E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
The mischief of the press
Sunday, 02 25, 2007
It is election time, and the spin masters and demolition crews are having the time of their lives.
Everybody and anybody is fair game, and your cellphone and computer are the happy hunting grounds. Once they lock on to your cellphone number or your e-mail address, you become the helpless recipient of slander, gossip and hate mail of every color and shade. The anonymity that the internet provides is the perfect cover for these purveyors of dirty tricks. They play mind games on you, f**k up your head and get away with it with total impunity. Of course, there is an antidote to the poison of these scurrilous messages. If you do not know who the sender is, all you have to do is to automatically hit the delete key of your cellphone or computer.
But what happens when the slime and the mud gets splattered on the pages of a widely read newspaper? Especially if that paper claims to present balanced news and fearless views? The slime is there for all to read — and be misinformed about.
That front-page article on two senators allegedly carrying on a love affair leaves a bad taste in the mouth, not only because there is absolutely no truth to it but also because it has no relevance at all to their qualifications as candidates for the Senate in the May 2007 elections.
Balanced news it was not; it had all the makings of a fruit from a poisonous tree. The view it expressed took on a new definition of “fearless:” The writer took care to project a mock cautious tone, and proceeded with the story with repeated reference to “sources,” who, of course, had to remain unnamed. But never mind — the article achieved its intended effect: An apparent hesitance of the unbelieving to blurt it out, on the one hand; and an obvious recklessness of the uninformed to make it public anyway, on the other. Even if was a clever juxtaposition of circumstantial events of each candidate’s life, maliciously placed side by side to create a seeming offhand sense of forbidden liaison. Really a nice cut-and-paste job, executed under the freedom of the press, and designed to stick in the memory of the public and cut down the subjects’ integrity.
True enough, the article has made a nasty dent on the reputations of the candidates mentioned in the article, enough fodder for the rumor mills circulating in this election period. And inasmuch as reputations, instead of qualifications, more often than not, spell the difference between victory and defeat in Philippine elections, it is now incumbent upon these candidates to dispel all the adverse effect that the defamatory article has wrought.
Or maybe they should not bother at all.
If they do so, they would simply fall into the trap laid out by that article. They would simply stoop to the level of the devious mind that conceived this tale in the first place and fed it to the gullible, if not mercenary, enthusiasm of a reporter who had been dreaming of a front-page byline. The candidates should just perhaps hope that voters are intelligent enough to know rubbish when they read one, and a public display of righteous indignation would only fan the flames of gossip and speculation.
The candidates mentioned in the article are rating high in the surveys. They each have a formidable personal network that could guarantee victory for them, their respective political parties notwithstanding. They performed much better than most of their colleagues at the Senate during their terms. Their qualifications place them several notches way up the other candidates. I have known the senators involved here, including the source of the mischief, having worked with them over the years. The story goes deeper than the personalities involved, the truth hidden in the maze of the politics that has enveloped them.
What is saddening is that one newspaper lapped up this story, and has not seen through the devious fact that it was concocted by another re-electionist senator. Respectable newspapers have the duty to educate the voters, to help them make a wise choice based on the qualifications and performance of the candidates. It is not the business of newspapers to confuse the voters with malicious and unfounded tales that pull the voters away from making an informed judgment at the polls.
Admittedly, candidates are fair game in this election period; they are at the mercy of the gods of disinformation even. But caution should be observed where personal attacks would cause collateral damage on third parties, for instance, members of their families. It is never right to make false accusations; it is always wrong to involve the innocents.
I say newspapers that claim to present balanced news should be discerning enough of the motives of their sources, and wise enough to refuse to be fed rubbish when they see one. Newspapers that claim to espouse fearless views should look at the targets of their views before they release it, to prevent damage to those who do not deserve it. Otherwise, they become mere tabloids who are unabashedly out for money in exchange for propaganda, a titillating morsel of gossip and skewed, misleading copy.
They should be fearless enough, as Lord Beaverbrook was when he declared to the Royal Commission on the Press: “I run the Daily Express purely for propaganda and for no other purpose.” Such that when he invited Anthony Howard to join his staff, he said: “If you want to make mischief, come and work in my paper.”
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