Editorial

presented by Solicitor General Jose Calida during the second round of oral arguments. Yes, at the center of all these are the common folk forced to become shape shifters in this unfortunate word war.

We are afraid the lumad children and their elders who are now holed up will be at the center of clashing narratives. We understand the indulgent confirmation biases of sectors, and they might reduce the fate of the lumads within that binary.

This is exactly why this story is better told, necessarily so, by journalists properly trained in aspects of objectivity and context, with supposed high aspirations of impartiality. It could not be properly told through the blinders that any interest groups carry.

Citizens, do not attack the “daily media,” to use the student editor’s sweeping classification. Far from perfect, but it thrives in skepticism, under the solemn principle of “truth pending other truths.” In the case of the Feb. 15 incident, authorities claimed the action was taken after a report by some parents that their children have been missing since 2018. The university version, which coincides with that of many other support groups, said these children were sheltered following the early 2020 lockdown. They have been under the care of schools in Cebu as part of the bakwit school program for displaced lumad children from Mindanao.

Cebu City’s Department of Social Welfare Services said its exit interviews only revealed that the supposedly “rescued” children in the university’s retreat house were only taught writing and reading. Nothing of the authorities’claim that the children went “child warrior training” was ever mentioned.

We understand that this incident is part of a wider pattern of indigenous communities being at the center of a propaganda war. It needs the colder eye of journalists to tell the story as it is, absent the tilt and weight of contending parties. It is, therefore, important to inspire media and give it space for that crucial enterprise of digging into the story. To get to the bottom of it, no stone left unturned, to further abuse these clichés.