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 in the Philippines.
What happens to Francis “Chiz” Escudero is of even more public interest. He’s a senator of the Republic, and what he’s really like not only has a bearing on his capacity to discharge the duties of that office; it is even more crucial to how he’ll run the country if and when he becomes President, it being widely known that he might run for that elective post, most probably in 2016, when he could be the Liberal Party choice for standard bearer.
The conventions of journalism support the media decision to report on the state of their respective love lives—at least where those conventions mandate that prominence makes news, as in Ms. Aquino’s case, and the news values of significance and prominence in Mr. Escudero’s.
Because Ms. Aquino is neither an elected nor appointed official of her brother’s government, her personal life is of limited public significance, and the only justification for the media’s intruding into her privacy—which, to be fair to the media, Ms. Aquino seems to have encouraged—is the morbid interest to which the public has been accustomed when it comes to celebrity trivia and gossip.
On the other hand, although the media have been more interested in his actress girlfriend, Mr. Escudero’s behavior and character does have a public significance beyond that kind of interest. How he has conducted himself with his girlfriend, how he has related to her family and behaved in their presence, could speak volumes on how he would continue to discharge his duties as senator if reelected this May, and, if ever it does happen, as President come 2016.
Indeed, the private lives of public figures, especially public officials, are seldom irrelevant to the issues of governance and other public concerns, as this country should have learned in 1992-1998, when the private lives of two Presidents of the Republic raised a number of questions on how well they were running the country.
His relationship with a socialite whose influence in government seemed too pervasive for someone who had neither been elected nor appointed to any office made Fidel Ramos’ judgment fair game to criticism. Joseph Estrada campaigned for the Presidency without his private life—his mistresses and households, his nocturnal habits and favorite company—being hardly reported. He was elected with a huge electoral mandate, only to be forced out of office when it became obvious that the demands of his private life had become major liabilities in his capacity to perform his Presidential responsibilities.
But it was the commercial interests of the media—the need to drive TV ratings up and to sell more newspaper copies for the sake of advertising revenues—rather than the conventions of journalism that were more than evident in the media focus on both Ms. Aquino and Mr. Escudero. How else explain the endless interviews with and reports on Ms. Aquino and her estranged husband, and on Escudero and his current girlfriend? How else explain why the media including some of the broadsheets have been milking both stories dry for days on end?
The people of this country have had to live with both the good and the bad in the country’s media system. They have been exceedingly patient with the bad, which has mostly been the consequence of ownership of the media by groups and organizations with business and/or political interests to protect and advance.
Of interest, however, are the reports on the failure of the focus on Ms. Aquino and Mr. Escudero to generate the high ratings the networks almost always assume reflect public interest in trivia and gossip. Despite its potential for enlightening the public on what is, in the case of Mr. Escudero, a matter of public interest, the public can only bear so much, and the media should be able to judge when the private lives of public figures have been more than adequately reported, commented on, probed, photographed, and video’ed to the point of nausea. What’s emerging even from a commercial standpoint is that the public has had enough, and that it’s time to give Ms. Aquino and Mr. Escudero and everyone else involved a rest.
This is the problem with stories in social media age. What is actually a single story is chopped into each juicy tidbit and served as news.
During my days as a beat rookie I would not have dared submit barebones stories like the ones appearing constantly about Kris Aquino and Heart Evangelista since Monday last week. I know, because my editors would have crumpled my copies and hurled them back at me with a matching scream to get the hell out of the editorial room.
And during my time as an editor, I punished my writers who submit separate copies for what is otherwise one single story by carefully sewing back the details in the copies together, thus drastically lowering the word count which is the basis for their fees.
Now, I don’t know what happened to this harsh rule.
This social media journalism is making me sick.
It is the high time that the government must act, with 5 billion peso budget for transformation and innovating the PTV 4. I’m sick and tired of the KRIS AQUINO issue in her love life also in CHIZ ESCUDERO.