Thursday, May 17, 2007 So: Sun.Star pirated like a DVD By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
JUST about anything and everything can be faked these days. Labels, designs, artwork, credentials, diplomas, professions, computer software, boobs, butt, hair, body shape, the O-thing, sheep, elections, newspapers. Wait, newspapers?
Yes, someone was ingenious enough to copy Sun.Star Pampanga like a DVD. Now I know that a newspaper can be pirated too.
When Sun.Star Pampanga editor Ria de Fiesta put the May 12 issue to bed, the front page story was about the Supreme Court affirming the decision allowing a certain incumbent official to run. On election day on May 14, she saw on the streets several copies of a May 12 issue of Sun.Star Pampanga carrying stories in Tagalog and a large mug of gubernatorial candidate Fr. Eddie Panlilio!
Everything looked Sun.Star Pampanga-ish—masthead, design, color, font style, paper size, everything—except that it wasn’t Sun.Star. Sun.Star Pampanga, the genuine one, is a 10-page English daily. Sun.Star Pampanga, the pirated one, is hybrid—Tagalog stories on page 1 and English stories on page 2. And like a pirated DVD, there is nothing beyond page 2. You are left bitin, just like what one pirated DVD copy of “Kill Bill 2” does (meaning, ending without the ending).
What’s on page 1 of the fake Sun.Star Pampanga? A two-deck banner story about Fr. Panlilio admitting having sired children with different women (“Fr. Ed Panlilio, umamin may mga asawa at anak”), a boxed sidebar about the Pampanga business chamber abandoning their support for the priest candidate (“PamCham at iba pa, iniwanan na si Panlilio”) and a 2x7 color photo of Panlilio with a caption that says that the priest suffers from “vitiligo” which is a kind of skin disease that arises from having the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV). Both stories are written in Tagalog and bylined by Raymond Garcia and Albert Lacanlale.
By the way, this is not the Raymond Garcia who considers himself the “more gwapo” Cebu City vice mayoral candidate. This is Raymond Garcia, a real reporter of the genuine Sun.Star Pampanga just like Albert Lacanlale.
The stories on page 2 are what appeared in the May 12 issue of the genuine Sun.Star Pampanga. Someone unbearably clichéd knew how to hit two birds in Candaba with one stone.
Fr. Panlilio, who has sought dispensation from ministerial duty from the Catholic Church, is an independent candidate who anchors his platform of government to God, morals and good governance. He is up against Provincial Board Member Lilia Pineda and reelectionist governor Mark Lapid, whose support is said to be coming from jueteng and illegal quarrying money. Among the three, Fr. Panlilio is a popular choice of Kapampangans who want legitimacy and morality back in their government. He’s leading in the Namfrel-count.
Who between Lapid and Pineda could be behind the moral assassination of Fr. Panlilio? Or, to be more parochial, who could be behind the DVD-like piracy of Sun.Star Pampanga?
Sun.Star Pampanga is co-owned by Sun.Star Publishing Inc. and Levy Laus, Clark Development Corp. chief and an auto dealer magnate and whose son Paul is Lapid’s running mate. It couldn’t be Lapid then, could it? Could it be Pineda? Fr. Panlilio had brushed it off as “the worst black propaganda.” That’s politics for you, Padre.
Under Pampanga’s heat, anything can be done and undone. But whoever thought of the propaganda material knows the page 1 specs of Sun.Star. We’re not letting this affront to the name and integrity of Sun.Star go, so we’re looking into it ala CSI.
Better check the Sun.Star copy you’re holding now. If you find something incomprehensible or way out of the paper’s character, chances are it could be a pirated copy. Hey, I don’t mean the missing jumps.
