Like it or not, the truth shall prevail!

An article from "Inside Cebu" by Bobit Avila taken from The Philippine Star newspaper.

Have a good read!

INSIDE CEBU By Bobit S. Avila
The Philippine Star 07/05/2006

There we go again… media is always blamed for all the bad news about the Philippines. This time this accusation comes from Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila who supposedly was getting complaints from foreign investors that local dailies report a lot of bad news, while others complained about the bureaucratic red tape in dealing with government offices and that these reports were giving the country a bad image. Perhaps it is time to call a spade a spade… should the people reporting these ugly things be blamed for spreading the bad news?

Come now… what does Secretary Favila want us to do, have the foreign news services report these ugly things in their newspapers and make us in the local media look incompetent? Perhaps this question ought to be asked… since when was reporting the truth wrong? If you didn’t notice, the masthead of The Philippine STAR says it all…"Truth shall prevail." Maybe we should rephrase this question into… why are we scared of telling the truth?

The bottom line is, we have a very sick country and if we paint a rosy picture of our country, which is far from the truth, it would only worsen the situation because whether you like it or not the truth will surface. If you have forgotten, we live in different times. With the Internet and bloggers watching us… like it or not, you can bet that the real truth will surface!

So our message to Mr. Favila is… fix the problems in this country and the media will report the good news… that things have turned around in the government… after all, the truth of the matter is, all the bad image that we report about the Philippines comes from the government. The rest of the Philippines is actually not doing badly! * * *
I was writing this column last Monday evening and watching the ABS-CBN’s The World Tonight on ANC with Angelo Castro and Tina Muñoz Palma when they revealed that exclusive video footage, albeit an embarrassing one, of Gen. Danny Lim announcing his withdrawal of support from the Arroyo administration. This footage was taken sometime before the Feb. 24, 2006 coup attempt and it is only now that this has been revealed. What was also revealing was another video footage of the same Gen. Danny Lim denying that there was any coup attempt.

But here is the truth being revealed to us. We saw Gen. Lim even going as far as saying that if the President would resign, a new government was already being formed. Could this new government be one and the same with that hatched by former Rep. Jose "Peping" Cojuangco and Pastor "Boy" Saycon, together with his bunch that calls itself the civil society that was reported by Nelly Sindayen of Time Magazine? My bet is, they were one and the same and why in heaven’s name none of these people have been charged for sedition continues to amaze me.

Watching the video footages of Gen. Lim tells us a lot… that he was the inside man within the military who would trigger the start of the coup. Who else would make this formal announcement of the military withdrawing its support from the Arroyo administration? When we saw the video footage of his denying that a coup was in the offing… we saw the political face of Gen. Lim transformed from an officer and a gentleman to the lowest human species found on earth… a cheap lying, dirty politician! * * *
Another interesting video footage that ABS-CBN secured and showed last Monday night came obviously from the NPA’s propaganda machine… where they showed an actual NPA raid somewhere in Mindanao. This is a tactic that the NPAs do not use so often. They must have learned about the big propaganda coup from the Tamil Tigers who have been getting free media mileage in their fight against the Sri Lankan government.

Once more, this issue brings us to the question of the role of the media in the all-out war that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) has declared against the communist insurgency. It’s about time that we in the media sit down and decide for ourselves whether the news that we report is helping the enemy or our own government. Who are with us or against us?

A case in point is a question brought up by media personalities against the Cable Network News (CNN) and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) when they show video footages of hostages being held by terrorist groups. Should the TV networks downplay this news or not? If the TV networks do not show such footages, then the world will not know whether a hostage is alive and well. But showing the video footage means we are playing into the hands of the terrorists who want the world to see terror right in their living rooms!

If you ask me, they shouldn’t show these video footages as they would certainly become part and parcel of the enemy’s propaganda machine. But then, who in the media would really make this decision to show them to the public or not? I guess at this point, it is a judgment call by the studio directors or newspaper editors on the implication of airing or publishing such a story. * * *
No doubt, the call by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for an all-out war against the communist rebels has sent many ideologues deep underground. Ka Roger, for instance, has suddenly disappeared when before he was very accessible to the media. Clearly, this call by the President has caught the communists unawares and they are now carefully studying their options. More so that the Arroyo administration has refused to go to the negotiating table for peace talks with the communists.

But surprise, surprise, we learned that opposition Sen. Jamby Madrigal very recently went to the Netherlands and met with National Democratic Front leader Jose Maria Sison. Worse of all, she even signed a joint communiqué with Sison demanding the resumption of peace talks with the Philippine government.

Sen. Madrigal may belong to the opposition, but haven’t we heard enough rumors about the so-called unholy alliance between the leftists and the rightists and the opposition in toppling the Arroyo administration? This is exactly what we wrote about last Monday … that one of the major problems with regards to the communist insurgency is the interference by politicians like Sen. Madrigal in this all-out war. If this insurgency is still with us today, it is because of naive politicos like Madrigal who don’t even know that they are being used by the master puppeteer himself… Joma Sison! * * *