Good news
Good news
Updated 01:28am (Mla time) Nov 18, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the November 18, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
ERNESTO Magtoto had an interesting letter the other day. (Inquirer, Nov. 16, 2004) "During a TV interview, the President asked the media to help in easing the prevailing tension gripping the nation by discouraging rumor-mongering and cultivating the attitude of positivism.... The announcement ... indicated her desire to improve the situation. But was it prompted by the right motive? Or was it just an attempt to dissuade the media from asking questions about the improprieties in government and her inability to stop them...?
"Isn't suggesting positivism a bit premature and suspicious given the likelihood it could be used to evade accountability? Isn't evading those questions a sign of weakness in leadership, especially when transparency has been bannered as a standard of governance?"
I'm glad a reader has seen fit to point this out. I've been saying the same thing, though in far more strident terms, all this time. The appeal for the media not to contribute to rumor-mongering is misdirected. The media are not the biggest contributor to rumor-mongering, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is. At the very least, she is guilty of spreading the biggest rumor of all, which is that the country is in good shape and will have a merry Christmas this December. That is rumor of the same epic scale as the one Ferdinand Marcos propagated about Sept. 21, the anniversary of martial law, being a day of thanksgiving.
At the very most, well, take it from Dante Ang bagging a sweetheart deal to develop 2.5 hectares of Subic land. Ang, of course, is one of Ms Arroyo's "spinners," people who, in a perverse parody of Christ turning water into wine, turn bad news into good news, hell into heaven. Yet another "spinner" -- though he has never advertised himself as such -- is Mike Velarde, the self-anointed spreader of the Good News. He truly cannot see bad news anywhere, especially in presidents, turning from Joseph Estrada to Ms Arroyo with the ease with which the lustful go from bed to bed. In return for which he received the good news of the Pag-IBIG Fund giving him its biggest loan to date to build condominiums, praise the Lord, or Ms Arroyo, whoever comes first.
"Spin" is the word the foreign press has used to describe the Arroyo government's handling of news about the fallout between the United States and the Philippines following Ms Arroyo's pullout of troops in Iraq. "Spin" is the word the foreign press used to describe the Arroyo government's handling of news about an impending economic crisis. Spin is just another word for rumor-mongering. Well, journalists have yet another word for it, but it is not used in polite company.
But it's not just that Ms Arroyo's call for "positivism," as Magtoto puts it, is premature and suspicious, it's that it isn't positivism at all, if by that is meant producing a positive effect. Positive and negative are tricky concepts, as indeed are constructive and destructive, good and bad. That point cannot be sufficiently belabored.
There is nothing positive or constructive about seeing only the good when the bad festers like an infected wound. There is nothing positive or constructive about reporting that Ferdinand Marcos signed a presidential decree while ignoring the fact that a million people marched down the streets to accompany Ninoy Aquino to his grave. There is nothing positive or constructive about reporting that Estrada broke bread, or ate rice, with the poor in some hovel in Metro Manila while ignoring the fact that his cronies ate and drank and plotted themselves silly in the witching hours every day. And there is nothing positive about reporting how Ms Arroyo is resolute about pinning down Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia for corruption while ignoring that her husband managed to get away with being Jose Pidal and that she herself has managed to get away with plundering the public coffers to campaign.
These things are not positive and constructive, they are negative and destructive in the extreme. Indeed, these things are not good news, they are bad news of the worst sort. It is not "positivism," it is being stricken blind.
Of course, Ms Arroyo has her own agenda for asking media to "toe the line," in Magtoto's words. But I have heard many well-meaning readers or viewers as well suggest the same thing for many reasons, not least to improve the national image. I remember again the group in Singapore that protested the airing of the Philippine TV program "Probe" there on grounds that many of its episodes (pedophilia, child prostitution, garbage) portrayed Filipinos in an unflattering light. Well, it is not the job of journalists to improve the image of the country, it is their job to tell things reasonably accurately. The job of improving the country's image belongs to PR practitioners or spin doctors who, in these days particularly, are able to do it only by rumor-mongering. See above.
In the end, the judgments of positive or negative, constructive or destructive, are alien to journalism. The only judgment that can and should apply to it is truthful or deceitful. The only good news in fact is the one that tells the truth -- with the small letter "t", or what can be ascertained with reasonable diligence -- about life as it unfolds, whether tragic or comic, whether a source of grief or laughter.
I did say when I wrote about the "Probe" case that the group in Singapore was missing the point. The "Probe" reports, for all the seamy side of life in these parts that they exposed, did give the country a very good image. They did give Filipinos, in Singapore and elsewhere, a reason to be proud of their country. They did so by showing the world this country had a free press. Which was more than could be said for many parts of that world.
Untruth, even of the feel-good variety, has never been known to set people free. It can't be very good news to anyone.
