Column: What does democracy look like to you?

The peerless photojournalist Romy Gacad taught us to see the true nature of our democracy. Published in Rappler on November 2, 2021.

Henry Jenkins of the Center for Future Civic Media once posed a question that struck me as both fundamental and provocative. “What does democracy look like?”

I am reminded of that question because my answer, at that time, came in the form of an excellent photograph taken by the great photojournalist Romy Gacad. Unfortunately, I cannot share the photograph, which you can find on Getty Images; I asked permission to share it on social media, for free, as a small tribute to Romy, who passed away last Sunday. But the terms did not allow it.

However, all you need to do to find the photograph is search for “Arroyo Gonzalez Salcedo Lagman Solidum” on Google Images. It should be the first image you’ll see.

Like so …

Digital Media and Philippine Society

The Department of Communication of the School of Social Sciences of the Ateneo de Manila University is launching a seminar series today. If you would like to join the conversation, please sign up here!

The first series features five speakers (it’s my turn on November 10, 2021).

Fittingly, the (new) department chair, Dr. Anjo Lorenzana,
takes the lead in the series.

Leadership legacies from Fidel Ramos

Notes read at Akademyang Filipino’s Perspectives on the Presidency forum, on August 26, 2021.

Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here.

When I received the invitation to join this exchange of perspectives on the Presidency, in a collective attempt to draw “leadership lessons for No. 17,” I said yes for two reasons. First, no one in his right mind would say no to Chair Conchita Carpio Morales. And second, I really wanted to know what Maris, Apa, and Manolo think!

I think of this little presentation of mine as a small price to pay to hear them speak.

To begin:

I did not vote for Fidel V. Ramos. In 1992, I voted for his ideological opposite: Senator Jovito Salonga was on the opposite side of Ramos on most of the big issues. But on the question of personal character, I actually think that they were very much alike. They were both men of personal integrity, possessed of iron self-discipline, who led by personal example, and, to borrow Maslow’s term, were capable of extraordinary feats of self-actualization.

I did not know Salonga enough to know whether beneath his earnest countenance he was also a funny man. But Ramos has always been a jokester, quick with a quip, ready with a prank.

The first time I met Ramos one on one was in Malacanang, when he was Defense Secretary and I was a young aide to Oscar Villadolid. He told me he was flying out later that night to visit a military camp. I’ll parachute into the camp with a case of beer, I remember him saying. “Sama ka?” On the chance that this was not a joke, I passed.

I have three points to make about the leadership legacy of Fidel V. Ramos, summarized in this incomplete formula: mc2.

Pubmats in a pandemic

In my most recent attempt to unclutter my phone, I saw these publicity materials for various public forums again—and it occurred to me to post them here, as a way of keeping a record. Some constant themes, and many topical issues. (I tried to post these 20 “pubmats” as a tiled gallery, something I’ve done before and that is easy to do, but the atrocious block formatting that WordPress.com decided to inflict on its users defeated my best efforts. Extremely frustrating.) This record of 20 forums between May 2020 and May 2021 is by no means complete; I only included those with (a) pubmats and (b) with my name or mug on it.

The Color of Malice: Combatting Historical Denialism

On December 3, 2020, I had the chance to speak at the Leadership, Innovation, Dynamism towards Educational Reforms (LIDER) series organized and hosted by the Private Education Assistance Committee. (The previous day, Dean Chel Diokno spoke on human rights; the following day, anchor Christian Esguerra discussed social media as a force for good.) My last two columns (on December 8 and December 15) ran excerpts from the speech I prepared. This is the speech in full.

Good morning, and thank you. I am honored to take part in the PEAC Educational Leadership Series. My role, as I see it, is to define historical revisionism, to describe the conditions that allow it to take root, and to determine ways to fight it. 

I am not a historian, although I have studied Rizal closely and have written on the role he played in fostering nationalism in Southeast Asia. I am only a journalist and a teacher, and my perspective is necessarily that of a practitioner in two disciplines deeply affected by the phenomenon of disinformation. 

Let me begin with a specific example of a simple error.

Last week, while searching for something I needed in a workshop I was about to conduct, I stumbled upon what I thought was an unusual passage in a Rizal translation. 

