulation” among bloggers is a “should be”

Professors Teodoro, Hofileña… with all due and deserved respect — LET’S PLAY.

***

First, on the issue that citizen bloggers must conform to journalistic standards and ethics. Are citizen bloggers journalists, so that we must conform to the standards of professional journalists?

I submit, sir and madam, that we are not, and by implying a distinction between journalist-bloggers who are to show us citizen bloggers their “examples” is for you yourselves to imply that we are not.

As we are not the journalists that your distinction has made clear, quite obviously we bloggers are not protected by the same laws and legal norms that your caste has benefited from for generations. Shield laws that protect journalists are said not to benefit citizen bloggers, as we are not professional journalists. The availability of corporate counsel that is available to professional journalists is absent among the general citizen blogger populace. Heck, the only protection that we bloggers can claim in terms of what we write is the right to free expression and the redress of grievances.

Even assuming that bloggers at large can be placed under the same scrutiny as bloggers, citizen bloggers generally do not have the same logistical capabilities or professional consideration that traditional media outfits have. Can we afford the legwork? Can we afford the airtime minutes to call bureaucrats? Even if the foregoing were true, will we be issued press badges and accreditation that will enable us to join, say, the Malacanang press corps? Can you honestly say that you believe that the Office of the Press Secretary or the National Press Club will issue The Journal of The Jester-in-Exile a press badge?

I thought so.

You do what you do because it’s primarily a job. Most of us do what we do what we do because it’s something we enjoy doing, or it is because we feel that we have something to say that you people do not cover normally. A lot of us have advocacies that we support and issues we oppose — that much makes us partisan and therefore no part of the journalism paradigm from the get-go. You report on things and plead neutrality; a lot of us stand for something and therefore cannot remain neutral.

The Constitution does not say that we citizens have less of a voice simply because we are not members of the priestly caste of professional journalists; in fact, we have less restraints on our freedom to speak than you do, especially since we are generally left to our own devices when we do exercise our right to be heard. You have your Constitutional guarantees; we have ours as well.

We are not journalists, that much is true… but when we have something to say, we need not be journalists to be able to express ourselves. For you to claim that we need to act like journalists when we either praise or vent is no different from imposing prior restraint on us.

What do you call a person who imposes a standard on a person he views as “inferior” and opposes the imposition of the same standard on himself?

‘Nuff said on that.

***

On that much-debated issue of self-regulation among bloggers, I think it disingenuous on the part of Teodoro to speak of self-regulation. Does he mean to regulate our language, such that the language and style of bloggers must conform to journalistic jargon? Does he mean to regulate our approaches to issues, such that bloggers are limited to the journalistic approach of “taking both sides” and must not write passionately about our personal beliefs and advocacies? Does he mean to regulate our content, such that there are certain topics we should avoid posting about?

Whichever does he mean, Teodoro yet again is attempting to apply prior restraint on the blogosphere’s denizens. I find it ironic that prior restraint is being asked of a class of people who don’t need it by a class of people who have long fought against it.

The whole beauty of the blogosphere is that even as self-regulation is absent, the power of an idea on its face is that which regulates the “viral effect” of the idea in question; that is, good ideas are picked up, while bad ideas are exposed for what they are, and the constant conflict is that which spawns good ideas from bad ones, and refines good ideas into better ones. As DJB (a blogger I don’t often agree with) says in his post Talk About Kettles Calling the Pots Black on this same issue of journalists versus bloggers:

The Blogosphere is a much more level playing field than the Main Stream. Here, as I said myself during Iblog Two, MEMES RULE. Strong, viral ideas, fit to survive because they are powerful and right can defeat weak and stupid ideas that have for so long dominated in the Main Stream because there, near exclusive access to the Medium IS the Message, instead of the Meme being the Message!

We don’t need self-regulation in our blogs more than we already do as people; bloggers generally post in a manner that reflects their personalities, whether these be the personae they act in real life or roles that they play online. A blogger who stoops to hate speech does so not because he is a blogger, but because he wants to foment hatred; a blogger who chooses to use arcane language does so because of personal preference; a blogger who writes posts like an academician probably perceives himself to be one; a blogger who tries to conform to journalism norms quite likely wants to be a journalist.

Bloggers are, before anything else, people with a belief they wish to express. Bloggers are not detached, unbiased spectators that reporters want to convince the public they are.

Regulate yourselves as you please, MSM. That’s your prerogative. Ours is to say what we want and how we want it — and our rights under the law are our only restraints.

A holier-than-thou gem from Teodoro belies the whole MSM argument — “Many of those who post information online are irresponsible… Sometimes, it becomes damaging. It disrupts the democratic dialogue” — apparently Teodoro would like to sweep under the proverbial rug the many in traditional media who practice irresponsible, yellow, tabloid journalism.

Get off your high horse and tell your peers to clean up your stables, Professor, before you come online and tell us how to live our lives. Can you do that? No? Showbiz, entertainment, scandal, and lurid, sensationalist reportage being the lifeblood of networks?

Heh. Such intellectual dishonesty — quite like a pedophile priest ranting about sinners who eat meat on Fridays.

***

I’ve been hearing far too many of these issues from mainstream media quite often these days, which gets me wondering why these have come up.

The crux of the matter is yet again the loss of MSM’s monopoly over information dissemination. The story has a quite appropriate quote:

In spite of these concerns, media experts acknowledged the contributions of bloggers in general. Blogs have become tools for the marginalized to expose information and voice out opinions that are otherwise neglected by mainstream media.

“There are things journalists miss,” said Hofileña. “Those who were in the blogosphere at the start were not journalists. They were there because of the lapses of journalism. They provided an alternative viewpoint.”

