Don’t shoot the messenger

“People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.” — Roberto Bolaño, 2666

AS we commemorate the 37th Press Freedom Week, let me reiterate once again that journalism is not “friends” with anyone. Its practitioners may establish a certain rapport with their sources but they are in no way beholden to them. They are only beholden to the truth.

I have always found it awkward in news events when a press conference emcee blurts out the phrase “…our friends in media,” where the word “friends” is often made interchangeable with the word “partners.” I have since let that one go and not correct the emcee because I don’t want to be acting like an erect male member in such events. But truth be told, we are there for one thing only — the news or the news pegs that we could write about.

I remember ranting about it on my Facebook page and in a news event that night, a communications officer of city hall pointed out that we, reporters, were there for the news and clarified that we were not their “partners.” It was said in jest, of course, having established rapport with this person a long time ago and she understood where I was coming from since she used to dabble in journalism before joining the public office.

However, there are still people who think that our role is to parrot whatever it is they want to be reported. Let me respectfully remind these people that we are not in the business of taking dictations. We are not your PR people. While most of us use stenography notebooks, we are not stenographers.

I would like to present three cases in point where we in Gold Star Daily have been criticized over what they thought was reporting beyond what happened or for supposedly spinning events to fit our supposed “agenda.”

On Nov. 28, 2017, a colleague took offense in our news article “Priest kills man in Gusa road accident.” She said the headline was inaccurate and uncalled for. She suggested that we should have used the word “died” in lieu of the word “kill.” She further pointed out that by using the word “kill” painted a picture that it was premeditated on the side of the priest.

First, it is accurate to say that the priest killed a man because the man did not just die by the side of the road. The person’s motorcycle collided with the priest’s Ford Ranger. Second, we did put in our headline that it was, in fact, an accident. But I understood where my colleague was coming from. She is a devout Roman Catholic and her church affiliation may have clouded her point of view as a reporter.

On Saturday, Councilor Maria Lourdes Gaane was reported as singling out this paper because of a news article “Group asks city hall to fund Aids advocacy.” She described the front-page news as “uncalled for,” “unfortunate,” and “unethical.”

“But she did not elaborate,” contributing editor Uriel Quilinguing’s report reads in part.

For context, Quilinguing’s story reported on Misamis Oriental-Cagayan de Oro Aids Network’s advocacy in time for the 33rd International Aids Candlelight Memorial and Mobilization last week.

It’s not like Quilinguing reported out of thin air. He quoted Mocan president Fritzie Caybot-Estoque as saying that although they were able to successfully lobby the City Council into enacting City Ordinance No. 11195, the ordinance was “not fully implemented due to lack of funding.”

Gaane could not elaborate on her tirade against the report simply because she could not. When you’re caught flatfooted, please don’t take it out on us.

Now, for the pièce de résistance. Colleagues and even a city councilor criticized our news article “Word ‘lobby’ baffles Unabia son: ‘What do you mean?’” which was published last Friday.

In the story, our correspondent reported on how newbie congressman-elect Christian Unabia took at least 11 seconds to answer a  question from a local broadcaster — what would he lobby in Congress when he assumes the 1st congressional representation of Misamis Oriental.

Colleagues pointed out that we were supposedly being “cruel” or “mean” to the neophyte solon as if we have maligned him in the article. They said that congressmen do not “lobby” bills but instead “propose” bills.

Please, don’t be naive, my dear friends. Of course, congressmen “lobby” for their pet bills among themselves. They do it all the time. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine,” as they say.

The context of the question hurled at the newbie was clear. Our reporter was only reporting on an incident that gives people an idea of the kind of people who have been voted into office. Would you rather that media did not report it only for you to wake up one morning surprised about the quality of bills this congressman would be pushing in the halls of Congress?

Let’s disabuse ourselves of thinking we can shoot the messenger once we do not get our way in a news report. It’s not that we cannot see past certain agenda. It is just pathetic, really. As I have said, when you’re caught flatfooted, don’t take it out on us. Just do your job and we’ll do ours. Pfft.

