“To the gallant journalists who work in Catholic media and to the Catholic journalists who work in secular media”

A response to Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle’s keynote speech at the “Catholic Media in Challenging Times” forum in San Carlos Seminary, Makati City. Friday, January 19, 2018.

The responsible shepherd 

It is an honor to be here; I don’t know if taking part in today’s forum qualifies as a plenary indulgence, but this sinner certainly jumped at the chance when the invitation arrived.

I share Cardinal Chito’s misgivings about not having a female perspective on this panel; I hope we can help cure that in the Q&A. But I look at the panel and I realize—this is not only missing the female perspective, it’s missing other male perspectives too, because we are all graduates of the Ateneo. It’s the Jesuit mafia at work! But keeping our limits in mind is good. We are only offering our views from the limits of our own experience.

My experience is primarily that of a journalist.

Indeed, I am wearing black today because today the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and other alliances and associations are marking #BlackFridayforPressFreedom, in support of our colleagues at Rappler, the staff at the 54 Catholic radio stations whose licenses to operate have been I think deliberately ignored, and other journalists on the receiving end of the government’s iron fist. 

An assault on press freedom

A 10-part Twitter thread on the SEC decision revoking the certificate of incorporation of Rappler, the social media network. (With a link to today’s column—and an 11th tweet.)

 

Reductionist, grossly disproportionate, and just plain wrong: SEC revocation of Rappler incorporation attacks press freedom, to pluck thorn from Duterte's Fentanyl-fortified side. https://t.co/34mXZy9TZO

— John Nery (@jnery_newsstand) January 15, 2018

Column: Bongbong Marcos’ big new lie

Published on August 15, 2017 but, apparently, germane again, now that former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has accused the Presidential Electoral Tribunal of bias. If you believe that, I have a bridge, in San Juanico, that I’m selling. 

I have read the transcript of the first preliminary conference conducted by the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (the Supreme Court convened as an election protest forum) on the Marcos vs Robredo case. I have compared both the direction and the specifics of the discussion with the post-conference statements made by both parties to the election protest—and can only conclude that former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and his camp are lying.

Column: Sex with starlets

In which President Duterte calls his predecessor an idiot, tells a rival presidential candidate to shut up, and (joke! joke!) pimps starlets to soldiers. The new normal. Column published on August 8, 2017.

President Duterte returned to Marawi City late last week. By all accounts, it was a happy, triumphant visit with the troops. But, confronted with a microphone, he again indulged his public persona’s vulgar streak. He called his predecessor names (albeit reluctantly), he dressed down a senator who had the temerity to offer him advice — and to the soldiers on the frontline he offered sex with starlets as a consolation prize.

Column: Betraying PDP-Laban in China

With today’s “thematic briefing” which the Chinese Communist Party conducted for the ruling PDP-Laban party out of the goodness of its collective heart, it seems like a good idea to post this column, published on August 1, 2017, to this on-again, off-again blog. (Hey, it’s on again!) The theme of the briefing, it turns out, was fighting corruption; I’m sure we all have something to learn from the admittedly effective but highly selective anti-corruption drive Xi Jinping has unleashed in China to consolidate power. 

Here’s the link to the original column: http://opinion.inquirer.net/106004/betraying-pdp-laban-china

The roots of the current ruling party PDP-Laban are as “yellow” as can be. Lakas ng Bayan was founded by Ninoy Aquino and Lorenzo Tañada et al. to contest the April 1978 Interim Batasang Pambansa elections in Metro Manila; Laban was winning in the count until a news blackout was imposed, and Ferdinand Marcos engineered a victory for his wife Imelda and everyone on her slate. The Partido Demokratiko Pilipino was founded in 1982 by intrepid civil libertarians, many of them from opposition circles in Cagayan de Oro and Davao, including one of Aquino’s fearless candidates in 1978: Mayor Aquilino Pimentel Jr.