In Medias Res Archives | Page 24 of 26

Freedom of expression and media freedom

The two are not quite the same thing. THE NEWS about the telephone-hacking scandal involving The News of the World broke out in July 2011. Extensive coverage tracked the investigation and hearings and the impact on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. But the story has died as news.

The best of all worlds

A RECENTLY released collection of essays by political science professors Felipe B. Miranda and Malaya C. Ronas of the University of the Philippines, Temario C. Rivera of the International Christian University, Tokyo, and Ronald Holmes of De la Salle University, contests the “conventional wisdom” that...

Philosophy before law, idealism before justice

INDEED, BEFORE there ought to be a law, or any sense of justice, there ought to have been, first, philosophy and idealism, the essential standards. Alas, there’s only the law of libel, which, thus unprecedented, has actually got in the way of justice, working lopsidedly in favor of people...

News media without journalism?

Holy Week in this country declares a brief holiday from newspapers. Anticipating lower sales in both circulation and advertising, most newspapers will not have copies on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Some will resume only on Easter Sunday. I don’t quite know how this is justified in the business...

The human thing

AMONG OTHER collateral consequences, the Corona impeachment trial has revived attempts, in the past usually from government agencies, to summon journalists who have been reporting on public events to testify in court or during congressional hearings on the assumption that they have undisclosed, secret information that could help trials...

Libel: Beyond decriminalization

WHEN I began as a newsman I was only 17, with scarcely a year of college and an immediate prospect yet of altogether dropping out, a prospect actually decided by my landing the job, which inspired in me the exciting, if naive, notion that, if college was intended to...

TV and Entertainment

THE SMALL and delightful movie, Morning Glory (2010), breezed through Manila without much fanfare and review. Chock-full of lessons on the place of news and entertainment in television, its plot projects the force of entertainment on news and the special place of morning programs in American television. Designed to...

Hyphenated

THERE IS no hyphen in “Filipino American.” It’s not solely a matter of punctuation but also of ideology. The majority-sanctioned assumption in the United States (US) is that everyone regardless of origin who’s permanently resident in or a citizen of that country is an American.

Renato and Miriam, a most awaited act

THIS TIME she did not go solo, as is her regular act; she had a quartet to back her up, piping choo-choo-wah and, even with just that, managing to contribute a worthy measure of dissonance to her grating, out-of-tune style.

The metrics of press freedom

IS IT possible to measure press freedom? I had asked the question in the early eighties when some publishers ventured to give critics some space to report and comment on sensitive political issues while Mr. (Ferdinand) Marcos was still in power. The threat of some government agency inviting one for...