We are dumbfounded by the Palace’s new line justifying attempts to muzzle media during purported national emergencies. The Palace says seeking to slant new coverage is demanded by the principle of necessity and survival. What message are the powers that be trying to put across?
The drive for survival is associated with an organism’s efforts to preserve itself in the face of inhospitable conditions. In its benign form, survival simply means trying to adapt oneself to the changing environment. But self-preservation has another more frightening meaning and that is shedding off all restraints to survive.
Clearly muzzling of the media, suppressing protests and trying to cow critics, is self-preservation of the latter kind.
It’s probably true that Gloria Arroyo’s rule is in imminent danger of being overthrown. Arroyo is seen as having cheated her way to the presidency. She is seen as an illegitimate president. Her credibility is near zero. People overwhelmingly do not trust her. The country is doomed under such a leadership. Ergo, she must go.
The threat is real enough. But Gloria is not the Republic and the latter will surely survive even without her. The contrary, in fact, is the more likely scenario. Her continued stay will so weaken the institutions of democracy that a communist seizure of power becomes a distinct possibility.
The law and morals are being thrown out the window in the name of ensuring her survival. Remember Gloria’s vow in December 2002 on the grave of Jose Rizal that she would not run in 2004 because she was the single biggest cause of the nation’s division? It was the drive for self-preservation (this was the time when the capers of the Jose Pidals were starting to come out) that made her turn her back to her pledge. She cheated in the 2004 election also for the same reason. The "Hello Garci" cover-up, the prostituted impeachment process, the calibrated preempted response, Executive Order 464, PP 1017 – these were all prompted by the drive for survival.
In the process, the credibility of Congress, the judiciary and the civil service has been eroded. Institutions outside government which are indispensable to the functioning of democracy such as a free press are under siege.
The drive for survival – in this case that of a discredited administration – can never justify the destruction of the social fabric. One cannot destroy everything held sacred in the name of self-preservation.
The Palace should also remember that self-preservation cuts both ways. The bigger social organism, by necessity, can and should excise rotten and cancerous segments also in the name of survival.
More from Ducky Paredes:
The visit of the Kilusan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas officers to the Senate together with some broadcast media practitioners gave the impression that the broadcast media is as if putty in the hands of Malacañang. There was no air of defiance to them. Instead, one saw a bunch that would toe whatever line is drawn for them in the hope that this will keep trouble from visiting them.
When the KBP with some self-satisfaction smugly reported to the Senate that the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) had adopted the guidelines that the KBP had long been using for themselves, what the KBP received in return was a rebuke from Senator Joker Arroyo.
Before Joker, were media persons who, had Senator Arroyo still had been a human rights lawyer, he would never represent before any military tribunal because these media persons would have been able to weasel out of any situation in which they might find themselves.
What a far cry from the media during the martial law years who, knowing that their freedom (and even lives) were on the line, would still do what they had to do, practice their freedom of the press and speech.
Joker had to tell the broadcast that the NTC had no powers over them. All that the NTC does is assign frequencies to franchises granted by the legislature and collect the yearly fees that the franchise-holders pay the government. The NTC can regulate these frequencies and, in times of emergency, take them over in case it becomes necessary to do so for announcements that the authorities may have to make to the public. That is the extent of the NTC’s powers over broadcast media.
What the KBP did not realize is that when the NTC re-issued the KBP guidelines as its own, the KBP gave the NTC more power over broadcast media than NTC actually has.
What we in broadcast media must do now is to ignore the NTC guidelines. They have no power over us, anyway. As for the KBP, this is a fraternal organization of elements of the broadcast media who look to each other for guidance. In that sense, the KBP guidelines are inoffensive while the NTC issued guidelines (even if the NTC guidelines are word-for-word exactly the same as the KBP guidelines) are an insulting hindrance to the broadcast media’s rights to free speech and free press.
This is something that we cannot expect this government to understand. After all, the Gloria government feels that a free press and free speech are their enemy because it is these two that might ferret out the truth and truth is the one thing that Gloria fears the most.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment