A declaration of principles

A NUMBER of readers have asked me why I have not written anything on the apparent conflict between Rappler. the embattled international online news platform, and this newspaper, The Manila Times, for which I write, and whose chairman emeritus now serves as President Rodrigo Duterte’s “special envoy for international public relations.” Columnists Rigoberto Tiglao and Yen Makabenta

have already castigated Rappler for its alleged violation of the 100- percent Filipino ownership requirement under the Constitution. The Times as such has written an editorial strongly excoriating Rappler’s CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa for her reported “insinuation” that in accepting his appointment, Times’ chairman emeritus Dr. Dante Arevalo Ang has put the Times under Malacañang’s control.

These readers, however, seem to suggest I am also a party to this conflict, and that not everything has been said until I have spoken. I do not agree with that proposition, and if I have not written earlier on this subject it is because there are so many other far more important issues that deserve prior attention; one can only do so much with a thrice weekly column. Of course, there are other reasons.

I suspect Rappler’s original sin is not its alleged violation of the Constitution, which remains open to legal interpretation and argument, but its critical reporting on DU30’s extra-judicial killings, among other things. I am open to putting to the test Rappler’s position that it is not, strictly speaking, a mass media organization, by inquiring into the precise character of foreign news agencies which provide news to newspapers and other users. When was the last time any government functionary asked Associated Press, Agence France- Presse, Reuters, Kyodo News Agency, etc. whether they are a mass media organization, and are 100-percent Filipino-owned?

Government spokesmen insist that the Rappler case has nothing to do with press freedom, that it is purely about the outfit’s compliance with the 100- percent Filipino ownership required by the Constitution. As one critic has put it, Rappler should have learned from the Al Capone case— the FBI could not pin him down for murder, they brought him down for tax evasion. But this is not how the rest of the world sees it, and DU30 stands to gain more by having a broader appreciation of how the world sees things.

Wideman remembered

This reminds me of the case of Bernard Wideman, a foreign correspondent of the Far Eastern

Economic Review, during Martial Law. The authorities had threatened Wideman with deportation for his alleged involvement in political action against the government. Proof of this, according to them, was his habitual participation in political demonstrations, where he would march with the leaders and talk to them as they walked. The authorities interpreted this as foreign interference. As information minister, I had to plead very hard for a basic understanding of what journalism was all about, and what every reporter must do to cover a march or an event.

In the end, then-Immigration Commissioner Edmundo Reyes asked me to draft the document exonerating Wideman. But the whole thing took a little while. I am hoping something similar would happen in the Rappler case. But someone inside the Reich must defend press freedom.

What a mouthful!

With respect to Dr. Ang allegedly putting the Times under DU30’s control, that’s quite a mouthful. But if it were true, the Times would have long shredded my columns. Not only have I been writing about things DU30 doesn’t want written about, I have also never written anything in defense of his vulgarities and bad manners. When DU30 said he would destroy the Catholic Church, I quickly asked, “Can DU30 succeed where Satan has failed?” That was never answered. And I have consistently maintained his allegedly “high popularity rating,” as proclaimed by the crooked pollsters and swallowed by everybody else, is, like the Shed at Dulwich, the biggest fake news ever.

(The Shed at Dulwich is a non- existent “by appointment only boutique restaurant” created by journalist Oobah Bayer on Vice

Magazine and successfully promoted on Trip Advisor until it became the number one rated restaurant in all of London. It apparently threatened to displace The Fat Duck, with its three Michelin stars, which has been named by international foodies as the number one restaurant in the world. Then it was exposed as a hoax. The Machine Shed at Davenport, Iowa does not claim any world status, but it does exist where the Shed at Dulwich does not, and the food is at least worth the one-and-a-half hour’s drive from Burlington.)

As a critic, I have never tried to tear apart anyone DU30 doesn’t like, just to show him we are on the same side, or perform the same service the infamous Makapili performed against Filipino patriots for the Japanese military during the war. Nor have I ever tried to produce the biggest rabbits from the smallest hats or divert the nation’s attention from some nasty incident which cast DU30 in a bad light.

Has Tatad died?

These are cheap stunts performed by those in the service of the big mouth and the vulgar tongue, which I have openly shunned. All this makes my columns unworthy of a paper controlled by Malacañang.

Out of respect for my readers, I have always tried to be constructive in my columns. But even my most constructive pieces have managed to offend DU30’s trolls and sycophants. I learned only yesterday that during my monthlong absence from mid-December till mid-January, when I was trying to get some rest in the Midwest, some quarters tried to spread the rumor that I had died.

