Missing the point

On July 3 ABS CBN News and Public Affairs decided to phase out Insider and replace it with the supposedly “groundbreaking innovation” Bandila.

The venture is a big risk, it being aired earlier (10:30 pm), simultaneously with entertainment programs of its main rival station. Of course, advertisers aim at programs with the most audience share. And news isn’t the televiewers’ priority.

Prior to ABS CBN’s brave attempt at Bandila, late-evening news programs have been airing at around midnight. In effect, news is sacrificed for entertainment. Beyond this attempt to prioritize informing the public not much has changed in ABS’s trivial approach to news.

Mainstream news is always geared to cover “big” events. Politicians, TV and movie stars and the occasional human drama stories. But the lenses of the TV camera have been missing points which do not include politicians, movie stars, even human drama. Most of the news do not fully reflect what is empirical, what is really happening. I have not heard of any station exposing the ongoing militarization in Central Luzon (care of Oplan Bantay Laya) nor the plight of displaced indigenous groups here in the Cordilleras.

Mianstream news program is already satisfied, even dwelling in the glory of these kind of development. Fundamental change has been absent from television news.

Prometheus unbound

I shall never exchange my fetters for slavish servility. Tis better to be chained to the rock than be bound to the services of Zeus.
Aeschylus, Promethues Bound

Mars shall glow tonight,
Artemis is out of sight.
Rust in the twilight sky
Colors a bloodshot eye,
Or shall I say that dust
Sunders the sleep of the just?

Hold fast to the gift of fire!
I am rage! I am wrath! I am ire!
The vulture sits on my rock,
Licks at the chains that mock
Emancipation’s breath,
Reeks of death, death, death.

Death shall not unclench me.
I am earth, wind and sea!
Kisses bestow on the brave
That defy the damp of the grave
And strike the chill hand of
Death with the flaming sword of love.

Orion sitrs. The vulture
Retreats from the hard, pure
Thrust of the spark that burns,
Unbounds, departs, returns
To pluck, out of death’s fist
A god who dared to resist.


This piece was published in Focus under the name of Ruben Cuevas (Jose Lacaba’s pen name then). The poem itself is an allegory of the events surrounding its publication.

It was the height of Martial Law, the dark age of the press. Any dissent is immediately silenced. The gist in Prometheus unbound isn’t in between the lines. Rather, the first letters of every line, when read vertically, says a lot of how Lacaba became Prometheus, the “god who dared to resist.” The regime eventually learned about the parody.

A famous writer of short stories concurred with the idea of the writer being granted with supernatural powers. The writer is god. Who else, but a literary genius like Lacaba, could find a way to steal fire and give it to the people. Who else could leave the late strongman puzzled but a literary god like Lacaba. Dissent demands energy and power only the god could confer.

But the writer is not god. He is only Prometheus, a potential giver of light and life. He is also, in more than one way, bounded by the gods. It is not the likes of Prometheus that the gods fear the most. It is man, the reader, the recipient of light.

Prometheus stole fire and bore the wrath of Zeus’s vultures. So must we, spread light and endure burning.

Fence sitting

The day after the Hacienda Luisita picket dispersal attempt (November 16, 2004) the Philippine Star carried the picture of a worker in the act of throwing something towards the dispersal units. On that same fateful day a baby, a year and three months old was suffocated to death by the thick chloroacetophenone from the tear gases thrown by the Northern Luzon Command and local police forces. As far as I know, no paper published that photo. No picture of that baby’s father being riddled with bullets as he runs towards his child’s murderers with just a bolo in his hand ever saw print.

Many may have already forgotten about the then famous picket. Then, media giants hounded the formerly unnoticed sugar land. And after much media hype, with the daughter of a former president even riding on the issue, the worker’s endeavors just disappeared from the pages. Of course, the occasional assassinations of picketers have earned some attention but that was it.

And like a murder of crows that had just finished feasting on its latest prospect, the media left.

But not all outfits acted like scavengers, hungry for a scoop or two. Some have already exposed the issue before hand. Some followed-up on the killings. Some never gave up on the issue, occasionally feeding us with updates on the case.

Is Philippine journalism all about sensationalism? Will it limit itself to just conservatively report the tragedies of a contradiction-ridden society?

Most people say that objectivity is something that a journalist should have. Fair and balanced reportage. What next? Objectivity is presenting accurate facts. Objectivity ends here. What’s next is up to the writer. The angle, the data presented is the subjectivity of the writer. This shows which side of the fence the so-called “objective” writer is in.

There are no fence sitters.