GMA will tame us or slay us

Perspective

By Rowena Guanzon

Visayan Daily Star (www.visayandailystar.com)

November 15, 2005

Tame us or slay us?

IF Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would have her way, we in the media would all be her propagandists, writing only about the good things she has done without the bad, dancing to her every tune and singing halleluiah. In the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters ng Pilipinas conference in Baguio last week, she dished out her low regard for the media as “becoming a national malaise and a hindrance to development rather than a solution to our problems.”GMA, a former professor in Economics, wants to lecture all of us on her theory of the role of the media in a democratic society.No one who has occupied Malacanang has been as antagonistic as she is to the media, and her speech in Baguio has just removed all doubts about the way she regards the media as an institution that a president must tame or slay.

Coming from no less that the one who lives in Malacanang, how else can be interpret her words other than a threat to our freedom of expression?

Because they must write or speak the truth, those in the media will often be at odds with those who in power, a president especially.In fact, it is the mark of a free media when it is at odds with the powers that be. That is its indispensable function in a free society.While some in the media can be bought or co-opted, they are answerable to the law, their peers and their conscience, but is not an argument for muffling the press, or stifling the people’s right to information.I thought it was elementary that one must not shoot the messenger.

GMA regards the “Fourth Estate” as an obstacle, an enemy of development, a national malaise. She might as well have said that the reason we remain an underdeveloped country is because we have too much freedom of the press.She would have us write only the good about what her government is doing, as if by doing so investors will come in droves, and that is all that a president needs for her economic plan to prosper.It is not the Philippine media that is the reason why investors are staying away; it is the corruption from the lowest to the highest levels of government (and the First Gentleman has not been spared of this accusation) and the high cost of doing business in the Philippines.It is not the media who caused the political instability in the country; it is GMA and her loyal henchmen who did, who used everything in their power to stop the impeachment proceedings against her.

I don’t know who gave her the idea that it is the media’s role to give solutions to the country’s problems in the first place.That is her job, not ours.We are no less patriotic if we write about the government’s ills, or less intelligent because we write that the new Value Added Tax will burden the poor.

Our job is to write the TRUTH and analyzes the truth.If the truth is that this government stinks, the media has no duty to deodorize it. We are unanswerable to those who read or listen to us, who can very well tell true from false, and right from wrong.The Filipino reader and listener knows which paper she or he wants to read, what radio station, anchor person or reporter she or he wants to listen to.No one powerful person is going to tell us what to stay or what to write about, or she might as well try closing down the newspapers, radio, television stations, and the blogs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Politics, Visayan Daily Star Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.