Columnists, Partisans and Conflicts of Interest
But even if they turned out to be accurate, taking a leave of absence from one’s writing if he or she is part of the campaign machinery of a candidate or candidates—and that includes being an unpaid volunteer– remains an ethical imperative. Even more obviously does a politician’s being the campaign manager of a candidate, as Ernesto Maceda was, disqualify him from putting down a rival through a column, which, as a politician, he shouldn’t even be writing in the first place
Election campaigns are virtual orgies of partisanship. To further their aims, various groups and personalities will use whatever means are available to present their candidate in a good light and to demonize his or her opponents. For Banayo, there’s nothing wrong with resorting to the latter, as long as the claims are true. In Sandra Aguinaldo’s I Witness documentary on what constitutes black propaganda (GMA-7, May 4), Banayo said: “Dapat na ilabas ang katotohanan (Truth must be revealed), regardless of who gets hurt.”
True enough. And it is equally true that just like everyone else in a free society, the columnists have the right to express themselves and are in fact so mandated by their media organizations and the public. It’s not so much partisanship, in the sense of passionate commitment to a candidate or a party, but conflict of interest that becomes an issue when a columnist becomes part of the campaign staff of his preferred candidate—or worse, is at the same time a politician.
Questions over which methods or approaches are appropriate in furthering the interests of one’s candidates and undermining those of his rivals would not even arise if columnists, editorial writers and other commentators who’re campaigning for a candidate, whether as volunteers or as paid members of the campaign staff, took leaves of absence during the campaign period rather than continuing to write without even a by-your-leave to the unwary public.
[…] Columnists, Partisans, and Conflicts of Interest by Luis V. Teodoro with research by Rupert Francis Mangilit and John Reiner Antiquerra […]
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