VANTAGE POINT

and ABS-CBN network. They applaud Mr. Duterte’s harangues against, and his subalterns’ banning individual journalists from covering events in which he’s present. They ignore or are completely clueless about the killing of journalists, and the libel suits, threats, physical assaults, and other harassments against them.

Neither they nor the aspiring senator have earned the right to be named in polite society. Some deserve only the infamy they have gained through their corruption, mediocrity, and mendacity, while others remain in well-deserved obscurity despite their pandering to whatever regime is in power.

One has thankfully traded his newspaper column for a post as lobbyist for China in the regime he’s been worshipping. In-between lying about the Marcos martial law regime, another demonizes, incites violence against, and endangers not only activists and members of sectoral and people’s organizations, but also those authentic journalists who are not in the pay of either his own patroness or other interests.

But it is not only these frauds who’re responsible for much of the public’s failure to understand what’s happening today in this country as well as what happened in such dark periods of its history as the reign of the Marcos kleptocracy.

There is also an entire broadsheet whose pages are not only in daily violation of the ethical and professional standards of journalism; they are also repositories of the worst writing in recent press history.

It has a sister publication in another broadsheet that, while not as incompetent and as clumsily partisan, nevertheless also contributes to the spread of disinformation and ignorance by dutifully repeating and applauding everything government sources say as if they were all Bible-truth.

There are also at least three tabloids whose editors, through press releases obviously sourced from their military handlers, have endangered the lives of their betters in journalism by claiming that the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines is “headed” by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army. (“nanlaban”).

Reporting the killings in the course of that war against the poor as just part of the daily toll of violence has also lulled much of the public into indifference, and allowed the killings to continue without much protest. But the humanitarian crisis that is developing because of the killing of breadwinners and the thousands of widows and orphans they’ve left behind remains unreported,

A reexamination of the conventions of journalism is in order in these times, when the need for accurate information has never been more urgent.

except by a handful of practitioners who take their responsibilities seriously enough to risk harassment and hate speech from the regime and its online trolls.

The few reporters and editors who’ve given it a thought defend their practice by citing such news values as that of prominence, which measures newsworthiness in terms of the fame, notoriety, or social and political standing of those involved. In addition to reporting what the prominent are doing, it is also assumed that the views and claims of official sources, particularly presidents, generals, Cabinet secretaries and other State personages, take precedence over the stories of such unknowns as ordinary citizens even if they’re the ones whose fathers, husbands, sons, wives or daughters have been killed in, say, a police anti-drug operation.

The illusion of “objectivity” is also cited often to justify simply quoting what sources say. But even when sources other than the powerful are quoted, the absence of context and explanation often results in the dominance of the views of official sources.

It would seem that only the conventions of reporting are responsible for the legitimization of the regime version of events, and that the media have only unknowingly become instruments of public disinformation. But there is an additional factor involved that makes the media not only inadvertently but also deliberately complicit in the spread of false and misleading information.

That factor is the corruption that has long been a problem in Philippine