The best of all worlds

The Philippines according to the mainstream media

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 the Philippines is a democracy.

Published by the Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations Development Programme, Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy cites as proof of the fallacy of that platitude the violence, fraud and coercion that characterize Philippine elections; the dominance of a handful of families over the political system and the resulting exclusion of the majority from political office;  the virtually unchecked power of the Presidency which in practice makes the  separation of powers and the system of checks and balances more honored in the breach than the observance;  the virtual absence of public accountability by government officials;  the failure of civil society, despite EDSA 1, to  exert enough pressure on government to correct these perversions in what passes for democratic rule—and, one might add,  to check  the egregious abuse of power and the continuing violations of human rights by an unreformed military.

For all its scholarship, however, Chasing the Wind hardly mentions the media, to which it devotes only two pages, and only in passing. It does declare that the political education of the citizenry is mainly the responsibility of the media (although it mistakenly separates social networking sites, websites and blogs—what are collectively known as new media—from the rest of the media). But it glosses over what journalists would like to believe is the indispensable role the media can play in democratizing Philippine society.

The reason for the oversight—if oversight it indeed is—is understandable enough. The media, or to be more precise, the mainstream media, have hardly made a difference in the democratization process despite the high hopes the alternative and non-corporate media generated during the   anti-martial law resistance.

Indeed the key phrase is “can play,” which accurately describes the media’s potential rather than actual role in Philippine society, and in the putative democracy in place in these isles. Despite the obvious enough need for an informed citizenry in a democracy or would-be democracy, the media have not realized their potential of providing the information and analysis that could enable the citizenry to arrive at some understanding of the country’s problems and their possible solutions rather than repeating and reinforcing the most common clichés about the country and its state.

On the contrary: the media are among the main sources of the “conventional wisdom” that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Philippines is a democracy.  Instead  of encouraging the rigorous examination of what’s happening to the country, beginning with the political system, the use of power being central to the democratic issue,  the  media mainstream—the dominant networks and broadsheets  owned and controlled by corporate and political interests as well as their online sites—has fostered a culture of denial as far as the country’s problems are concerned,  in effect declaring this the best of all possible Filipino worlds, except for occasional, easily correctable lapses.

The Marcos tyranny, for example, has been almost flippantly dismissed as an aberration rather than the logical consequence of a corrupt political system dominated by political dynasties with no loyalty to country or people, many of the members of which have bought homes in the United States and keep their green cards handy while funneling their ill-gotten wealth into bank accounts and investments abroad. This is the very same political system that remains in place despite the martial law experience and which as a consequence makes reform impossible and continues to expose the country to the danger of authoritarian rule.

There is no shortage of media exposes on officials purchasing not one but several  homes in the US; on textbook scams in one agency, or kick-backed infrastructure projects in another; on officials who pay hardly any taxes; or on falsified Statements of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth. But there is no attempt in the mainstream press and media to look into the causes of these and other persistent perversions of democratic rule.

The primary reason is the ownership and control over the mainstream media by corporate and political interests, the supposed pluralism of which results in the illusion that there’s a free market of ideas in the media, whereas the reality is that the range of choices in that so-called “free market” is severely limited in terms of the bottomline media commitment for the status quo.

The Philippine media are failing. They’re not failing to provide information on this or that scandal, or analysis of what’s happening in the impeachment trial. They are failing in a fundamental sense. They’re both unable and unwilling to contribute to the democratic imperative of developing among the citizenry the capacity to understand the fundamental sources of the inability of Philippine society to achieve the democratization of power, wealth and opportunity promised by EDSA 1— and much, much earlier, by the Revolution of 1896.