More than vigilance, we need action
TODAY, Nov. 24, hundreds of new and veteran bloggers are set to gather at the UP College of Law’s Malcolm Theater for the 14th edition of iBlog Philippine Blogging Summit.
Unfortunately, due to prior schedules, I won’t be able to be there. I’m writing this column as a humble contribution to the discussion of the summit’s theme this year “Vigilance Online & Offline: Bloggers & Digital Influencers Speak Out.”
Going through the summit agenda, I sense that event would have an elephant in the room — a noisy, kicking, and rampaging one, if I may say. And I refer to Philippine politics.
There may be lots of problems that need vigilance both offline and online, both here and abroad. But nothing could be bigger and more urgent than the rise of political tyranny in the Philippines.
In my view, this rising tyranny is at the bottom of the spread of fake news, disinformation and online abuse in doses never before seen since social networking became the No. 1 online activity in our country. Perhaps the personification and thought-leader of the dominant political narrative are none other than Rodrigo Duterte and his former assistant secretary Mocha Uson.
Any utterance or gesture of the President is news, whether we like it or not. Because he is the President, and because every utterance or gesture could signal the start or the end of a policy, program, or appointee. It could make or unmake the careers of people, and lead to matters like new and higher taxes, the resurgence of political monsters like the Marcoses and Arroyo, and the extrajudicial execution of suspected drug addicts. We cannot underestimate.
As if being the top news source, head of government, and head of state ain’t enough, Duterte has the likes of Uson to help amplify, rightly or wrongly, his views and positions. Uson likewise specializes on trying to take down everyone she perceives to be critical of Duterte, as if criticism of the President is wrong or bad.
Uson’s posts “her views” on her Facebook Page, which she calls a blog. The millions who follow her share her posts, and do battle when told to do so. And so by the time she was forced to vacate her post, she had quite successfully crowned herself the most influential blogger in the country, helped in no small way by sticking with the President and also by the access, staff, and resources made available to her as assistant secretary.
No blogger comes close to the kind of influence Uson has attained — and the corruption she may have committed. (Manolo Quezon went on a blogging hiatus after Aquino appointed him as undersecretary. Neither did Mong Palatino, the country’s first blogger-turnedcongressman, use his position to benefit his personal political blog.)
The problems wrought by Uson are felt everywhere. Other bloggers would often have to assure readers they’re “not like Mocha,” and take pains explaining the differences.
Before this thing gets way longer, let me draw attention to my main point: Bloggers today have to reclaim the honor of blogs and blogging. Uson has nearly destroyed the collective credibility of blogging which the pioneers helped build through practice, trial and error, and humble attempts at attaining excellence in both form and content.
Exactly how we would do this task of “reclaiming,” I do not know. It may require more summits, conferences, sit-downs, seminars, workshops and assemblies. But since Uson did/does her thing for political ends (from “helping elect Duterte” to “helping protect Duterte”), this task of “reclaiming” cannot possibly be apolitical or non-partisan.
Folks within and outside blogging have made a couple of suggestions: join “fact-checking” projects, confront “online abuse,” fight surveillance and other attacks on privacy, promote debate, uphold free expression, demand accountability, defend democracy. In any of these and in all of these, we bloggers are called to go beyond our blogs and instead think, speak, and act as citizens.
Yes, folks. If the problem is political, then by all means we need political solutions. And we cannot arrive at such solutions if we limit our vision (“we’re just bloggers”) and not join our readers in a problem that besets everyone as citizens. If Duterte and Uson make use of fake news, disinformation, and online abuse to advance tyranny — with ‘blogging” and social media as tools for mass communication — then we must find a more powerful basis or motive for our response.
We cannot tip-toe around politics any longer, not only because we are months away from the elections. Politics already pervades most discussions online. Why be afraid of politics? Why give all politics to Duterte and Uson, when bloggers could very well give them a proper challenge?
And then we cannot limit it to comparing the past and present, when the sins of the past actually led to the present. We must be smarter than the partisan thought-leaders of the past and current regimes who wish to convince us that there’s nothing better or superior to the battle between two bad choices. As bloggers who look to the future and who have no respect for crap that waylays us in our forward march, we must be wary of some of our friends who cannot go above and beyond the divisiveness and in fact would like to limit politics and blogging into a mere battle royale between fan clubs of political idols.
Speaking out is always good start. Hopefully 10 years from now, we would look back fondly at iBlog14 as a milestone in the quest to reclaiming or even reinventing blogging beyond and in positively better ways than what Mocha has “achieved” for Duterte.