Rethinking freedom of expression

Happy to join the Friedrich Naumann Foundation as it starts its second Learning Series, with a reflection on freedom of expression: What, exactly, is under threat, and what, exactly, is the nature of that threat? TO REGISTER, please click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cgAqFfQwRPmlLN6Zzj5i5w

 

Column: ‘The attack was so sudden and violent’

Published on March 3, 2020.

Last week, in a forum at Ateneo de Manila on the martial law experience, I was invited— together with an old friend from those very days, Chair Chito Gascon of the Commission on Human Rights—to provoke a discussion about memories and lessons.

I used my time first to tell a simple story, as a form of witnessing, and then to talk about martial rule as a system; that is, “a carefully built legalistic system, constructed to allow a small class of privileged capitalists and professional politicians to use a fatally compromised military, which at that time included the police force, to run the country for their private interest.” That system, and the comprehensive complicity of many leading Filipinos, including prominent Ateneans, caused the turmoil and the tragedy of martial law. But it is the stories out of that experience that we now seek to tell again, and with unquiet urgency. The story I told was simple, real, obscure, brutal—but limned with the possibility of grace:

Column: Was the Katipunan ‘populist’?

Published on August 13, 2019.

I am under the weather; allow me to use this downtime to run excerpts from a speech I read at the 2018 Euro Summit in UP Diliman:

We can discern three main conceptual approaches to the study of populism: as substantive ideology, as discursive style and as political strategy.

One of the more influential definitions of populism as ideology is that of the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde: Populism is “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”

“The truths I learned at the Ateneo”

Commencement Address before the John Gokongwei School of Management and the School of Science and Engineering of the Ateneo de Manila University, on June 1, 2019.

Good afternoon.

Yesterday, I received a gift—and like all true gifts, it was entirely undeserved. I had the honor of serving as commencement speaker in my beloved alma mater. If you knew me back in college, and remembered that I spent far too much time outside the classroom and in the streets, you too would have been struck by God’s mysterious ways. As the eloquent young man Elihu reminded the old and self-righteous Job: “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.”

Today I receive the gift again, and on behalf of all those who just barely made it, or made it only after second chances, or made it mostly because long-suffering teachers took one more leap of faith, I welcome the inexplicability, the irony, the sheer grace of it all. God truly does great things beyond our understanding.

Now I am faced with a choice: To repeat yesterday’s speech, or read another one. The ancient Greeks respected the power of repetition. But on reflection, I realized that while I drew the necessary connection between the continuing assault on the institutions of truth and the erosion of Philippine democracy, I fell short in explaining what truths are worth defending in the first place.

So, a new speech then, but with many elements of the old.

“To tame the beast, we must first name it”

Commencement Address before the School of Humanities and the School of Social Sciences of the Ateneo de Manila University, on May 31, 2019.

 

[[[Passages in brackets were left unread, to save on time.]]]

I. BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY

WE STAND ON A HILL—literally. Loyola Heights is approximately 54 meters above mean sea level. The highest point on campus has an elevation of 70 meters, and that’s where the Manila Observatory was built. In contrast, the city of Marikina, sprawled right there behind you like a cat sunning itself, has an estimated elevation of 13 meters above mean sea level. That means that the original Godzilla, just under 50 meters tall, can stand right there on the floor of the valley, and if we’re not looking for it, we wouldn’t even see it.

But ours is a hill in a figurative sense too. Our beautiful, beloved campus is an aerie of academic, artistic, athletic achievement. Our university is a sanctuary, for spiritual activity and social activists. Our home is a laboratory for the liberal arts, a retreat for research, a safe zone for the sciences. And 142 years after Jose Rizal was graduated from the Ateneo with the highest honors, his formative role in our history, and his fate and fame as First Filipino, continue to add not only borrowed luster to our name, but borrowed height to our hill.

“Conquer Ignorance and Injustice, Defend the Beauty and Dignity of Our Own Language”

Commencement speech at the Southern Philippines College, read on April 8, 2019 at The Atrium at Limketkai Center, Cagayan de Oro City. MindaNews was kind enough to publish a copy of the speech on the same day. 

Good afternoon.

I am both happy to be here and honored to be invited. Cagayan de Oro is my hometown, and it is always good to visit. For many of us who have moved elsewhere, or stayed away, or strayed, it is a sure source of joy to know that, yes, you can go home again.

