Tag Archives: Journalism

Sarah Fergusson interviews BBM – a masterclass in journalism

Sarah Fergusson of ABC News, Australia interviewed Ferdinand Marcos Jr. It was a masterclass on how to interview a politician – asking the hard questions that, unfortunately, most journalists in the Philippines seem to have forgotten or have chosen to forget

Here’s a portion of the interview:

SARAH FERGUSON: There is one series of questions that comes up in relation to your father’s time which is, which is, of course, the question of corruption which became wholly associated with the Philippines for a long period of time. I think contemporary court judgements acknowledge the atrocities that were committed but also the plunder of the country’s resources.

Why wouldn’t you want all of that money back in the hands of the Filipino people?

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Well, with the narrative…[laughs dismissively]

SARAH FERGUSON: May I just ask you why that is funny?

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Why that?

SARAH FERGUSON: Why that is funny. I’m asking you a question about the plundering of large sums of money from the Filipino people…

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: No. I’m thinking that that maintains, that idea maintains because I take exception to many many of the assertions that have been made.

And I think we have been, we have since the cases were filed, the government fell. Cases were filed against me, my family, the estate etc and up to now we have, the assertions that were made, we have been shown to be untrue.

SARAH FERGUSON: Quite a lot of money, I think $5 billion was already recovered. I guess the quetion is …

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Again, again, again…

SARAH FERGUSON: Do you not want to see all the money that was taken returned to the people?

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Again, we have signed, this family has signed a quitclaims, we have signed many quitclaims. Any money that you find is yours and finished and everything was taken from us.

We went, we were taken to Hawaii. Everything. Everything was taken from us with nothing, we have nothing left.

SARAH FERGUSON: Not the view of the presidential commission.

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: I’m sorry?

SARAH FERGUSON: Not the view of the presidential commission. This is my final question on this topic.

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: Which presidential commission?

SARAH FERGUSON: In the Philippines? Their view is there is a large amount of money outstanding.

FERDINAND MARCOS JR: I think that having seen the facts, as they have been slowly revealed, further true investigation, not propaganda, but actual true investigation, the court cases and investigations by all kinds of NGOs, different agencies, that has changed and people can see that it was propaganda.

Farewell and thank you, Conrad

Daily dose, ,

Apart from the music of the ‘90s – The Eraserheads, The Corrs, the Goo goo Dolls, and early 2000s, – Limp Bizkit, Eminem and Rage Against the Machine, the columns of Conrado de Quiros filled with brilliant logic, sharp criticism, eloquent mastery of language – proof of his intellect, shaped my formative years in high school and inspired me to take up writing, to speak out and ask the hard questions. So to my classmates back then, this is why I always came to school with a copy of The Philippine Daily Inquirer every day. And yes, also to get my regular dose of Pugad Baboy.

I’ve seen him only once in person when I attended one of those kapihans when after the ouster of Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo morphed into the being we call People Power revolutions for.

My sympathies and condolences to the de Quiros family, and to the man himself, thank you for showing us how words are truly more powerful than the sword.

“It is not easy to want to go down to the lower deck of the literal and metaphorical boat the sight and the smell assail you from the very top of the stairs, like the gaseous emanations from a parched earth at the first patter of rain. Society’s answer to that problem in fact has been to make the people in the lower deck disappear completely. It has been to make them invisible. “Invisible Man is the name of Ralph Ellison’s novel about a black man living in the southern United States in the first half of the 20th century. That was the condition of blacks generally then: people who were there but were not there. People who served but we’re not observed. People who spoke but were not heard. People who existed but were not seen.

Invisible men are what Filipinos are in the heart of this country in the first year of the third millennium after Christ. Or invisible women, as the women’s groups are bound to insist, women living even more phantasmagoric lives than men in this country. They are shadowy figures that surround us but which we cannot see. They are strands of insubstantial matter that float around us, but which we cannot catch.

They are emaciated forms that lie on the sidewalks at night, finding temporary refuge in oblivion through the deadly fumes of rugby whom we pass by but acknowledge as there only in the same way that we acknowledge the pavement to be there. They are the blotches we see through the rain tapping on the windows of our cars with scrawny fingers, whom we flip coins to and roll the glass rapidly down not so much to avoid getting wet but to avoid looking at their faces and impaling them with our eyes into reality.

