The press we need and deserve

FRANCISCO S. TATAD

THE brutal murder of 63-yearold radio broadcaster Percy Lapid Mabasa on Oct. 3, 2022, by a gunman allegedly hired by a former high official of the New Bilibid Prison, will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on the media and other citizens all over the country.

It should also have some longterm effect on the relationship between the media and government, particularly on the kind of media we need and deserve.

We need a vigilant and dynamic media to help us bring to a successful close this terrible murder case. Beyond that, we need a vigilant and dynamic press to help us understand what’s happening to us and the world around us at this time of global crisis. Following a highly divisive presidential election that catapulted into power the son and namesake of the nation’s longest serving president, who had been forced out of power 36 years ago in a foreign-instigated regime change, we need a candid and no-nonsense press to tell us whether we are doing well or not doing well at all.

With all due respect to my friends and companions in the media, I don’t believe we have the kind of press we need right now. The Philippine press, once the liveliest if not the most freewheeling in the world, has become — with some notable exceptions — ineffectual, uninteresting, dull. This was already the case before the Lapid murder, it may have quickly worsened thereafter. We could blame it first on technology — the digital age has replaced the traditional media with social media, but we the practitioners and the government must assume some responsibility for a few other things.

George Orwell, the author of the dystopian novel 1984, has an explanation for it. “[Our language] becomes ugly and inaccurate,” he says, “because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Then there is the government. It has not paid enough attention to the media.

The President, in particular, has failed to prioritize the formulation of media policy and the organization of the structure in charge of that policy. In the first round of Cabinet “nominees,” the President designated lawyer Trixie Cruz-Angeles as press secretary. The choice surprised (“shocked” is perhaps the better word) everybody, so Trixie disappeared after the first sign of trouble. But until now the position remains unfilled.

So, on October 5, when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appeared at the Manila Overseas Press Club’s “President’s Night” — his first appearance before a group of top newspapermen and corporate executives — he did not have a press secretary to do the necessary liaison work for him with the media.

In fact, at the open forum, where I asked the first question, one TV reporter wanted to ask the President if, having come to the MOPC without a press secretary, he was prepared to appoint one right there and then. He was advised not to put the President on the spot.

There is no shortage of interested (and qualified) parties, I am told. But apparently the President has yet to decide whether he needs a press secretary and a spokesman at the same time or a press secretary only, while he acts as his own spokesman.

In the case of his father, Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., he had no such difficulty. In 1969, after one short private conversation inside his private study, he made me concurrently press secretary, presidential spokesman and secretary/minister of public information — positions

I held until I resigned 10 years later, six years before the EDSA coup.

The President cannot err if he defines his information policy and chooses the men and women who will help him enforce that policy now. He must also decide what kind of press he will want to work with, and what kind of relationship he will have with the press.

Under Marcos Sr. the martial lawinduced docility of the local press was more than compensated by the acerbity of the foreign press. But he delighted in sparring with the toughest foreign correspondents who came to the Philippines. These included the likes of William Buckley Jr., the celebrated host of “Firing Line,” whose taped interview with Marcos Sr. is still on YouTube. After an hour-long interview with Marcos Sr., I asked Buckley how it went. He said Marcos Sr. was the only politician who ever quoted Heraclitus to him in the first few minutes.

In the early days after the declaration of martial law in 1972, Manila columnists fell into the habit of trying to overwhelm the president with superfluous praise even without cause. I did not think this was good either for the president or for the press. So I suggested to the editors to suspend the columns for at least a couple of weeks until the columnists learned never to praise the president unless there was sufficient reason for it. Teodoro F. Valencia, the dean of Filipino columnists, who wrote the most widely read daily column, “Over a Cup of Coffee,” supported the idea, which I first cleared with the president.

Like his father, Marcos Jr. does not need to bathe in shallow and superficial praise; he can afford to take the harder questions.