Why does Maria hate Mocha?
First part of a series rapping Rappler
‘MARIA’ is Maria Ressa, CEO of the website Rappler.com, which she claims has become the third largest news website in the country in just four years.
Mocha is Mocha (Margaux) Uson, a pro-Duterte blogger whose blog has built up a huge following in just a few months of 4 million viewers. Ressa herself doesn’t dispute that data, and even wrote that last September Mocha’s blog had a bigger audience than Rappler.
That points to why the former CNN reporter and ABS-CBN executive hates Mocha. In her article in her website, Ressa oozed with a convent-bred señora’s disgust for Mocha when
engine optimization, a discipline that analyzes such algorithms in order to tweak websites so that these will rise to the upper rungs of a Google search, or will result in more Facebook users going to that site.
Think back, how did you first learn of Rappler’s existence? In Facebook or Twitter. Rappler, I was told, spent huge amounts of money to have Rappler’s posts or those of its agents boosted on Facebook.
Rather than focusing on good journalism or providing new content (e.g., the highly successful had dozens of commentators and bloggers, whom mainstream media - pler has resorted to cheap commercial giving away coupons for products and services. Indeed, after four years, none of its more than two dozen reporters have distinguished themselves as journalists breaking new ground, except of course one who because of her weird antics and questions in a press conferences Duterte couldn’t resist making fun of.
I should know about these web vice president and editor-in-chief of inq7.net, the joint website of
and GMA7 News in 2000 — 16 years ago.
Inq7.net was the first major, and adequately funded, business enterprise aimed at creating the country’s biggest, multi-media news website. Even in those early “days” in 2000, a number claiming that they could increase our traffic significantly — if we bought their atrociously priced technology and software for doing so. I rejected the offers, as I thought it was better for Inq7 technology-based tricks. And after all, I didn’t think the newspapers’ owners would be interested or could afford such huge “soft” investments.
Our business model was that if the newspapers’ reporters and columnists continued doing good journalism, if the website delivered real-time news (which the print provided the news and entertainment video clips which would surely A post at Uson’s blog to protest the petition to Facebook to close her down. attract page-views. GMA-7 though turned out to be planning to set up its own website. Our model, though, was proven correct: the websites of GMA-7 and ABS-CBN are the two biggest websites in the country because of their video content.
Rappler owes its phenomenal growth to its two tech executives, its chairman Manny Ayala (no relation to the Spanish magnates, but which triggered rumors still circulating that and board of directors member Nix Nolledo, both of whom I was told are minority shareholders.
Ayala has had a 12-year experience in entertainment media enterprises, and had been well plugged into the US website industry, whose continuing preoccupation is how to increase internet industry’s rock star, now a billionaire after his Xurpas recently raised P1.3 billion in capital through the stock market. Nolledo has been an expert breakthrough was his pinoyexchange. com, which in just a month after it was launched, Nolledo boasted, accumulated 20,000 registered users.
Rappler is Philippine journalism’s “Brave New World,” in the fearful way Aldous Huxley used those words from Shakespeare as his novel’s title. Just as in Huxley’s dystopia, technology and the state had taken over the human spirit. Rappler’s technology and social-media tricks have replaced journalistic excellence and professionalism.
In the past, newspapers grew mainly because they provided citizens with accurate news, opinion columns that helped them understand events, and with investigative pieces that broke new ground. Rappler has demonstrated that in this brave new cyber do so for its growth, and can rely on technology and social-media tricks.
Mocha’s blog though has become Ressa’s nightmare: That a blog with little money and practically no staff could overtake such a huge web enterprise as her Rappler. What if some big businessman bankrolls the website Mocha Uson Blog, as big business
Chief Justice Corona
I wouldn’t have written a word about Rappler, if it simply reported objective news. But it has been spewing out biased reportages and opinion pieces, and the website’s reach has had an impact on Filipinos’ minds, especially those of the youth who prefer this medium.
For instance, its dozens of articles reporting against Chief Justice Renato Corona during his impeachment trial, led by one of its main editors, were so biased as to be immoral. Indeed, a thesis by three UP mass communications students concluded that Rappler’s news content was no different from that of the
which had also been rabidly anti-Corona, anti-Binay, and pro-Aquino.
Antonio Contreras, a La Salle professor with a Ph.D., and a hundred times more active in and knowledgeable about social media than I am, recently described Rappler in a recent column as “the mouthpiece of anti-Duterte rants masquerading as thought pieces… at the forefront of a crusade demonizing anyone who dared to fight the Aquino dynasty and its extension, the Liberal Party, from Renato Corona, to Jojo Binay to Bongbong Marcos, exposing all their dirt, whipping up hatred against them.”
ONE OF Rappler’s biggest failing is this. Its medium depends on the telecommunications industry, which obviously it should be very much concerned about. Yet in its four years of existence is hasn’t posted a single news article or opinion piece pointing companies, foreigners’ dominance of it, and the corruption in this sector. It has even often run to the defense of the duopoly when it had been criticized. It was vicious in its criticism of the attempt of the San Miguel-Telstra joint venture to enter the industry.
That makes me suspect that one of could be the owners the two telcos.
Its section for opinion pieces, pretentiously labeled “Thought Leaders” have been dominated by a has-been editor in the late ‘70s who writes nothing but anti-Duterte pieces, by leaders of the pink Akbayan Party (such as Walden Bello and Risa Hon cadre of the likes of Teddy Casino.
I bet they’ll be surprised that the owned by foreigners and one of the country’s biggest, yet low-key magnate, who will be laughing on their way to the banks when the site starts making money. That, in succeeding parts of this series.