LIFE would have been simpler had Maria Ressa not lied about the registration papers of Rappler, had she fully and correctly paid her taxes, and practiced the due diligence expected of a journalist to always write balanced and not attack pieces. Had Rappler remained true to the code of ethics for journalists, which lists among its tenets the obligation to seek and publish both sides of any story, and to be skeptical of every narrative and to presume any accused as innocent, it would have been easier to stand by its side and fight for the freedom of the press.
The freedom of the press is a much-valued element of any democracy. But because it is held up high, much is also expected of those who appeal to its force. An adversarial press is a given, for it is a necessary check on the power of the elites and the state. However, in order to ensure that the press becomes a credible bearer of the truth, its objective must be to focus on facts and not for it to peddle its own partisan political biases.
If there should be any master which media entities must serve, it must be truth itself, not the government, and certainly also not the political opposition. A media entity should never be labeled as an opposition newspaper, or a pro-government television network. It would be technically a diminution of the credibility of a media entity for it to be described as a critic of government, simply because the duty of media is to propagate the nonpartisan truth, and not to serve the political opposition, or to act like it. It is supposed to expose the lies not only of government, but also of its critics. It is expected to fact-check not only one side of the political divide, but all sides.
Should media fail to live up to these expectations, then they stop being genuine media entities, but instead become simply influencers and propagandists. They turn their entire platform into one big opinion page, or show.
It is unfortunate that media entities not only here but abroad have taken up a more biased outlook. But in other countries, media’s bias tends to be less partisan but more ideological, with some networks taking up more liberal views while others projecting themselves as more conservative. In the US for example, MSNBC is considered liberal, Fox News projects itself as conservative, while CNN struggles to be somewhere in the middle.
In the Philippines, where political ideologies are amorphous, unarticulated and even nonexistent for many politicians, media bias is denied its ideological rationalization, and is now simply reduced to plain partisanship. This is not to say that there are no individual journalists whose biases are founded on their ideological beliefs, as seen for example in news reporters who still carry their left-wing, anti-Marcos sentiments which they nurtured during their student activism days.
The danger in having a deeply held bias, be it ideological or simply partisan, is that this becomes an impediment to performing the task of looking for facts, interpreting events and telling the truth as it is, unclouded by any personal blinders. It compromises the work which is expected of a journalist. It is no longer just manifested in the spin given to news, the choice of words used to deliver the story, and the way headlines are crafted. It is also now manifested in the body language, facial expression and voice intonation of a reporter doing an on-cam report, or of a studio anchor. This is now aggravated by the blurring of the divide between news and opinion, one that is often committed by radio-hosts who mix up their commentaries with the news they deliver, leading to the appropriation of news and merely appending this to the articulation of partisan opinions.
It would be accurate to say that from among all the media entities in the country, it would be Rappler that has acted, often with audacity, and in some instances with impunity, like a partisan pit bull. And its yellow partisan color is simply too palpable to even hide by any pretension to journalistic integrity. Much as Rappler tries to occasionally produce narratives that appear somewhat out of its partisan line, there is simply an overwhelming array of pieces that it tries to project as news but are nothing but one-sided demolition jobs.
During the term of former President Noynoy Aquino, Rappler acted like a government attack dog during the impeachment of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona. Its pages simply did not accord the beleaguered Chief Justice a fair treatment. And this is nowhere most pronounced than in the now assailed story written by Reynaldo Santos Jr. Consumed with the goal of impugning the integrity of Corona, Ressa did not do her due diligence and failed to uphold the ethical requirement of actively seeking the side of those whom Rappler adversely writes about, like private businessman Wilfredo Keng whom the article painted as a shady businessman involved in criminal activities.
And now that Rappler has been taken to court, Ressa’s defenders paint her as a victim of political harassment. They paint her as if she is now the Joan of Arc of press freedom.
It should not be said that this column does not defend the freedom of the press. It would be hypocritical of me to join the lynching of Ressa by abandoning my freedom to express, considering that the very soul that inhabits my narratives is the force that freedom of expression enables.
Ressa cries that the libel case filed against her, Santos and Rappler is an attack on press freedom.
On the contrary, it was Rappler, Santos and Ressa who launched an attack on press freedom. They allowed their gross partisanship to violate the code ethics for journalists when they irresponsibly published an overtly biased piece.
https://www.manilatimes.net/rapplers-attack-on-press-freedom/513880/
https://www.manilatimes.net/rapplers-attack-on-press-freedom/513880/
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