As a result, mainstream news media organizations are rapidly losing their monopoly over information. Citizen journalism has become a growing trend. Anyone with access to the Internet can share information.

As Manolo pointed out with his quote on “professional priests”, the growth of the blogosphere would quite likely threaten journalists who view themselves as the pontifex maxima of truth and information, finding the idea of ordinary citizens being able to purvey and share truth by and among themselves heretical. I have no doubt in my mind that this is the reason why traditional media practitioners are wary of the blogosphere — such MSM people may be unable to wrap their minds around the idea that ordinary folk no longer need journalists’ intercession when such folk are in search of data relevant to their lives.

See, the MSM/blogosphere conflict would not exist had there been no “lapses in journalism”. There would be no conflict if journalists did not “miss things”. There would be no conflict if mainstream media had not been neglectful in exposing information and providing venues for the expression of the opinions of those who have been marginalized.

The blogosphere could have been complementing mainstream media by providing valuable input from the grassroots, becoming the feedback mechanism by which mainstream media could get data that would lead to more substantive reportage. Instead, MSM is acting all high-and-mighty, as if they were the only means for truth to be reported, and speaking in tones as if they would burn those disagreeing as heretics.

***

The Information Reformation has been upon us for quite a while now, traditional media folks. The ninety-five theses have long been nailed to your church’s doors.

You will eventually realize that you need us console jockeys a lot more than you think. For every camera crew you have on the ground, the blogosphere has thousands of cellphone-camera-wielding bloggers ready to cover an event they have personally witnessed. For every opinion writer you have and for every issue he writes about, the blogosphere has thousands of bloggers already debating on whatever issues they feel strongly enough to take a stand on. For every column inch or minute of airtime you have available, the blogosphere has space limited only by imagination.

There is yet time to work out a modus vivendi. We aren’t selfish; we’d welcome becoming your adjuncts and partners in the search for truth and the dissemination of information.

Now, if you persist in trying to monopolize the space and place, and persist in acting as if you are the sole anointed, well, let’s put it this way:

Far too many people who changed the world were first known to be heretics.

Eppur si muove. ‘Nuff said.

***

On another note, I stumbled on this story by Marites Danguilan Vitug — Telling it like it is — where she speaks of issues with Brian Gorell, Couples for Christ, and Chief Justice Reynato Puno. A notable excerpt was this, referring to the negative (perhaps vicious?) feedback on the Brian Gorell and CFC reportage:

We don’t take these things lightly. Reporters, while generally skeptical, care about the impact of their stories and how the public receives them. We don’t want to be pilloried—but we’re not in for a popularity contest either.

At the end of the day, we just want to do our jobs well in the face of deadlines and other pressures.

We can’t afford to sulk because we are seen as ogres by partisan groups and self-promoting individuals. The best we can do is take away lessons from these experiences, that is, after coping with the stress.

Incidents like these, after all, make the reporters more mature.

Another notable excerpt is related to the report on CJ Puno’s apparently considering resignation, which turned out to be an apparent bum steer:

After worrying about what the public would think of us—someone asked whether we were purveyors of rumors—we accepted the fact that such was the risk journalists take for using anonymous sources. None among our sources could come out in the open to say the chief justice, indeed, had told them about his plan.

Still, we decided to go with the story because it was a matter of huge public interest, considering the implications. If Puno bowed out early, Malacañang would have full sweep of the High Court and this means goodbye to independent justices.

Another risk we were taking was that, by using anonymous sources, we were making the public take a leap of faith, asking them to trust us.

Even if I had for the longest time felt a certain amount of respect and gratitude to media in general, I’m not sure if I had ever been thoroughly convinced that traditional media does truly care about the impact of their stories. I recall commenting on the PCIJ blog how someone affiliated to one of my staff in my former company was reported to be involved in a crime, but after the report was shown to be erroneous, no retraction nor reparation was ever made to the person reported about nor to his family… and I recall that the only recourse available was to go to the courts.

(Talk about a mismatch — the corporate lawyers that the traditional media outfit had vis-a-vis the pro bono lawyers that my staff’s friend’s family can barely afford. So what happened? Nada. That’s how much “caring” that MSM team had on that issue.)

In the same line of thinking have been those recent reports related to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center canister-removal anal-surgery YouTube-scandal (now that was long), when a doctor was named specifically, and then his mother is reported to have requested anonymity… wouldn’t it be far more accurate to say “the mother of one of the doctors, who requested anonymity”? What happened to caring about reporting it right the first time?

I also am not sure if I can believe that traditional media are likewise circumspect and self-regulating in terms of publishing unconfirmed reports — and I’m not even talking about the scandal and innuendo in those tabloids’ entertainment sections; I have yet to see front-page retractions and admissions of error or guilt when traditional media outfits get things wrong. I am more convinced of MSM believing that accuracy can be allowed to suffer for as long as deadlines are met.

If such incidents make reporters more mature, I’d be glad for them; it would help, however, if prior to asking us readers to take a leap of faith MSM’s performance would be so trustworthy that it wasn’t so much of a leap. It really doesn’t seem to me as if such incidents do make reporters more caring about accuracy and fairness; with Vitug saying “In the end, it’s up to you, the readers, to decide whether we made a strong case”, this much I have to say:

A house of cards would be far more solid.

‘Nuff said, yet again.

***

So then, does this mean I’m going to stop reading the papers and watching the news?

Heck, no. It’s just means that I’m learning how to be a bit more skeptical about these “honest brokers of information”.

After all, whatever credibility I have is affected by the credibility of the reports of theirs that I react to and write about here.

The funny thing is that I’m fairly certain I’m going to get scraped sometime by some lazy reporter or other.

Oh, well — at least I can point to the scraper and his story and rant about it.

Later, all.