Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Seares: Tomas’ pet (media) peeves
By Pachico A. Seares
News Sense
DECADES after they were uttered, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osme¤a still talks bitterly about what radio commentators said against him.
They accused him, he says, of selling shampoo and cooking utensils in the U.S. and not visiting his then dying father Serging, former mayor and senator.
They were “really below the belt and not even true,” he tells a film crew working on a short documentary titled “Access Denied: Journalists’ Lament and News Sources’ Plea” (to be screened Friday, Sept. 26 at the Cebu Citizens-Press Council quarterly meeting).
That was years and years ago and it still rankles.
And they were said during an election season when libel laws by presumed assent of combatants take a leave of absence.
Why the beef?
Maybe because the assault came from regular broadcasters, not politicians’ employed hacks.
“When I first ran for mayor, everyone was against me. Every day Leo Lastimosa, Manny Rabacal, and, who’s this guy, Nalzaro (attacked me),” Tomas says.
At the same time, Tomas blasts at all radio commentators. Politicians, he says, go around paying them. “This has been going on. Call it AC/DC...”
Free meals
Not exactly pinpoint firing, but he generalizes too on beat reporters whom he praises to high City Hall rooftop.
He’s proud of Cebu’s reporters who, he says, return bribe envelopes. Not like in other areas where reporters’ body language shrieks “where’s the money.”
But his adulation seems not to include Capitol reporters: “if you’re a beat reporter there, they give you free meals.”
And surely he’s no big fan of Sun.Star, which he occasionally curses along with SRP creditors.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 23, 2008 issue)
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