At this commencement ceremony, we can perhaps commence with that thought. You can go home again. Some of you in grade school and in senior high school will be moving to other places of learning; most of you in college or post-graduate study will be leaving the campus, its suddenly empty halls and corridors, its classrooms layered with memories, to create a name and earn a living for yourselves. You will be saying goodbye to some of the most formative influences of your young lives; you will be leaving behind bits and pieces of yourselves.

But the good news is, You can go home again. When you want to renew your sense of purpose, or recharge your spiritual or emotional batteries, or remember what it was like to be you, you can go home to your school again, and it will be there, your memories in its safekeeping.

“Fighting the Logic of the Snake”

Updating this blog has its advantages. I learned, for instance, that I had not yet posted the keynote speech I read at the 2018 Cardinal Sin Catholic Book Awards, held on September 12, 2018. Let me do that now; let me also tell you a story. An American priest was in the audience, and when he heard me say the phrase “the idiot Donald Trump” he walked out on me. I did not know this at the time (the Catholic Book Awards rites are held during the annual Manila International Book Fair, and it’s a busy place), but he emailed me twice afterwards: First, to tell me what he did, and second to apologize for his language. 

When Father JK asked me to speak in this year’s Cardinal Sin Catholic Book Awards, I said yes immediately, in part for personal reasons. Many years ago, Cardinal Sin officiated at my wedding; I thought that speaking at a ceremony and in a publishing tradition that was named after him, to pay tribute to his expansive vision of a truly catholic media and communications culture, would be a chance to give back in return.

I would like to thank Father JK and the Asian Catholic Communicators, then, for giving me this opportunity. I’ve read only a couple of the books in the list of finalists, but the procession of titles, by some of the industry’s most distinguished publishing houses, tells me that Cardinal Sin’s ideal of a book culture that promotes human development, Filipino culture, and Catholic values has taken root, and is bearing fruit.

I was asked to speak on a very specific topic today, and I can’t help but think that it is in fact a topic very specific to today: “The truth will set you free (John 8:32). Fake news and journalism for peace”—the same theme that animates Pope Francis’ Message for World Communications Day this year. In a couple of earlier forums, I had the opportunity to think, in public, about the Pope’s teaching, on a serious problem that bedevils not only journalism, the profession I call my own, but society itself, in which of course journalism is only one of many vocations. I am grateful for the chance to continue the discussion today.

Under the Gun: Democracy in the Crosshairs

Keynote at the 10th anniversary of the Eisenhower Fellows Association of the Philippines, on October 5, 2018. [The passages I bracketed in parentheses I did not read aloud anymore, to cut down on the speaking time.] I ran excerpts from the speech in my column of October 9. The opinion piece “The Marcos family’s last gasp,” written for the Asia News Network’s Writers Circle, first appeared in Vietnam News on Saturday, October 6, 2018.

Is the democratic project in the Philippines in the crosshairs?

To ask the question is itself already a sign—of something. I think we can all agree that, generally speaking, we raise medical concerns when we are ailing, not when we are in the full flush of good health. We ask whether our democracy is under the gun, when we sense that it is under threat, or a target.

Sometimes the threat is not obvious. Sometimes it is massive and persistent, but too familiar to be visible. We can take our initial bearings from the man after whom your fellowship is named. President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, famously warned against the “unwarranted influence” on “our liberties and democratic processes” of what he called the “military-industrial complex.”

The “first rough draft” AND history

Happy to present a lecture on the relationship (or at least one kind of relationship) between journalism and history to core history students (that is, non-history majors enrolled in history subjects that are part of the core curriculum) at the Ateneo de Manila University yesterday. I thought the questions from the audience were the real highlight; unfortunately, this copy of the lecture is all I got!

The “first rough draft” AND history
Journalism as source and resource

LET ME START AT THE BEGINNING—at the beginning, that is, of Jose Rizal’s public career, as leader of the Filipino nationalists.

On June 25, 1884, a banquet was held in a Madrid restaurant to honor the pioneering achievement of two Filipino painters. Juan Luna had just won a gold medal at the Exposicion de Bellas Artes; Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo completed the triumph with a silver medal. Luna was only 26, Hidalgo 29. The previous Thursday, Rizal had just turned 23.