The seven-hour glitch

“They’ll be asked nothing about their absurd justifications, born in the shadow of the total lie.” – Otto Rene Castillo, Apolitical Intellectuals

WITH the President’s favored senatorial slate dominating the recently concluded midterm polls, many of this administration’s apologists interpret this phenomenon as validation of its supposed war on drugs.

The Commission on Human Rights puts the killings brought about by the war on drugs at 27,000 drug “suspects” killed. Although the Philippine National Police has a lower figure of those killed in the last three years at 5,300 people, mostly urban poor, it could not be denied that this is an unprecedented carnage.

Many apologists were quick to point out that the midterm polls win of this administration meant that the people “have spoken” in support of the war on drugs with no less than Foreign Affairs Sec. Teodoro Locsin Jr. leading the pack.

However, the seven-hour glitch of the Commission on Election’s “transparency server” has effectively put a cloud of doubt on the winners at the senatorial polls. From 0.4 percent of all precincts nationwide uploaded to Comelec’s server at around 6:15 pm Monday last week, it suddenly jumped to 90.57 percent of total precincts in the wee hours of Tuesday.

I’m sure everyone who followed the midterm polls closely has heard of Comelec’s reasons for the server glitch. Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon explained that the data packets “flooded” their server after they simultaneously received the digital election returns.

Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo offered a more technical reason for the glitch but hidden in jargon by saying that a “java error” was the reason for the seven-hour glitch of their transparency server.

Let me remind you, my readers, that this is not the first time that Comelec has handled automated elections. The 2019 midterm polls was the fourth time they have handled automated elections in the country. Voters started shading ovals next to the names of candidates in the 2010 presidential elections. Given that they have been at it for four polls already, shouldn’t they be good at it?

An election advocacy group compared the 2016 and this year’s election. The results are staggering if not starkly points out the inefficiency of Comelec. In the 2016 polls, there were 120 secure digital memory cards that malfunctioned, 801 vote counting machines malfunctioned, and there was a 10-minute glitch in Comelec’s server. In comparison, the recently concluded elections showed that 1,665 SD cards malfunctioned, 961 VCMs malfunctioned, and the controversial seven-hour glitch in its server.

With those figures, don’t the voters have the right to question the outcome of the midterm polls?

Carlos Conde, Asia researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, pointed out that Ronald dela Rosa, one of the biggest winners in the elections, “may still have a date with justice.” Remember that dela Rosa was one of the foremost architects of the drug war.

“However one views the election results, it won’t change the fact that victorious candidates implicated in ‘drug war’ crimes shouldn’t receive a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Conde said in a statement.

For me, the recently concluded midterm elections are neither validation nor approbation of the President’s “war on drugs” but a confirmation that voters can easily be misrepresented in an election.

As a colleague succinctly puts it: “Comelec has spoken, not the people.”

Not today

WHERE will these social media trolls go now that the midterm elections are over? I guess they will go into hibernation and will go on hyperdrive again in 2022. However, I must say I learned a lot from these trolls during the campaign period up to the very end.

On Friday, in their attempt at a Hail Mary pass, trolls circulated a supposed disqualification decision against Mayor Oscar Moreno that was allegedly penned by Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia of the Commission’s 2nd Division.

The photos of the supposed hard copies of the decision were posted on Facebook first by the incorrigible DDS News-CDO and were further circulated on the social media platform through their most active trolls like “Jojo Cruz” and “Jose Ma. Guerrero.”

On that same Friday night, local reporters were all abuzz after receiving a forwarded copy of the same digital photos posted by DDS News-CDO earlier from Nicole Managbanag, media liaison for the Padayon Pilipino-Centrist-Centrist Democratic Party’s Jose Gabriel La Viña.

As to how Managbanag got hold of the digital copy that DDS News-CDO posted on its Facebook wall is for you to analyze. I will not deprive you of the delight in making that link.

Just a cursory scan of the document, any journalist worth his salt could see a lot of irregularities, up to a point where it’s almost glaring and apologetically fake.

The discrepancies:

• The order was supposedly promulgated on the International Labor Day — May 1.

• It is not printed on a legal-size bond paper.

• It does not have the dry seal of the Commission.

• Even the font used is not what the Commission uses in the documents.

• The order was not uploaded in the Commission’s official website.

