We should not have let Jay Sonza speak for us
On Sarah Balabagan's disclosure or on anything else, really
You have no doubt by now read about claims made by former OFW and murder convict Sarah Balagaban that she was in a relationship with GMA broadcaster Arnold Clavio decades ago — Philstar.com’s Entertainment section has three stories on it this week — or have at least seen the headlines on it.
In brief, Balabagan says she and Clavio became close when he was covering her case in the late 1990s and they were in a relationship from 1996 to 1997.
Her statement, made in a video posted on social media, put into words a rumor that had long been passed around in media circles.
I have been uneasy about coverage on the issue all week, although the nature of that unease has been evolving. Initially, I felt that this is a matter of Clavio’s alleged private personal failings and one best settled by parties involved.
With no statement on it from GMA Network or from Clavio himself, there was not a lot to go on and the Manila Standard notes in an August 24 editorial that “hardly any major news organization — including the Manila Standard — has bothered to carry the story, and the broadcaster in question was on the air again Monday, as if nothing happened.”
There have since been articles on it, although, as a colleague pointed out, the issue was treated as “just a story of a man taking advantage of a girl.”
Even how the story has been written so far —with Balabagan being the one admitting fault and seeking forgiveness — makes it not a very unique story.
It was, as the colleague pointed out, “just a seduction story and there are many of those.”
True, the people involved are familiar names — even arguably Jay Sonza, whose opinion on the issue was deemed newsworthy, is a familiar name — but the story itself as presented was little different from other stories involving wealthy businessmen or local politicians.
“The question on everyone’s minds,” an article in the Manila Bulletin’s Lifestyle section helpfully points out, is “is he still legally liable?”
“Apart from the moral issue of a then 32-year-old man (who was supposed to be married) having an illicit relationship with a 17-year-old girl who was still reeling from her trauma, there’s also the question of whether or not Arnold Clavio should be legally held accountable for this relationship, as Sarah was still a minor.”
Put that way, it really does seem, as I initially saw it, like another story of a man proving once again that men are trash by taking advantage of a girl.
No charges were filed, no settlement is being sought. Within that narrow lens, there is really no story except for the controversy.
And that is where I was wrong. The real story here, and one that I may have been unconsciously reluctant to see is of a journalist taking advantage of an interviewee who was underage and who had just gone through the trauma of being sentenced to death and then having that sentence reduced to being caned and jailed.
Prior to that was the trauma of her employer trying to rape her, and her stabbing him to death in self-defense.
Would the alleged relationship have happened, the colleague I talked to and who was previously with the Center from Media Freedom and Responsibility, points out, if Clavio had not had the status of a TV journalist?
Could his position have been used to take advantage of the girl involved? Would he have even been in that situation if he were just a private citizen?
All questions that ought to have been asked and that we seem to have failed to or did not do so loud enough.
“This is why media has no credibility, because of stories like this,” I was told although I am not sure whether that was in reference to the issue or to how it was written. It would be true, either way.
“I shall refrain from writing reports which will adversely affect a private reputation unless the public interests justifies it,” the Journalists' Code of Ethics says, and on its face, reporting on this seems like an intrusion into Clavio’s privacy.
It does not help that the issue first resurfaced on social media — according to reports, the posts were what prompted Balabagan to post the video of her saying that she and Clavio had a child — and is spreading on social media still.
It all also feels like a coordinated takedown of Clavio, possibly in retaliation for criticism of someone or something.
But even if that were true, and I have no proof that it is except a hunch, it is also true that it is, in a way, in the public interest to interrogate allegations like this.
As much as it is in the public interest for us to interrogate allegations of media bribery and other kalakaran that journalists acknowledge but do not discuss openly.
Manila Standard points it out correctly:
“In a more enlightened society, the revelation that an established journalist had taken advantage of a vulnerable 17-year-old would be a news story worthy of public discussion.
It would trigger calls for reform and a demand that the broadcaster in question and his network address his ethical misstep, no matter how long ago that was.”
While it may some day be true that an attack on one is an attack on all of us*, that should not mean that any of us is immune from criticism or that we should not hold each other accountable when necessary.**
It is difficult to talk about ethics — it is easier, for example, to proclaim being ethical — but it is a conversation that media must have and one that it ideally will have openly and with the public.
We failed by not picking up the story sooner and I personally failed by, on seeing our coverage of it, not jumping in and doing something about it.
Whether from a sad sense of solidarity or an unwillingness to throw stones from within our glass houses, our failure to confront the story squarely will likely come back to bite us. And we may not have to wait another 23 years for that to happen.
* More of a slogan at the moment than an actual principle, although it is good to see that there are attempts to organize within the media community and that this could eventually hold true
** That we will hold each other accountable is precisely what our claim of self-regulation means and failing to do that will make it easier to argue for government regulation
Former Al Jazeera correspondent Marga Ortigas has a short podcast on The Fourth Estate (that is literally also the title of the episode) and on the suppression of media in increasingly authoritarian regimes.
She talks to former journalist Neven Andjelic who shares this bit of cheer: "...this hypocrisy (of government and of power in general) is present in all spheres and if you are really trying to preserve this main human value (of fostering public debate) you are in the position of Don Quixote."