Everywhere, the institutions of society conspire to hide them from sight. The Church does so by turning them into radiant flock, filling up the churches in their Sunday best, their eyes turned heavenward in blissful supplication.

Someone makes a movie about the poor so caught in the clutches of desperation they copulate without shame in front of an audience-no, more than this, fallen in the in the lassitude of despair they laugh without joy at the thought of salvation-and it protests the distortion of the superimposed image. Imelda used to put up huge billboards of her nutrition program on the road used by visiting dignitaries to hide the hovels that lay in the path of their vision. The sensation is not unlike that.

Government makes the poor invisible in a similar way. Except that in lieu of huge billboards of proclaim the divine plan, it erects ones that proclaim the human plan.

“On this site,” say the billboards that hide the jagged roofs made from La Perla Biscuits cans afire from a setting sun, “will rise a new Philippines.” Through the magic of “developmentalese” the poor are the longer the tangle of arms and legs and the mass of consumptive bodies we must extricate from to get to our bunks, they are a statistical aggregate that has been temporarily disadvantaged, dis-empowered, and inconvenienced. But not for long. Growth will eradicate poverty, even if it has to eradicate the poor.

The media make them invisible even if they transfix them into very visible corpses that float on the river or headless bodies that rot in iron drums. The charitable institutions made them invisible even if they transform them into very palpable bottomless pits resembling human bellies that make food and medicine, alms for the body and balms for the soul, disappear. Even the poor themselves make them invisible even as some of them materialize the fog of invisibility to become very visible maids and nurses and forklift operators in strange lands.”

Tongues on Fire, Conrado de Quiros, delivered before the French Business Association of the Philippines, Alliance Francaise, Bel-Air Village, Makati City, April 24, 2001. From 20 Speeches that Moved a Nation, Manuel L. Quezon III, editor.

Will Philippine media do a News Night 2.0?

Daily dose, , , , , , , ,

The role of journalists and in particular the manner of how they report on the President’s public statements have become the focus of discussion on Twitter in the morning after Duterte’s most recent address wherein he launched into another diatribe against Vice President Leni Robredo for upstaging him with her efforts of helping out the victims of the two recent typhoons that ravaged Luzon causing massive flooding, damages, and loss of life. Worse, Duterte’s tirade was based largely on wrong information that was given to him by his own cabinet officials.

Aside from Duterte who was once more ridiculed and called out for his lies, misogyny and uncouth behavior, veteran journalist Joseph Morong got some flak for allegedly reporting what the President said as he said them without even bothering to fact-check the statements or applying context. Such is the peril of covering the President who is known for his incoherent and at times unfiltered public statements. Rather than interpreting, Joseph Morong has just reported what the President said nearly verbatim. Which is the sensible thing to do to avoid being called out for being ‘too biased’ with his reporting.

Simply put, don’t shoot the messenger as the veteran journalist still deserve some credit for his honest coverage of the President.

However, the larger issue remains: when would Philippine media and journalists step up its efforts in covering the President in a true journalistic fashion:

And it’s something that is not hard to as just recently, the world was impressed by US media and journalists for calling out Trump for his baseless accusations of election-rigging after being denied a second term by Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Weeks before the US Presidential elections, there was a hint of this, ‘journalistic reboot’ from ABS-CBN News chief Ging Reyes that headlined a story that was largely ignored by the public and media itself:

“Media fed our audience too much entertainment. We’re guilty of that.”

It quickly reminded me of the opening scene in an episode of The Newsroom on which fictional cable news anchor Will McAvoy gave an inspiring apology in the same vein:

It opened with a clip of Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief to President George W. Bush, testifying before the US Congress on March 24, 2004, in which he basically apologized to the American people for the failure of their government to stop terrorists from carrying out the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. The full transcript I reproduce below along with a clip of the episode:

“I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/1 1 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurrence.
I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/1 1.
To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you.
Those entrusted with protecting you failed you.
And I failed you.”

