Welcome back to Slow News Days, a now-and-then newsletter on journalism and journalism-adjacent topics in the Philippines.
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Well, the May elections have come and gone, leaving those in the media community who dreaded the thought of a second Marcos presidency because of how our predecessors were treated by the first a few weeks to reflect, regroup, get reacquainted with our alcoholism, and plan for what may come next.
Among those plans, necessarily, are whether to stay in journalism at all and to think about whether journalism will, as a former colleague asked before switching careers, still be a thing under Marcos.
Related to staying in journalism, and in the country in general: Karen Davila sets record straight on Sen. Imee Marcos' remark about leaving PH over brother's win
We are not off to a good start going by this story from The STAR* about the likely next president buying meat in Melbourne and making light of how his father was a dictator.
An excerpt, in case you haven’t seen the YouTube videos that carry the same angle:
In the video, Araneta-Marcos was heard saying: “Andito si Bongbong Marcos, ang diktador (Here comes Bongbong Marcos, the dictator).”
Marcos could be heard in the background saying: “Diktador ba? Kunin mo ’to (Dictator huh? Carry this).”
The term kargador refers to dock or market workers who manually carry boxes of goods.
New presidents traditionally get a honeymoon period with media and, for this one, that honeymoon seems to have started even before the wedding.
Aside from the soft, humanizing content, we see that in our agreeing to refer to him sparingly as the son and namesake of his dictator father and in agreeing to refer to him in headlines as “BBM” as his campaign and publicity strategists want instead of “Marcos” or “Marcos Jr.”
Even before the wedding, we’ve seen some of the people on the groom’s side. Among them, Rep. Boying Remulla — Marcos’ pick for justice secretary — who has come out against media for being “weaponized” to push for “liberal hegemonism”, which is really quite a thing to say in what is nominally a liberal** democracy.
“The end game really is, the Philippine media should help us love our country more,” he said on ONE News PH’s “The Chiefs”, which, you know, OK.
But glossing over issues and giving the government line automatic prominence for “love of country” would be a fundamental misunderstanding of what we’re supposed to be: A forum for public criticism and compromise, and a monitor of power.***
Love is patient, they say, and love is kind, and love cannot be imposed by a government that will use legal and regulatory mechanisms to pound critics into silence.
More on the next justice secretary and why his appointment is worrisome: Red-tagger Remulla is Marcos pick for justice secretary
Meanwhile, the National Press Club and the Publishers’ Association of the Philippines, Inc are pushing to make the Presidential Task Force on Media Security a more powerful commission to “broaden its power in effectively addressing all concerns related to the country’s media sector.”
It is too early to say how this will go, but the call for a commission that will “[uphold] a free and responsible press that was started by the Duterte administration” and media’s experience with the dictator Marcos’ Media Advisory Council raise some red flags.
Some insight on how that might actually look like, from a memo to state media during the worst of the pandemic: Palace pushes pandemic narrative: Not lies, state media says, just ‘amplifying’ the positive
To counter critical media, Remulla and Marcos’ preferred press secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles, turn to vloggers and social media influencers who may soon be accredited to cover the Palace to help with “opening up discourse and looking at issues of disinformation that seem to be a hot-button topic nowadays.”
There has been legitimate push back against the plan to accredit vloggers and influencers — we feel that that is actually code for pro-Marcos content creators and will further restrict media access to government information— but some that I am uncomfortable with, like this one from a personal hero:
I was a blogger before I started working in news (I stopped because a girlfriend at the time didn’t want me writing about myself and so I have been writing about other people ever since) and have found that there are just as many incisive and insightful bloggers and content creators as there are reporters and editors who happily play government, party and product propagandist to paint these communities in broad strokes.
The clearer and more deserving target for all this energy, I think, is the undeclared but clearly felt policy of trading access for good press.
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*It doesn’t really matter but the newspaper and our tiny news website have different editorial staffs. Staves?
** Not Liberal as in the diminished former administration party, necessarily, but in the sense of upholding things like human rights, the separation of powers, rule of law and political freedoms.
*** Here’s a response to the Remulla interview. I meant to say that corporations and owners do have influence on media but often not in the way that he says. I’m not sure if I was able to communicate that clearly enough.
There has been a lot of discussion on how the media failed and how it could do better in future, including this Twitter Space by Puma Podcast but the general mood seems to be that we have to keep going, as this note from Bulatlat urges:
Democracy — at the minimum — means having a government that listens. And a people that is allowed to speak and disagree with it.
Whatever lies ahead, let's stay engaged. Let's not glorify oppressors by defending their crimes or by not speaking out.
SCMP correspondent Raissa Robles has been getting a lot of flak, including from media colleagues, over a comment — she may have meant well, but it was irresponsible, ill-informed and unfortunate — about supposed security threats that would hamper tourism in Mindanao. Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, vice-president elect, has called her out for what she said is a “demonization of Mindanao and an insult to its people.”
It was a personal comment and not for an SCMP report, but, as HRW Asia’s Carlos Conde warns: “Every mistake you make from here on out will be exploited by the Marcos forces as an argument against journalists to justify the incoming regime's use of social media influencers for propaganda.”
I am still not sure how my tweets about drinking and being drunk fit into the new order of things, but he argues that “this is actually good for journalism. You will be more responsible. You will be more careful with facts. You will be more dedicated to your craft.”
And I still feel that that is the best path out of this polluted information landscape we are in now. Yes, we should experiment and get into social media platforms and vlog and go on TikTok, but at the heart of it should be the rigor and the ethical principles that we said back in the 2000s set us apart from bloggers.This is a good start, I feel:
Finally, some personal (but also work-related because that is my personality) news:
I was at the International Federation of Journalists’ Congress in Muscat, Oman to take a week off work for other work and to talk about work with other media workers. While there, we formed the Federation of Asia-Pacific Journalists, where I will sit on the executive committee.
More about the IFJ Congress in another newsletter but it was a wonderful experience meeting fellow media workers, connecting with them on common issues, and really just getting inspiration from successful campaigns.