In Medias Res Archives | Page 11 of 26

Rocky road

IN WHAT could be an attempt to preempt a Supreme Court decision on the unconstitutionality of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (RA 10175), the Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it is recommending the removal of the provision on online libel in the Act. The DOJ, said...

More on 2013 Elections

I think we have done it again, making bad out of something good. Automated elections were hailed the first time around, as the speed with which winners were proclaimed made everyone wonder why it took us so long to turn to our system to machines. For sure, there were grave doubts...

A national fantasy

"POLITICAL MATURITY" is one of our great national hang-ups. We like wearing it for the same reason that a child given to fantasies of adulthood likes wearing Mom’s large, high-heeled shoes. The whole psychology may have developed from the one event in our recent history in which we shone, as...

Facebook Face-off

IT’S BEGINNING to look like a stretch, but assuming the integrity of the May 2013 mid-term exercise—meaning the votes cast were accurately counted by the Comelec’s problematic PCOS machines and transmitted—the efforts of individual Netizens as well as groups to influence the outcome seems to have come to naught....

Automation 2013: A Post-Mortem

I went early on May 13 to cast my vote. The precinct was in much better state than what we found in 2010. It seemed as though the different teams, the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs), the volunteers, and barangay officials had worked on a better system of time...

“Making” democracy

THE CLAIM that free expression is not absolute falls regularly from the lips of people who’re basically hostile to it, among them certain members of the 15th Congress who were prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles their allegiance to free expression, access to information and press freedom,...

The hijacking of press freedom

THANKS TO technology, press freedom is looking less and less like anything it’s been intended. Indeed, press freedom has been hijacked, to the extent that it now belongs more to non-journalists than to the professionals in whose suitably trained hands it is meant to rest, so that its responsible exercise...

Press and online freedom (Updated)

In observing World Press Freedom Day 2013, we must include in our discussion the need to protect Internet freedom and its enrichment of human communication. I may not be its most savvy user but I hail this technological revolution breaking down the hierarchical culture of the newsroom as the traditional...

Politicians and journalists

THIS YEAR marks the 20th year since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared May 3 World Press Freedom Day. May 3 continues to resonate with irony in the Philippines, where, since 1986, or seven years before the declaration, the killing of journalists and media workers...

Real time coverage

For the rest of the world, CNN has become the first "go-to" source for news of crisis in the US. The Boston Marathon had been news even before the bombing, an iconic event that draws unfailing global interest. The run is among the oldest of the kind and the...