“I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/1 1 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurrence. I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/1 1. To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you.”

Will McAvoy:

Americans liked that moment.

I liked that moment.

Adults should hold themselves accountable for failure.

And so tonight I’m beginning this newscast by joining Mr. Clarke in apologizing to the American people for our failure.
The failure of this program during the time I’ve been in charge of it to successfully inform and educate the American electorate.

Let me be clear that I don’t apologize on behalf of all broadcast journalists, nor do all broadcast journalists owe an apology.
I speak for myself.
I was an accomplice to a slow and repeated and unacknowledged and un-amended train wreck of failures
that have brought us to now.

I’m a leader in an industry that miscalled election results, hyped-up terror scares, ginned up controversy, and failed to report on tectonic shifts in our country.

From the collapse of the financial system to the truths about how strong we are to the dangers we actually face.

I’m a leader in an industry that misdirected your attention with the dexterity of Harry Houdini, while sending hundreds of thousands of our bravest young men and women off to war without due diligence.

The reason we failed isn’t a mystery.

We took a dive for the ratings.

In the infancy of mass communication, the Columbus and Magellan of broadcast journalism, William Paley and David Sarnoff, went down to Washington to cut a deal with Congress.

Congress would allow the fledgling networks free use of taxpayer-owned airwaves in exchange for one public service.
That public service would be one hour of air time set aside every night for informational broadcasting, or what we now call the evening news. Congress, unable to anticipate the enormous capacity television would have to deliver consumers to advertisers, failed to include in its deal the one requirement that would have changed our national discourse immeasurably for the better.

Congress forgot to add that under no circumstances could there be paid advertising during informational broadcasting.

They forgot to say that taxpayers will give you the airwaves for free, and for 23 hours a day, you should make a profit,
but for one hour a night, you work for us. And now those network newscasts, anchored through history by honest-to-God newsmen with names like Murrow and Reasoner and Huntley and Brinkley and Buckley and Cronkite and Rather
and Russert, now they have to compete with the likes of me, a cable anchor who’s in the exact same business as the producers of Jersey Shore.

And that business was good to us, but News Night is quitting that business right now. It might come as a surprise to you
that some of history’s greatest American journalists are working right now, exceptional minds with years of experience and an unshakeable devotion to reporting the news.

But these voices are a small minority now and they don’t stand a chance against the circus, when the circus comes to town. They’re overmatched.

I’m quitting the circus, switching teams.
I’m going with the guys who are getting creamed.
I’m moved they still think they can win, and I hope they can teach me a thing or two.

From this moment on, we’ll be deciding what goes on our air
and how it’s presented to you based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate.

We’ll endeavor to put information in a broader context because we know that very little news is born at the moment it comes across our wire.
We’ll be the champion of facts and the mortal enemy of innuendo, speculation, hyperbole, and nonsense.

We’re not waiters in a restaurant serving you the stories you asked for, just the way you like them prepared.

Nor are we computers dispensing only the facts because news is only useful in the context of humanity.

I’ll make no effort to subdue my personal opinions.
I will make every effort to expose you to informed opinions that are different from my own.

You may ask, “Who are we to make these decisions?”

We are MacKenzie McHale and myself.

Ms. McHale is our executive producer. She marshals the resources of over 100 reporters, producers, analysts, and technicians, and her credentials are readily available.
I’m News Night’s managing editor, and make the final decision on everything seen and heard on this program.
Who are we to make these decisions?
We’re the media elite.
We’ll be back after this with the news.”

Will ABS-CBN make good on the apology of its News chief shape up and step up to what the fictional Will McAvoy and his news program did in the Newsroom and be more objective, critical and be ‘damned good newsmen’?

Or am I just being too naive into thinking that the network will do such a thing? After what it has been through – suffering a major blow from Duterte, losing billions of revenue, its stable of talents decimated, losing hundreds of employees and making do with online streaming and piggy-backing on other network’s broadcasts, maybe it finally saw this as a wake up call. Had it done a much better job of informing the electorate about the monster that is Duterte, maybe it would not have gone through this dark chapter.

Here’s a clip of that opening scene: