Vergel O. Santos Archives | Page 3 of 6

We will not surrender our freedoms

Today, 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.

Covering the Pandemic

Covering the CoViD-19 Pandemic

Drawings as theater

AS A boy I read everything I could get my hands on, fish wrap included. But, truth to tell, I found home reading either unexciting (the daily Times or Chronicle) or strenuous (the weekly Free Press). Anyway, I read it all, as I did all else available, partly out...

Redefining journalism

IT HAS not occurred to me to look at certain changes in my trade as closely as I do now. It’s probably because the changes have been made arbitrarily and little affect my own medium—print. For now, at any rate, I wish to deal with a wide-ranging point raised with...

Sanctioning media

The sensitive subject of sanctions against the media has been raised with me through questions that, not unlike in a school exam, calls for straight answers. The questions have come in fact from journalism students, provoked by an actual case—that involving the brothers Tulfo, practitioners all, who closed ranks...

Journalism misgivings

THE NEWS profession used to be a fairly clear path. Since I began walking it nearly a half-century ago, it didn’t pose any problems I could not sort out for myself. Now it’s no longer such an easy walk; it has become so laid with traps one can no...

An outrageous dream (Updated)

THE FIRST image inspired by the government’s plan for its television network is one that indulges the miracle of soaring, yet wingless, ambition. In particular, the inspiration comes from the idealization of PTV (People's Television Network, Inc.) as a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. tells the...

A plague of plagiarism

LAYING ITSELF open to thievery being so temptingly and readily accessible, the Internet must have by now fostered a plague of plagiarism. If not enough cases have come to light to support any claim to such a scale, I imagine it’s only because little watching, let alone policing, is...

‘Everything is eventual’

I NEVER met Jesse Robredo. But from what I’ve known about him—from his pronouncements, from the news, and now from the testimonials given upon his death—I feel I’ve known him enough to feel a desperate sense of loss myself. In particular I feel gratified by his relentless crusade against...

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,...

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

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...