In Medias Res Archives | Page 19 of 26

My unsung collaborator (“My private collaborator” Updated)

RESTING ON stands beside my writing table are two guitars, a regular-sized, steel-stringed acoustic and a smaller, nylon-stringed, acoustic-electric. A third guitar—"the baby," "the junior," "the little one," as I lovingly call it—has been taken away for rehabilitation by my son, Paolo; being the smallest, it is the handiest,...

On top of the weather

Philippine broadcast media does its best during natural calamities. It may be because our fragile ecosystem gives them so much practice. Media workers do not get the work holiday that eases the trial of storms, and like everyone else assigned to emergency services, they have to be on duty when...

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...

The power of injustice

SEEMINGLY AT work today across the professions is a closing of ranks so self-aggrandizing it perverts the nobler sense of fraternity. If it appears most marked among lawyers and judges, it’s only because circumstances have put them on the spot, circumstances of which three have been the most provocative

What is at stake?

Editorial enforcement of checks and restrictions must oversee these movements between and among powerful institutions and the press. Otherwise, further “blurring of the lines” between the press and other influentials may weaken even more the already fragile credibility of the institution that is assigned its specific and critical role...

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...

The president and the news media

IN APRIL President Benigno Aquino III addressed the annual general assembly of the Philippine Press Institute (ppi), our organization of newspapers, and ruffled plumes among our proud members as well as among our fellows in the other news media when he took us all to task, which, come to...

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...

The challenge of transition

BUSINESSWORLD MARKS its 25th year today with its founder, Raul L. Locsin, hovering about in his ghostly constitution. I definitely sense it and feel deservingly visited; after all, I consented to step into this pair of extra-large publisher’s shoes he had left and have worn them into this moment...

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...