All of that irregularities could be vetted with a cursory check on Google and plain common sense. However, when I saw that the order’s supposed ponente, Guia, I started to doubt that the document could be real.

As a backgrounder, the commissioner and I go a long way back. He was the chairman of an electoral advocacy group of lawyers and paralegals called Legal Network for Truthful Elections or Lente. This group tied up with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism for a campaign project of Comelec for the 2013 midterm elections.

I thought, what better way to have the document checked than to directly ask the commissioner who supposedly signed the order.

“Officially I am saying that Resolution you showed me is fake. The second division did not issue that resolution,” Guia told me Friday night.

What the local media did, both collectively and individually, showed the trolls and their shadowy masters that when we say no to fake news, we mean it.

Kudos to all the journalists and broadcasters who did not bite the bait for a supposed scoop.

In the words of Arya Stark, the local media said “Not today,” to fake newsmakers.

My criteria

IT will be exactly six days until the midterm elections when this column sees print. So, I would like to share with you, my dear readers, my criteria in choosing the candidates who will land on my final list for the polls, less than a week from now.

But before all that, I think a disclaimer of sorts is in order. First, people tend to forget that journalists, like any law-abiding citizen in this Republic, can also be registered voters. We may not cloud our reports with our personal biases, but it is there. It is a tight-rope act.

So, I just hope my editor-in-chief will not begrudge me of this moment of showing my bias against candidates whom I think will not serve me and my family’s agenda for a better society.

Here goes:

First, it is important to me that the candidate has a good sense of humor. There have been a number of studies into this which points that people with a good sense of humor are likely to be more intelligent than the unfunny people.

Lowri Dowthwaite, a lecturer on psychological interventions in the University of Central Lancashire, wrote that researchers in Austria have discovered that funny people, particularly those who enjoy dark humor, have higher IQs (Intelligence Quotients) than their less funny counterparts. The research also pointed out that it takes cognitive and emotional ability to process and produce humor.

“Their analysis shows that funny people have higher verbal and non-verbal intelligence, and they score lower in mood disturbance and aggressiveness,” Dowthwaite’s article reads.

For me, people who are funny tend not to be uptight or act like an erect male member. This kind of candidates is the kind who refer to themselves in the third person. Like, they are endorsing a brand or something. It seems unnerving to me.

Second, I want a candidate with an above average intelligence. It would even help if the candidate has an IQ north of 120. Like what my boss told me, “I don’t want to be brighter or more intelligent than somebody in Congress.”

As manang Rhona Canoy would say: “People who are three donuts short of a dozen.”

These two criteria are closely related as I have mentioned above. Studies show that when you experience a positive emotional state, like laughing, it increases the production of dopamine in your brain. Dopamine opens up the learning centers of our brains. As a result, funny and intelligent people are more flexible and creative in their thinking process. This, in turn, aid them to be better at solving complex and daunting problems.

Unfortunately, most of the incumbents in both houses of Congress are as dim as the gaslights in the houses in rural areas. Let’s not add insult to injury by voting dumb senator wannabes. Instead, let’s help restore the luster of our Republic’s Congress.

Lastly, I want empathy back in our legislative branch and our local government units. As we have experienced these past three years, we have had enough of impunity and negativity in the executive branch.

Performance coach and human behavior professor Melody Wilding writes: “In a busy, complex, stressful world, empathy is the glue that holds relationships together. Whether you want to connect with your colleagues, customers, or children, you need to master the art of empathetic communication.”

Wilding defines empathy as the ability to detect other people’s emotions and understand their perspective. “When people feel accepted and validated, it builds trust,” she adds. Wouldn’t it be better if we have empathic politicos as opposed to having polarizing ones?

This administration has been selling fear and hatred like pancakes. To me, it is starting to sound like a “folk” song — where our President has been cursing: Folk this and folk that. Personally, I think his brand of semantics, or the lack of it, is getting kind of tiring to the ears, hearts, and our brains. It has contributed in the general dumbing down of our country. Don’t contribute to that kind of society, please.

So, there you have it. My three criteria in choosing a candidate this coming election — a sense of humor, intelligence, and empathy. Now that we have the opportunity to put a semblance of balance in the three branches of government, we should use our votes wisely. See you at the polling places.