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.