Unnecessary depiction of violence

JEERS TO media reports of 24 Oras, State of the Nation with Jessica Soho (SONA), CNNPhilippines.com and Rappler for the use of unfiltered videos in their coverage of the latest hazing scandal to rock the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).

The case of Cadet 4th Class Darwin Dormitorio, who died due to injuries he sustained from hazing, was reported in mid-September and promptly provoked public condemnation and the threat of a congressional inquiry into the incident.

On October 22, GMA-7’s 24 Oras aired a report about two hazing incidents, showing video clips of PMA cadets physically abusing “plebos.” The reporter, Marisol Abdurahman, said that the footage was provided by a source who was not named and cited PMA’s confirmation of the identity of the cadets.  While there was some effort to blur the faces, some were clearly identifiable. But there was no attempt to blur the extent of the brutality. The footage showed the cruelty of the practice, including repeated bodily assaults on four victims who were hit on the head, hands, buttocks and abdomen, the brutality of which has no place in a general news program. GMA News TV’s SONA used the same videos in the same way on the same day, and the two newscasts reused the same footage on their follow-up report the next day.

On October 23, online news sites CNNPhilippines.com and Rappler both included in their reports the unfiltered version of the video, showing graphic violence. Rappler’s upload of the video concealed all the faces while CNNPhilippines.com’s did not.

The problem of hazing is not limited only to the PMA. The offensive practice has plagued the fraternities in other colleges and universities. The videos which were shot in 2017 and 2018 illustrate the pervasiveness of the problem. But their use should have involved filters to protect privacy as well as to avoid the gratuitous display of violence.

Hazing deserves to be reported with the facts not just of the incidents but as a pattern that taints the culture of learning. That it seems to have become an accepted tradition for those entrusted with law enforcement should be discussed in the media. But it is important that the media report such matters without necessarily showing violence in a manner that may distract from the substantive points of the reports, leading to desensitization and even copycat conduct of young viewers.