Remote learning cannot continue in the wake of the global pandemic and the strong typhoons, not to mention the incompetence and indifference of the Duterte administration.
The future of public communication rests on giving relevant media literacy. Audiences should be taught the valuable lesson of asserting and fighting for a media that we all deserve. This means fighting attempts by government to control the media, as well as demanding responsible gatekeeping by the owners of social media platforms.
The media should resist all commercialist trappings and not favor profit over truth-telling. Journalists and news media organizations need to brush up on the normative standards of journalism, if only to realize that bias is inherent and should not be hidden.
There should be no attempt to regulate video-streaming services like Netflix because the Internet already has several layers of filtering that can be done by clients/subscribers and service providers. Just like in other forms of media, online media or digital media should be self-regulated. Any attempt by government to regulate media content would be a violation of the constitutional provision that prohibits abridging the people’s basic freedoms.
A journalist should be fair but he or she cannot be neutral. In the context of its role as the Fourth Estate, journalism is inherently critical and adversarial. A neutral observer cannot ask critical or hard questions, so in a sense the framing becomes “soft” if a journalist believes in neutrality. By DANILO ARAÑA ARAO…
Even if this sounds nebulous, journalistic outputs are inherently biased for the truth. Journalists are therefore expected to use as sources of information the experts (i.e., truth-tellers) instead of “fake news” peddlers.
The issue here goes beyond Rappler as other dominant and alternative news media organizations are also under attack. Ressa only becomes a convenient target because of her high profile. That’s what she has in common with ABS-CBN which is a leading network. The chilling effect becomes clear by targeting both of them.
Moving forward, it is imperative for journalists and media workers to ensure that media repression and creative forms of censorship do not happen. Virtual pressers where questions are screened cannot be the “new normal.” By DANILO ARAÑA ARAO Bulatlat.com N.B. – A journalist emailed six questions on the “new normal” in media coverage due to…
A journalist based in Hong Kong who writes for a leading international magazine sent these questions on press freedom under the Duterte administration. Please allow me to share the short answers.
Based on empirical data, e-learning is not for everyone given the unequal economic status of students. Internet access is not for everybody. Even if mobile telephony is ubiquitous, the low purchasing power of families makes it expensive to maintain good data connection in the students’ mobile phones.
It comes as no surprise that the current lockdown has become a de facto crackdown for some of those who dare speak up against the government.