The day after the dinner, a newspaper with moderate leanings, El Imparcial—perhaps today we can render that idiomatically as The Independent—published a lengthy news story about the event. It was 24 paragraphs long, and ran on the front page.

Asian perspectives on disinformation, and other urgent necessities

Notes on disinformation, for a panel discussion on the “Role of Journalists in the Context of Information Disorder and Digital Literacy,” at the Maintaining Credibility and Trust in Journalism collaborative workshop in Bangkok, March 22, 2019:

There is much to be said. Let me just focus on four points. These are not so much direct answers to the main question, about the role of journalists, but rather considerations we need to bear in mind when we attempt to give our answers.

First, it is good to have forums like this. An Asian perspective on disinformation is useful and necessary in several ways. As I have written elsewhere [in a paper that is still being prepared for publication]: “It can highlight the aggressive use of disinformation in the region’s history of colonialism, and … prove that disinformation was a preferred weapon of colonizing forces; it can help correct the America-centric focus of much of the existing literature, by demonstrating a greater variety in the scale and impact of disinformation in different media ecosystems; it can help focus attention on the fatal consequences of ‘fake news.’ Above all, an Asian perspective can help underline the role digital disinformation plays in hastening democratic decay.”

Second, in fighting back against fake news and other forms of disinformation, we do not need to reinvent the wheel. I find the definitions crafted by Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan most useful, “in part because they are the result of a lengthy and rigorous process of research and revision and reasoning, and in part because the definitions make intuitive sense.” Thus:

• “Mis-information is when false information is shared, but no harm is meant.”
• “Dis-information is when false information is knowingly shared to cause harm.”
• “Mal-information is when genuine information is shared to cause harm, often by moving information designed to stay private into the public sphere.”

To these definitions, and if you will allow me, I would like to add my own definition of “fake news.” I realize it’s a contested concept, and some of my own colleagues do not think it is even possible to define something so elusive, and not worth the time. My definition of “fake news” is based on the 3 Ds: “It is a deliberate act of fabrication and manipulation; disguised to look, sound, feel like the news; designed to deceive.” Deliberate, deceptive, disguised as news.

Third, we should be careful about limiting the problem of disinformation to the digital space alone. In many parts of Asia, lies and disinformation still travel the old routes. Allow me to give only one example. I have elsewhere noted that: “The latest We Are Social report, released in January 2019, estimates that some 76 million people in the Philippines are connected to the Internet; that’s a 70-percent internet penetration rate. Impressive, but consider the number who are NOT internet-connected. The estimate is at least 30 million people—that’s equivalent to the total population of New Zealand AND Australia, combined. To focus only on the manipulation of digital and social media in the Philippines is to ignore the impact of other media, especially TV and radio, on a large number of Filipinos.” I think the same can be said for other parts of our region.

Fourth, what should we do when government is the main source of disinformation? In most countries, government media resources dwarf those of privately owned media; in many, government media institutions dominate the media landscape; in some, these different platforms and channels are used to shape an alternative reality. As I have written before: “the democratic ideal is not merely consent by the governed, but rather informed consent. [Disinformation] threatens this ideal by seeding the community of the governed with lies and falsehoods, and because of this diet eventually stunting our growth as moral, reasonable, responsible citizens. Hannah Arendt sounded the alarm half a century ago: ‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is … people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.’

My four points, in sum: We need specifically Asian perspectives on disinformation. We must build a common language to address the problem. We must not limit the problem of disinformation to the digital space alone. And we need to understand that governments can and do benefit greatly from disinformation.

“The Shape of Harm”

“See here, sonny …”

The Philippines Communication Society asked me to speak on “misinformation and media manipulation” at their annual conference yesterday. I highlighted one recent and horrifying example, gave two reasons why we in the Philippines must not limit the scope of the problem of media manipulation to digital and social media only, and suggested three ways of understanding the threat posed by Rodrigo Duterte’s “narcolists.” (I also showed four cartoons, from 1898.)

We meet a mere three days after the horrifying attacks on the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand—the shock has not yet worn off, the depth of human suffering has yet to be fully plumbed.