Too bad, the rumor turned out to be grossly exaggerated, as Mark Twain previously put it. But there was not a week during those four weeks when the editorial desk did not send out a query, “when are you coming back?”

Strange behavior for a newspaper supposedly controlled by a despot who did not want to read anything but saccharine praise. A couple of weeks ago, a young friend whose late father was the moving spirit behind the formation of the Grand Alliance for Democracy in 1987, saw me inside a university cafe armed with my MacBook. With a big broad smile, he said sardonically, “Continue writing, I’ll visit you in prison!” Can you reconcile all this with the Times being supposedly under Malacañang’s control?

Dr. Ang’s appointment

Truth to tell, I was somehow grieved when I first heard of Dr. Ang’s appointment sometime last year. I was worried about the public perception it would generate among my readers. I was particularly worried about what they would say if one day DU30 did something genuinely praiseworthy and spectacular, and I had to write 2,000 words in praise of it— would they not say I have finally been “bought”?

Or if I continued to be critical of the President, even after everything has been said, would they not say I had decided to become a bigot, - enced or bought?

Thus, until these readers spoke, I felt no need to write this piece. First of all, even though I am an independent columnist rather than a hired employee of the Times, I felt that anything I might say that is not in accord with the position of the Times would be seen as disloyal and reprehensible, while anything I might say in its favor would be seen as completely selfserving, obsequious and servile.

Secondly, I never believed I institutions which should be working together rather than against each other, regardless of their different appreciations of the DU30 government. They are simply not adversaries. Because of Dr. Ang’s Malacañang ties, it is normal that some of his friends on the paper will look a little more kindly at the administration, not on account of DU30 but rather on account of Dr. Ang. This is in the natural order of things. But even if Dr. Ang should want to put DU30, Martin Andanar or even Harry Roque “in control” of the Times he just cannot do it, simply because he does not exercise management or editorial control over the paper.

What emeritus means

Dr. Ang’s position as Chairman Emeritus is purely honorific, a simple recognition of the fact that he was the chairman before. It is no different from our dear friend Eugenia D. Apostol being honored in the Philippine Daily Inquirer staff box as the paper’s Founding Chair. In any Catholic diocese, the retired Bishop is referred to as “Bishop Emeritus,” according to canon law, but he has nothing whatsoever to do with anything in his previous diocese. That’s what “emeritus” means.

When I started my career as diplomatic reporter and columnist of the Manila Daily Bulletin in 1963, that paper, which celebrated its 118th anniversary last Friday, had for its publisher the industrialist Brig. Gen. Hans Menzi. He served simultaneously as Marcos’ senior presidential aide, but he never interfered, on Malacanang’s or his own behalf, in running the paper. As foreign affairs reporter, I succes embarrassed the government. One such secret compelled then Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos to board up the executive room adjoining to his staff, and to formally ask my paper to transfer me from my beat.

But my editors never showed any indication that I should go slow on my scoops and exposes. When Ramos asked Menzi to reassign me to another beat, Menzi came to my defense by asking the Foreign Secretary one simple question. “Suppose, sir,” he said, “I were in your place and you were in mine, and I asked you to remove your reporter from his beat because he has been exposing all your secrets, would you do it?” To which Ramos, a former newspapermen, answered with a big laugh: “Hell, no!”

Many years later, after I had served as press secretary, presidential spokesman and minister of information for ten long years, I returned to journalism. I wrote occasional op-ed pieces for the International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern

Economic Review, etc., and columns for some local broadsheets. I wrote for the Philippine Daily

Globe, owned by the Ramos family of the National Book Store and edited by my friend Yen Makabenta. One day, I learned that Cory Aquino’s speechwriter Teddy Boy Locsin, DU30’s permanent representative to the United Nations, had been named the Daily

Globe’s new publisher. I do not recall now how my other colleagues reacted to it, but I could not resist expressing my bewilderment. If memory serves, I wrote then that I would have felt honored if the President had asked my publisher to help her write a speech, but I thought it was unthinkable that an ongoing newspaper should ask the President’s speechwriter to become its publisher.

The point was never refuted, and this started a friendly exchange between my column and the publisher’s in the same paper. Although Teddy Boy has always been capable of flashing the middle like, he proved to be a good sport, and no matter how we disagreed with each other in our columns, we always managed to have a good The Times and Rappler may never see things in the same way, but this should not inhibit civil discourse between them, nor prevent them from working together not necessarily for or against DU30, but against fake news and for some concrete idea of the common good.