We will not surrender our freedomsToday, Independence Day, we renew our pledge to serve the people, to continue speaking truth to power, and to guard and defend freedom of the press and of expression from all threats.Read More Covering the PandemicRead more Covering the CoViD-19 Pandemic Cruel month April is the cruelest month. —TS Eliot SEPTEMBER’S THE first of those months of the year that end in "ber" (September, October, November, December)—its onset signaling, so local wags say, the beginning of the Philippine Christmas season. Sure enough, your favorite mall usually makes it a point to pipe "Rudolph the... Time enough THE PHILIPPINES now has its first woman Chief Justice in the person of Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. It’s a precedent- setting appointment, but wasn’t really all that surprising in the Philippine context. Until she was disqualified because of the disbarment case against her before the Integrated Bar of the... The persistence of impunity STATE RESPONSIBILITY was writ large in the Ampatuan Massacre when it occurred in 2009. Not only were the immediate suspects members of the ruling dynasty in Maguindanao. They had also prospered because they were the reliable allies of the Arroyo administration, the fingerprints of which were all over the... Post-disaster media event THE MEDIA have not tired of declaring, in the aftermath of any disaster, that adversity brings out the best in the Filipino. Like all generalizations it is only partly true: Disasters like floods and earthquakes also bring out the worst in people. Despite price controls, the usual anti-social tradesmen... License to kill INTRODUCED IN the House of Representatives by Congressmen Angelo B. Palmones of AGHAM Party list and Lord Allan Jay Velasco of the lone district of Marinduque, House Bill 6391 declares in its Section 1 that Title 13, Crimes Against Honor—libel, of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) , RA 3815... Fear of FOI In some countries including the Philippines, officials apparently fear freedom of information (FOI) because they think it an instrument their rivals and competitors as well as the mass media can use to harass them. There are also speculations that once a Freedom of Information Act is passed, government agencies... Divide by two LANGUAGE DIVIDES the media audience as it does Philippine society: the broadsheets have always been in English while the tabloids have always been in Filipino. To class A and B are the broadsheets addressed, while the tabloids have for presumed readers the C, D, and E segments. But beyond... Owners and practitioners Government control of media organizations in many countries is most often expressed through censorship. But self-censorship equally imperils accurate reporting of politics and governance even in those countries such as the Philippines, where, officially at least, there is no censorship supposedly because the media are mostly privately-owned. Private ownership... Journalism and advocacy 101 Most journalists would argue that there is no room for advocacy in journalism. But no journalist can claim without lying that he/she is unconcerned with the issues that confront his/her community, whether it be the world, his/her country, or the municipality of his/her birth and/or residence. His/her concern—or at... Police problem THE PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) claims it can’t arrest the remaining 97 accused in the Ampatuan Massacre of November 23, 2009 who’re still at large, 196 being the number of the accused in that atrocity, of which only 99 are in custody. (Only 72 had been arraigned as... « Previous1…89101112Next »
