Business as Usual: Media Publicize Undeserving Candidates

By Luis V. Teodoro

Media at the Comelec headquarters in Intramuros, Manila, covering the filing of certificates of candidacy for the 2019 midterm elections. Photo by Lito Ocampo.

THE SIGNS are already there. It’s still business as usual for the media, and it doesn’t augur well for the outcome of the May 2019 elections.

That exercise is crucial for two reasons.  Assuming that it will be fair, honest and fraud-free, and that President Rodrigo Duterte will not impose nation-wide martial law between now and May, it will be a referendum on the Duterte regime.  Whom they elect to Congress and other public posts  will be interpreted as indicative of the true sentiments of the people on the many issues — the extrajudicial killings, the human rights violations,  inflation, corruption in government, China’s occupation of the West Philippine Sea, among others — generated by what it has been doing over the last three years since it came to power in 2016.

But the same results will also determine whether the regime march to despotism will be completed through the total control of its allies and henchmen of both houses of Congress, in the context of its dominance over the Supreme Court, the Office of the Ombudsman and other government institutions and agencies — or whether the election of a sizeable number of oppositionists, whether from the Right, Left or Center, will be enough to frustrate that goal.

As in every election in this country, the old media of print and broadcasting,  especially television and radio,  will play a major role in deciding either outcome. The new media, as they’re most obviously manifest in the social media networks, will also play an equally important part, given the access to the Internet of even the poorest sectors of the Philippine electorate.  With its extensive reach, radio will be as major a player as television, which, every public opinion survey has found, is the medium most credible to Filipinos.

The power of the media to keep them in the public eye and mind, and to provide  them the name recall that in this country decides who among a slew of candidates for this or that office the electorate will vote for, is widely recognized by the country’s politicians, their  strategists, and the public relations professionals in their employ.  In addition to the usual campaign sorties in various communities,  their awareness of media power makes every campaign period a scramble for media attention.

As early as the days prior to the filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) from October 11 to 17, however, the media had already revealed that they needed no encouragement or prodding, and instead demonstrated their readiness to provide the exposure to the mass audience politicians of various types crave.

That readiness was evident not only in their cranking out report after report on those who had announced their resignations from government, and that they were aspiring for various posts. It was equally obvious in their interviews with even the most obviously unqualified — with the purveyors of false information, the plainly unprincipled, those under indictment for such offenses as plunder, as well as those who have no visible program of government to offer, but whose notoriety, fame, or celebrity make them, in the media’s eyes, “news material.”

The latter is an assumption based on some practitioners’ apparent ignorance of the fact that among the powers of the media is precisely their capacity to endow anyone and anything with status and legitimacy. By taking the announced candidacies of this or that individual seriously simply because they’re “prominent” or notorious for whatever reason, they immediately make it appear that these are among those the electorate should be choosing from come election day even if they’re obviously incompetent, dishonest and intellectually-challenged.

The media have also played this early into the dynastic game by reporting on the contention for the same posts between the same members of such political families as the Estradas, the Binays and the Dys on the argument that these rivalries are news, without, however, providing readers, viewers and listeners with what these seeming conflicts mean.  Missing in the media focus is their being indicators of the reality that electoral contests are almost solely between dynasties, and that by fielding for the same posts the same members of the same family, the so-called political parties are actually limiting the electorate’s choices to individuals with the same interests to advance and protect.

All are occurring in the context of one of the most critical times in the country’s recent history, in which the results of the May 2019 elections are likely to contribute to what governance will be like for the next three years and even beyond.  It is a reality much of the media is either unfamiliar with or has chosen to ignore, the consequence being, despite these unusual times, business as usual– the continuation and even enhancement of the practice of reporting what this or that prominent, celebrity, or notorious source said with neither discernment nor analysis.

The practice leads to the media’s being used to further the undemocratic aims of the liars, the crooks and the other scoundrels that infest the Philippine body politic. As powerful as they are, the media need to take great care in their reporting in these urgent times not only to prevent their being manipulated, but also for the sake of a better informed public and what little remains of Philippine elite democracy.