Updated 01:28am (Mla time) Nov 18, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the November 18, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
ERNESTO Magtoto had an interesting letter the other day. (Inquirer, Nov. 16, 2004) "During a TV interview, the President asked the media to help in easing the prevailing tension gripping the nation by discouraging rumor-mongering and cultivating the attitude of positivism.... The announcement ... indicated her desire to improve the situation. But was it prompted by the right motive? Or was it just an attempt to dissuade the media from asking questions about the improprieties in government and her inability to stop them...?
"Isn't suggesting positivism a bit premature and suspicious given the likelihood it could be used to evade accountability? Isn't evading those questions a sign of weakness in leadership, especially when transparency has been bannered as a standard of governance?"
I'm glad a reader has seen fit to point this out. I've been saying the same thing, though in far more strident terms, all this time. The appeal for the media not to contribute to rumor-mongering is misdirected. The media are not the biggest contributor to rumor-mongering, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is. At the very least, she is guilty of spreading the biggest rumor of all, which is that the country is in good shape and will have a merry Christmas this December. That is rumor of the same epic scale as the one Ferdinand Marcos propagated about Sept. 21, the anniversary of martial law, being a day of thanksgiving.
At the very most, well, take it from Dante Ang bagging a sweetheart deal to develop 2.5 hectares of Subic land. Ang, of course, is one of Ms Arroyo's "spinners," people who, in a perverse parody of Christ turning water into wine, turn bad news into good news, hell into heaven. Yet another "spinner" -- though he has never advertised himself as such -- is Mike Velarde, the self-anointed spreader of the Good News. He truly cannot see bad news anywhere, especially in presidents, turning from Joseph Estrada to Ms Arroyo with the ease with which the lustful go from bed to bed. In return for which he received the good news of the Pag-IBIG Fund giving him its biggest loan to date to build condominiums, praise the Lord, or Ms Arroyo, whoever comes first.
"Spin" is the word the foreign press has used to describe the Arroyo government's handling of news about the fallout between the United States and the Philippines following Ms Arroyo's pullout of troops in Iraq. "Spin" is the word the foreign press used to describe the Arroyo government's handling of news about an impending economic crisis. Spin is just another word for rumor-mongering. Well, journalists have yet another word for it, but it is not used in polite company.
But it's not just that Ms Arroyo's call for "positivism," as Magtoto puts it, is premature and suspicious, it's that it isn't positivism at all, if by that is meant producing a positive effect. Positive and negative are tricky concepts, as indeed are constructive and destructive, good and bad. That point cannot be sufficiently belabored.
There is nothing positive or constructive about seeing only the good when the bad festers like an infected wound. There is nothing positive or constructive about reporting that Ferdinand Marcos signed a presidential decree while ignoring the fact that a million people marched down the streets to accompany Ninoy Aquino to his grave. There is nothing positive or constructive about reporting that Estrada broke bread, or ate rice, with the poor in some hovel in Metro Manila while ignoring the fact that his cronies ate and drank and plotted themselves silly in the witching hours every day. And there is nothing positive about reporting how Ms Arroyo is resolute about pinning down Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia for corruption while ignoring that her husband managed to get away with being Jose Pidal and that she herself has managed to get away with plundering the public coffers to campaign.
These things are not positive and constructive, they are negative and destructive in the extreme. Indeed, these things are not good news, they are bad news of the worst sort. It is not "positivism," it is being stricken blind.
Of course, Ms Arroyo has her own agenda for asking media to "toe the line," in Magtoto's words. But I have heard many well-meaning readers or viewers as well suggest the same thing for many reasons, not least to improve the national image. I remember again the group in Singapore that protested the airing of the Philippine TV program "Probe" there on grounds that many of its episodes (pedophilia, child prostitution, garbage) portrayed Filipinos in an unflattering light. Well, it is not the job of journalists to improve the image of the country, it is their job to tell things reasonably accurately. The job of improving the country's image belongs to PR practitioners or spin doctors who, in these days particularly, are able to do it only by rumor-mongering. See above.
In the end, the judgments of positive or negative, constructive or destructive, are alien to journalism. The only judgment that can and should apply to it is truthful or deceitful. The only good news in fact is the one that tells the truth -- with the small letter "t", or what can be ascertained with reasonable diligence -- about life as it unfolds, whether tragic or comic, whether a source of grief or laughter.
I did say when I wrote about the "Probe" case that the group in Singapore was missing the point. The "Probe" reports, for all the seamy side of life in these parts that they exposed, did give the country a very good image. They did give Filipinos, in Singapore and elsewhere, a reason to be proud of their country. They did so by showing the world this country had a free press. Which was more than could be said for many parts of that world.
Untruth, even of the feel-good variety, has never been known to set people free. It can't be very good news to anyone.
posted by Dante at 10:35 AM
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