What the public wants
DID the broadcast media have to keep airing the video of the May 6 scuffle at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport between Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Ramon Tulfo and the group of actors Claudine Barretto and her husband Raymart Santiago, and to conduct interminable interviews with each side? And did the Inquirer really have to make its version of the incident its Monday (May 7) issue front page lead story?
Granted that under the conventional news value of “prominence” the incident, because it involved two actors and a media practitioner of some fame if not notoriety, deserved at least passing mention in the news programs, news sites, and newspapers. But after having told us what supposedly happened, and having followed that up with the information that both parties are filing charges against each other, shouldn’t that have been enough?
Apparently not, if we’re to judge from the major networks,’ the Inquirer’s, and the tabloids’ insistence on regaling us with the Tulfo and Barretto/Santiago versions of the incident, despite the fact that doing so doesn’t contribute one whit to establishing who really started the incident by throwing the first punch. There’s the additional fact that most of us don’t really care who did, and who would let them settle the entire thing between themselves whether in or out of the courts, it being an incident of no public consequence.
However, regardless of who started it and who’s to blame, the incident does call attention to a media subculture in which some journalists and actors, especially those past their prime, strut around this country as if they owned it and it owed them. The last movie an actor made may have been a decade ago, and a journalist’s last great contribution to journalism may have been an article on the latest dog-show opening, but neither has been known to stop either from acting like God’s gift to filmdom and the press.
Ramon Tulfo isn’t exactly the Filipino reincarnation of the tough correspondent with a heart of gold that’s the staple of American detective novels, and no model of media modesty and restraint in his work. Tulfo’s bodyguards, who were thankfully not with him during the incident, have also been known to elbow their way through crowds, as if they were parting the Red Sea for Moses himself rather than a columnist. On the other hand, Barretto’s no exemplar of either, and could be representative of those actresses who infest filmdom in this country whose physical beauty is often marred by the foulness of their language and their assumption that their having appeared in a couple of movies makes them special.
Indeed one can believe, and the airport employees of Cebu Pacific airlines did attest to it, that Barretto’s voice’s decibel levels and choice of words may have been enough to call Tulfo’s attention for him to video her in action. Being photographed, videoed and filmed are among the risks public figures have to accept when they’re in public places such as an airport. Tulfo needed no permission to record the incident.
But exactly for what purpose was Tulfo taking a video of the incident anyway? While it could be charitably argued that he was doing so on the supposition that he might find some use for it at some point, one hopes that he won’t be turning it over to his brothers who host their own TV programs, from where his video can add to the footage the networks have already been mercilessly inflicting on their audiences.
The perennial network argument to support the practice of reporting celebrity antics is that trivia rate; they’re what the public wants. It’s true—but only up to a point. Audience interest eventually wears off and not only gives way to boredom, but also returns to what studies have established is the hunger, habitually unfilled by the media, for real information—meaning information relevant to such concerns as rising prices and why they happen, for example, or, for that matter, the implications on their lives of the possible conviction of Renato Corona.
Which leads us back to our earlier, bottom-line question: was it really necessary to devote so much airtime and space to the incident? And on the very same day too as the resumption of the Corona impeachment trial—and, among other events that do matter, the reactions to President Benigno Aquino III’s claim that he has ended corruption, the Armed Forces’ response to charges that AFP officers and men tortured the Morong 43, and the Commission on Elections’ announcement that it is weeding out the bogus from its list of authentic party-list groups.
I am not siding one way or another, but I am concerned about how this recent altercation demonstrates the sorry state of our society.
Can people please stop glorifying the Tulfos?
There are 2 truths in our country:
People do not go against politicians for fear of reprisal.
People do not go against the Tulfos for fear of reprisal.
Filipinos despise politicians’ abuse of power, yet dignify and joke about the Tulfo™ brand of vigilantism. Something’s definitely wrong there.
Not to mention the Tulfos’ hand in being part of the news rather than just reporting it. A Tulfo’s complicit involvement in the Quirino Grandstand tragedy immediately comes to mind.