LET US Take the Bull by the Horns
We have said it before and we will say it again, there can be no denying that corruption is as serious a problem within the media as it is within government and, let us face it, society in general.
Media, after all, do not exist in a vacuum.
Without passing judgment on anyone, the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s report on media personalities who allegedly benefited from the pork barrel scam according to accounting records purportedly drawn up by whistleblower Benhur Luy comes as no surprise.
All these remain allegations, and those who raised these claims are duty bound to prove, just as those so accused have every right to prove their innocence.
Having said that, just as media should have no sacred cows, neither should the Fourth Estate be spared from scrutiny and criticism.
But it should not end there, whether these allegations are later proven true or false.
It is time that the Philippine media – and we speak not only of those who work in the news but everyone in the industry, including, yes, the managements and owners – recognize the problem and save ourselves and our people from ourselves.
It is bad enough that this plague within our ranks has time and again been used not only to justify but even to trivialize the ultimate censorship – murder – that has claimed the lives of at least 161 of our colleagues since 1986, as President Aquino did when he attempted to explain his administration’s inaction on media killings.
It is bad enough when our audiences, the people we purport to serve and who depend on us for the information they need to make decisions about their personal and collective lives, feel no outrage when one of us is murdered.
What we must fear is the day when the people finally and irrevocably decide that what the PDI reports is, indeed, what we are, when they judge us as having lost all credibility, unworthy of their trust, useful only to while their idle hours with brainless entertainment, a day, alas, that appears to be creeping ever closer to us, no thanks to the quest for profit over service.
But we are also confident that there remain more than enough among us who, despite extreme difficulties and danger, remain true to the tenets of the profession.
We call on all those who believe so to come together.
We need to take a long, hard look on where we are now – not just the problems of ethics and professionalism besetting us but, just as important, the economic and other interests that inform everything from how the industry is structured, the living and working conditions of its workers and, yes, the form in which the “truth” eventually reaches our audiences – and where we should go from here.
There is no other way.
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines
nujphil@gmail.com
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