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Tuesday, April 18, 2017

On 'Manufactured Noise', anti-Duterte media bias makes financial sense


A former PR operator who now likes to be called a veteran journalist, Miss Manufactured Noise (not her real name) went to a university and asked her barely adult audience whether they've heard about certain popular Facebook pages or not. After hearing less than half of them raised their hands, she then went on to conclude that all the buzz generated by these Facebook pages were just, as she calls it, "manufactured noise".

As an owner of a Facebook Page with considerable following, I saw her observation as less of a critique of people like me and more of a psychological projection, if not a desperate cry for attention. Because Miss MN, who accuses us of "manufactured noise", admitted to having a long history of manufacturing noise herself.

Bubby Dacer
Several weeks ago, I published a post with a line that reads:

Miss 'Veteran Journalist', natatandaan mo pa ba si 'Bubby Dacer'?

In response, Miss Mainstream Journalist wrote an incommensurately lengthy post to explain to the public how she turned down several major deals while she was still working for Dacer, saying there are lines she wouldn't cross.

Miss Mainstream Journalist was the former right hand person of slain Public Relations (PR) consultant Bubby Dacer, who was known as one of the most influential spin doctors in the 1990s. He allegedly handled Public Relations (PR) work for powerful politicians and ultra-rich businessmen… until he suddenly disappeared and was later found dead in 2001.

I was still a teenager when Dacer died, and I never realy understood why there was so much coverage about him afterwards. Back then, I didn't understand why there's so much interest on this fellow. Truth be told, the resolution of his case has been, for the longest time, the concern of a tiny subset of the sociopolitical elite.

That is, until today.

Disclaimer
From this point, I am forced to hide the identity of all my first-hand sources. The local PR establishment is relatively small and people know each other. Given the amount of money that changes hands regularly, mentioning their names can almost surely get them in major trouble, if not killed.

Moreover, note that this is not some demolition job against Miss Manufactured Noise. If her website's negligible monthly traffic is an indicator, she's already past her "journalistic" heydays. There's no need to demolish her career: it's more convenient for me to just let it die a natural death.

However, I felt that her story is relevant to help explain what's going on in the government today. In short, I will use her story as my Exhibit "A".

If you're a TP reader who only reads TP articles that are replete with citations, then this is not the article for you. I promise that the next one will be. But for this one, I can't.

The Seedy PR World
Miss MN's de facto reply to my March 21 post consisted of a list of projects that she supposedly turned down, essentially claiming that she still has some sort of moral fiber in her. Her defensiveness, however, is indicative of one basic fact: that PR work is dirty, that PR work isn't something that one can't openly brag about.

Last week, a veteran journalist told me that he found it surprising that mainstream accepted Miss Mainstream Journalist despite her PR past, as hardcore journos typically maintain a condescending attitude towards PR-people-turned-journalists. However, the same person said this is probably because she allegedly had many mainstream journalists on her payroll in the past, so that kind of attitude didn't apply to her.

But what, exactly is PR?...

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