Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Wenceslao: A killjoy’s thoughts on press freedom By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
YOU'LL know its Press Freedom Week when The Freeman sports columnist and veteran runner Raffy Uytiepo sing “you ain’t nothing but a hound dog…” while trying to do his best impersonation of an Elvis Presley grind. Raffy did that last Sunday when the annual activity opened with a parade, mass and raffle draw spiced up by a talent show.
It seems like the ritual is often equated with media people loosening themselves up, aside from them expecting to win prices in raffle draws. But to be fair, Press Freedom Week is more than that, because other serious activities are actually being lined up, like today’s “Reaching Out to Future Journalists” forum at the UP in the Visayas campus.
I don’t want to sound like a killjoy, of course. But one must admit that “press freedom” is a big phrase, especially because it is being attached to Sept. 21, the date in 1972 when Ferdinand Marcos set up the foundation of a destructive dictatorship by declaring martial law, shutting out Congress and closing the country’s media outlets.
One can argue that many factors that made the pursuit of press freedom under the Marcos dictatorship worthwhile are gone. Government censorship, or the policies that prompted mainstream media workers to censor themselves, is no longer open or direct. Media people are killed, true, but it is difficult to definitely pin these acts on authorities.
That does not mean threats to press freedom are no longer existent. One of the things I realized in my 15 years or so as a journalist is that media people are always targeted by “users.” Those users can be politicians, traders, rebels, the military etc. who want favorable press. They exert pressure through direct/indirect bribery or coercion.
That means the fight for the freedom to practice one’s profession without interference from or being influenced by vested interest groups is constant. In a sense, fending off the effort of the myriads of “users” is as difficult as protecting the integrity of the press under a dictatorship. Vested interest groups are many and are no less aggressive.
Freedom, though, is but one side of the coin. The other side is responsibility. I would even say that at this period in our history, responsibility can be more compelling than press freedom. “Responsibility” involves objectivity, fairness and decency not only in news coverage but also in opinion making. The other word for that is professionalism.
Being in media accords us certain powers not from our personal abilities but because these are inherent in our job description. The task of informing and entertaining the public carries prestige and influence, making media practitioners a bit special than ordinary workers. There is always the tendency, then, for media people to get too heady.
Corruption is but one form of abuse of this power. Media work is a thankless job for the honest, but it pays for the corrupt. Thus we see the anomaly of the honest media person finding it hard to make both ends meet while the corrupt gets rich. The corrupt gets disrespected in the end, but by then they have already damaged the profession.
Power breeds arrogance. Much of the complaints against media people stems from their lack of respect for targets of their commentaries, use of foul language and their tendency to go personal instead of relying on the logic of their arguments.
Corruption and arrogance are the sources of hatred some sectors harbor for media practitioners.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