What seems clear now is that the world has just experienced what we can call an act of perlocutionary terrorism. Borrowing from the philosopher J. L. Austin, a perlocutionary act is classified by the “… consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons …”

Austin was classifying speech acts, or more specifically what he called effects of speech, but I am not the first person to say nor will I be the last one to claim that terrorism is also a statement: It is violence as political or ideological statement.

What makes the attacks in New Zealand even more repulsive is that at least one, the attack on the first mosque, was designed and executed as a made-for-media spectacle. As the Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell tweeted: “The New Zealand massacre was livestreamed on Facebook, announced on 8chan, reposted on YouTube, commentated about on Reddit, and mirrored around the world before the tech companies could even react.”

The violence was meant to have consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of a specific audience scattered across the world: white supremacists, both full-fledged or incipient. It was meant to persuade them, to move them to action. It was, chillingly, meant to inspire imitation. The statement was crafted to be shared and retold. In that sense, it was perlocutionary terrorism.

I hope I will not be misunderstood. When I focus on the aspect of statement, I do not mean to minimize the human suffering inflicted on the Christchurch victims, or to deny the horror of the violence, or to diminish the responsibility, the savagery, of the mass murderers. (The considerations would be the same, if we were to discuss, for instance, the bombing of the Jolo cathedral only last January, which killed 23 persons and wounded 95.)

Stories, Estorya, Counter-History

Remembering in a Time of Forgetting
The 2019 Ramon Reyes Memorial Lectures

Stories, Estorya, Counter-History:
The Moral Thinker and the Crises of Deliberate Forgetting

Ramon Castillo Reyes was one of the greats. I was fortunate, as a philosophy major in the 1980s, to take his courses in the history of philosophy as well as in ethics. I must admit that, like Fr Reilly’s class in epistemology or Fr Green’s on language, Dr Reyes’ classes provoked me into poetry, not philosophy. I remember writing a poem prompted by Dr. Reyes’ impressions of an old folks’ home in Belgium; Father Reilly caused a poem I wrote in his class to be published in America magazine. So when I received the unexpected invitation to celebrate the memory of Dr. Reyes in the company of the peerless Doc Leo Garcia and the brilliant Ron Mendoza, a spasm, perhaps it was a metaphysical unease, seized me.

How can I pay this remarkable teacher and influential philosopher due honor and just tribute?

Rizal’s theory of “intellectual tradition”

Another speech I thought I had already posted here. This one was from December 6, 2012, for that year’s Philippine PEN Congress. I ran excerpts in my column of December 11. 

“Condensados en un libro”
Fr. Vicente Garcia, the Noli, and Rizal’s Theory of ‘Intellectual Tradition’

It is something, when you come to think of it: how many, and how often, priests and friars figure in Rizal’s life and work. The early champions, the first tormentors, the iconic characters, the dedicated enemies, the secret supporters; even, at the end of his life, the eager revisionists.

To discuss one aspect of our session’s theme, of the writer and the Philippine intellectual tradition, I would like to call attention to, or invoke the example of, one of Rizal’s secret supporters: the priest who was among the first to defend the Noli.

I would like to do so because, in Rizal’s extensive correspondence, the letter he wrote the priest seems to me to best sum up his theory of a Philippine intellectual tradition. The basic elements of the general idea weren’t new; they can be found in many of his other letters. But in this particular letter, from the beginning of 1891, we find the most felicitous phrasing of his theory.

First, though, I need to set the context of the correspondence; please bear with me.

ON OCTOBER 6, 1888, writing from Barcelona, Mariano Ponce brought Rizal some needed good news. He told the thrilling tale of “an illustrious fellow countryman, recognized in Manila as a profound theologian and great philosopher,” who had taken a stand against the hated Fr. Jose Rodriguez and parried the Augustinian friar’s attacks on the Noli. (It was well over a year since the first copies of Rizal’s first novel reached the Philippines.)

“ITIGIL ANG SPEKULASYON NG MGA JOURNALISTS TULAD NI JOHN NERI” (sic)

A really late post. I thought I had already posted this speech I read at the annual national conference of the Philippine Association of Communication Educators, held on April 17, 2015 at De La Salle University Dasmariñas; I ran excerpts in my column on April 28, 2015, and then I guess I just forgot. On hindsight, the speech was, among other things, an attempt to understand pre-Duterte (levels of) trolling.

