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COMMENTARY

Rage Against the Regime

The state is running roughshod over the principles that make us human beings, but we in the media choose to look the other way. To many of us, the antics of officials engaged in a word war is far more newsworthy than the continuous assault on our freedom and our basic rights as human beings.

By Carlos H. Conde

Bulatlat.com

(The following is the keynote speech the author delivered at the 31st National Student Press Congress and the 62nd National Student Press Convention organized by the College Editors Guild of the Philippines on May 27-June 1, 2002, in Davao City.)

I am here before you today with a little trepidation, and it's not because an intelligent audience such as this intimidate me. It's more because I realized that I could not possibly talk to you today and exhort you to be good campus journalists without first taking a long, hard look at my profession.

My beef against the mainstream news media is mainly its failure - or is it refusal? - to lend a voice to the voiceless, to console those who are suffering, to enlighten those who are in the dark, to liberate the minds of those who are stuck in the rut of conventional wisdoms, who believe the myths that are being passed off as truths.

Seeking out the stories that matter - for instance, documenting the various human-rights abuses in the countryside - is a lonesome task for a journalist these days. These days, despite the fact that this or that human-rights abuse or this or that political assassination or this or that political harassment happen with impunity, we in the mainstream news media are looking the other way. Either because we are too ignorant to ask the right questions or we have grown accustomed to the sad reality of the press in this country, which is that, more and more, it is becoming elitist. More than being elitist - that is, it seeks only the answers to questions that matter to those who own the media, which is the elite - the mainstream news media is becoming blinded by the very lies that it has been heaping on us.

In newsrooms across the country, my fellow journalists are following a routine in which the plight of the poor, particularly those in the countryside, hardly figures. At 3 p.m. every day, they sit in their air-conditioned offices, deciding which myth they would dish out again in tomorrow's edition of their newspapers. They would shock us with rumors of a coup d'etat or this animal called Freedom Force. They would bombard us with the never-ending stream of pathos that marked the event - or a death that the media turned into an event - that was the death of an actor named Rico Yan. They would force their view of the world on us without so much as an appreciation of what it is the public really want.

In the meantime, the elements of a fascistic dispensation continue to wreak havoc, murdering activists left and right, among them a dear friend, Beng Hernandez, who had the courage and the wisdom to rage against the regime. Across the country, the Arroyo administration is terrorizing our people, even as it pays lip service to the fight against terrorism by allowing itself to be used by the United States government in a vague but costly - to human rights, to life, to decency - mission in the southern Philippines.

Sadly, my colleagues - even I, to some extent - are preoccupied with our own business, pursuing stories that are dictated by a journalistic structure that serve more the interest of the State and big business. To many of us, wittingly or not, the death of Beng Hernandez was newsworthy only because she supposedly had a diary. Hah, a diary! To many of us, the death and the arrest of our Moro brothers all over Mindanao on the mere suspicion that they are members of the Abu Sayyaf is newsworthy only because it fits perfectly with what the police has to say - that all this is part of the campaign against terrorism.

You are in very interesting and turbulent times. You are now faced with the challenge of proving once again that, when the mainstream news media fails in doing its job in reporting the events and the issues that matter to the masses, it is you who will stand up and show the rest of the world how a little commitment can go a long way in reinforcing our faith in the power of the written word. It happened during the Marcos regime. I don't see how it cannot happen now.

By being excellent at what you do, you can give the mainstream news media the jolt that it needs, not that I delude myself in thinking that its defects can be repaired that easily. I am convinced that under the present structure of our society, a media that serves and protects the interest of the poor is a pipe dream.

You have so much power in your hand. And I implore you to use that power to challenge what I think is one of the worst afflictions of the mainstream news media -- the myth of objectivity that permeates the newsrooms in this country. This myth only serves to absolve those of us in the mainstream press of our limitations, if not wrongdoings. Objectivity prevents the mainstream press from asking tough questions and from forming conclusions out of facts, thinking that if they do that, they would become less objective and, thus, less effective as journalists.

But you must agree with me that in a regime that is becoming more and more brutal, in a society that is more and more unjust, to be "objective" - that is to say, to report events dispassionately and to merely write down the much vaunted 5Ws that come invariably from the government - is to help the regime perpetuate its barbarity.

You have a real power in your hands, and I am not just talking about the fact that you have what is called a captive audience. The combined circulation of all the country's newspapers is nothing compared to the sheer number of minds that you can help open, that you can help free. The commitment to tell the truth to benefit the masses - that is what you have that the mainstream news media has taken for granted in its pursuit for profit and in fulfilling its role as a mere propaganda tool by those in power.

But you cannot fulfill your role as journalists if you stay within the confines of your schools. As such, you have to intensify your struggle against the repressive structures within the schools that you come from. You have to fight campus-press repression. You have to stand up against the many anti-student policies and actions of school administrations.

You have to go out and see and smell and feel the suffering of our people. You have to witness for yourself how the State has degenerated into a killing machine. As journalists, as chroniclers of the struggle of the masses for genuine freedom, nothing less is expected of you.

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