In Medias Res Archives | Page 6 of 9

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

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,...

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...

Internet perils

RELYING for information on Twitter, Facebook, other social media networks, blogs, or the Internet in general can be perilous for journalists, and therefore, for the public they’re supposed to serve. The information can turn out to be biased, incomplete, distorted, or totally false.

Enough

ONE COULD argue that whatever happens to Kris Aquino matters. Not only is she the daughter of Ninoy and Cory Aquino; she is also one of the sisters of the current President of the Philippines, and one of the highest paid and most well known TV and movie personalities...

Part of the solution

SPECULATING ON the reasons for a suicide and attributing it to a single cause is a common and misleading habit of the media. The media also tend to make it seem as if killing one’s self vindicates the suicide, which is not only wrong, but also dangerous.

Habemus Papam! The Papal Conclave in the Age of Media

I GUESS it was bound to happen. We have witnessed what the news can do with a religious and spiritual event. Sure, the papacy has global political impact, but that would be missing the point of the conclave.

Coalitions wanted

Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, have been recognized in the laws of many states as expressions of the right to association, but have also come about because of the political and other deficiencies in society.

The continuing past (Updated)

AT A lecture I gave recently to journalism students, the discussion, until now focused on the principles of news writing, was detoured by someone in the audience toward a grammatical subject – tense sequence. It is not a subject off too far, really. After all, news writing is storytelling,...