The Quality of Discourse in the New Media Landscape

I want to begin by quoting a comment posted online in response to my column last Tuesday [April 14, 2015]. It is a virtually anonymous comment, and I have mixed feelings about encouraging the practice of cheap, convenient anonymity by referencing it, but this coarseness is now an everyday part of the texture of new media, and you and I have to live with it. So we live and let live, and quote it.

After I argued that it was the PNP’s Special Action Force that should in fact “man up” about its shortcomings in the Mamasapano incident, a commenter using the name caricid wrote:

“Malacañang is very worried and has sent its paid hacks like John Nery to attack the SAF because Malacañang is afraid that SAF will expose the truth regarding PNoy’s issuing the stand down orders that condemned the 44 troopers to their deaths. PNoy and the AFP have involved themselves in this conspiracy to cover up the issuance of the stand down orders. Only the truth will set the spirits of those brave troopers free. Until then, there is no moving on. The likes of Nery and PNoy cannot just make this dastardly crime go away. Justice must be done. Besides, PNoy cannot escape the fact that he gave the green light to this debacle called Mamasapano.”

This is not exactly the kind of insightful response a columnist can’t wait to read over the breakfast table, but I do not know if communication educators like you know just how rampant, how prevalent, this category of response is, in the comment threads.

“The role of the youth in fighting populist authoritarianism”

Detail, from the SocDem Asia website.

I had the privilege of speaking at the closing rites of the second Political Management Training for Young Progressives program, conducted by the Network for Social Democracy in Asia (SocDem Asia), on November 3, 2017. The program—a partnership with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Olaf Palme International Center, and the Australian Labour Party—hosted “young progressives” from six countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines. (Coming in last, I had the chance to reference the remarks of the Thai class valedictorian, the SocDem Asia coordinator Machris, and Aemon of the ALP, who spoke of his party’s ideal, codified in a famous speech as “the light on the hill.”) I tried to present a cogent argument, and ended with a list of five responses we might all learn from Rizal.

I am very happy to be invited to speak at your graduation ceremony—not only because it gave me the opportunity to stand on the beautiful Taal lakeshore for the first time (yes, it really is my first time) and to see the famous Taal volcano this close, but also and more importantly because I believe we are all standing on the slopes of a social volcano, and you are the volcanologists who can study the problem and save the lives of our people at risk.

I read your program of training, and was impressed by its breadth (16 topics!) and by its rigor. It is a privilege for me to meet you, the political advocates and activists gifted, as your class valedictorian Golf said, with “energy, belief, thoughts, dreams,” who will help shape our region’s future.

The world you have chosen to become politically active in is different from the era which politicized me. In some respects, it is the opposite of the 1980s. In other respects, it is the culmination of the historic shifts that started in that decade.

Let me begin in earnest by reading an extended passage from a piece of political analysis.

‘All governments lie’: 15 theses

The Varsitarian covered The Political Science Forum.

I took part in The Political Science Forum at the University of Santo Tomas on February 23, 2018; my jump-off point for discussion was the following set of 15 theses (since slightly edited).

1.All governments lie.

2.They lie out of necessity, to protect state secrets, or to gain an advantage in negotiations. They lie in an attempt to advance the public interest.

3.But they also lie when in a panic, to save face or to defend their principals. They lie to benefit public officials’ private interests.

4.In a democratic setting, there is no place for organized disinformation directed against a government’s own citizens.

5.Governments are not to lie, systematically, to their citizens.

6.Unfortunately, the Duterte government is breaking new ground in this regard.

7.Disinformation is false information intended to deceive.

8.Fake news is Deliberately fabricated information designed to Deceive, Disguised in a news format. The 3Ds.

9.On three critical issues, the Duterte government is either withholding vital information, or intentionally misleading the people.

10.First issue: EJKs. The government refuses to come clean about the casualty toll in the so-called war on drugs.

11.Second issue: The new alliance with China. The government declines to hold China to account.

12.Third issue: The rehabilitation of the Marcoses. The government ignores both history and jurisprudence.

13.The machinery of disinformation includes the agencies in charge of the administration of justice.

14.The machinery has a hands-on leader, the President himself, who is a primary source of disinformation.

15.The machinery of disinformation relies on an outsourced army: DDS social media.

The Varsitarian covered the forum.

Doing journalism in a dangerous time

The real highlight of the first part of the Philippine Journalism Research Conference, held at the main campus of the University of the Philippines, was the McLuhan Fellows Roundtable with Tess Bacalla, Lynda Jumilla, and new Pulitzer prizewinner Manny Mogato; the thoroughly engaging discussion was moderated by Kara David. They struck the true keynote; I merely picked up the tune, and some of their themes. 

It is a privilege to speak at the Philippine Journalism Research Conference, and a pleasure to be back at the University of the Philippines; I was very happy here, when I taught a class in opinion writing for a few semesters. Some of my students became my colleagues at work and in the industry; I hope some of you will become journalists too. Not just from UP, but from the University of Santo Tomas, from Visayas State University, from Southern Luzon State University, from Ateneo de Manila, from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Manila, from Wesleyan University, from De La Salle University in Dasmarinas—and I’m just listing the schools where this year’s finalists are from. We certainly need you and others like you in other schools. We need you, in our newsrooms and in the field, in this turbulent, dangerous time.

I would like to raise three baseline questions today, and the first of these is specific to our time: What does it mean to be a journalist, or to do journalism research, in the Duterte era?

It means fighting back against “fake news” and other forms of disinformation. It means doing journalism at a time of hyped-up hostility against journalists. And it means countering the brazen lies about journalism, press freedom, and free speech that President Duterte and his subordinates propagate. These lies become myths, and are used to justify all manner of suppression of dissent and criticism. We must, all of us, each of us, debunk them.

The Pope and the Protectors

At about 45 minutes long, it was the longest speech I had written—I teased the participants (some 200 nuns, third-order members and other lay persons active in ministry, plus a handful of priests and seminarians) that it was going to be like doing penance, except it would be them doing it. But I was grateful for the chance to reflect at necessary length on Pope Francis’ Message on “fake news”—and on the journalists (“the protectors of the news,” he called them in English) whose special responsibility it is to inform the public. It was my first time at the central house of the Pauline community in Pasay City, but as I told Sister Pinky Barrientos, I felt immediately at home.

[Good afternoon.

You honor me with your invitation. Thank you; I am delighted to be here. I received Sister Pinky’s invitation with a mixture of optimism and a creeping sense of fear—the exact combination of feelings I get when a priest invites me to confession! Only, in this case, and because I prepared a rather lengthy speech, it would not be me, but you in the audience, who would do the penance. My apologies in advance!]

My focus today is on “The Pope and the Protectors of News.” My perspective is that of a believer, in both the purpose of journalism and the faith that gives life purpose, but firstly, principally, my point of view is that of a practitioner—I am a practicing journalist and a practicing Catholic.

“In the real world”

It was my privilege to serve—on February 19, in Dumaguete City—as this year’s keynote speaker at the National Schools Press Conference, the annual and massive enterprise an education official called the “Olympics of campus journalism.” Channeling Rizal, I had a few things to say:

Maayong buntag sa inyong tanan.

Secretary Briones, Governor Degamo, Mayor Remollo; education officials, distinguished guests, teachers and coaches and parents; not least, the 5,000 student delegates to the National Schools Press Conference: Good morning. It is my privilege to join you at the largest annual journalism-related conference in the Philippines, the “Olympics of campus journalism.”

As a journalist who believes in the necessity of journalism, in the role of a free press in a developing democracy, I am happy to see so many young campus journalists here, with the proverbial pen in their hand and idealism in their eyes. As a newspaper and online editor who has had the opportunity to serve as a judge in division-level press conferences, I am—like you—thrilled to finally take part in the national finals.

I had the chance yesterday to tell someone that I was at this year’s National Schools Press Conference. My friend, who is now a lawyer working at the Senate, immediately replied: “Wow I remember back in high school I joined that and made it to editorial writing nationals. Didn’t win though haha. Very good training ground!”

There was no mistaking the enthusiasm in my friend’s voice, or the joy he felt in reliving happy memories of press conferences past. I am moved to say to all of you: Stop. Take a deep breath. Look around you. Remember the details of color and sound and scent. Enjoy the moment. You are making a memory that will last a long time, and for most of you, that memory, win or lose, will be a happy one.

Congratulations!

“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.