“Journalism is what we need to make democracy work.”
--Walter Cronkite
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- I AM a Filipino community journalist and not an enemy of the state.
I belong in the so-called Fourth Estate, the chief vanguard of democracy that serves as the catalyst of change and watchdog of the government’s three major ribs: the Executive (First Estate), the Legislative (Second Estate), and the Judiciary (Third Estate).
I believe that the alleged “Oust Duterte” matrix supposedly plotted by some journalists and human rights lawyers is not only a dud but also a hoax.
It does not exist in reality and is only a figment of imagination.
It is meant to shift public attention from the bigger national issues and scandals and to scare those who are critical against the Duterte Government.
It was intentionally coined by spin masters and members of the Palace “think tank” to cushion the impact of media flak especially if the criticism has become effective and has influenced public perception about how the government is being managed and ruled.
By using logic and common sense, the jobs of journalists and lawyers are apolitical by nature and, unlike the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Muslim separatist groups, ousting a sitting president does not and will not benefit them.
This is not new actually.
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We experienced the same hara kiri or “belly cutting” threat from the previous administrations, which all failed to bring us down and even backfired.
In 1991, the Cory administration, which could not handle the intense media criticism against her “Kamaganak, Inc.” believed to be siphoning the taxpayers’ money through iniquitous means, and the spiraling cases of human rights violations, fired back at the press by letting loose a Bulldog named “Oplan Malunggay.”
The “Oplan” tagged several journalists as members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) and, henceforth, were now “enemies of the state.”
Then Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Gerardo “Gerry” Flores (now a congressional candidate in the first district of Iloilo), had served as Tita Cory’s “Gen. Oscar Albayalde,” who recently threatened to “investigate the journalists and the lawyers in the matrix without waiting for an official order from Malacañang.”
Flores and his police “witch hunters” had threatened to arrest “the communists” in the press and charge them with sedition.
The “witch hunters” gathered phony dossiers and spied on some journalists listed in the “Oplan” like they were cosmic terrorists on a mission to launch an intergalactic battle.
It had some chilling effects on many of us, in one way or another, since we feared we could be abducted and disappeared any time; but we were unfazed and continued to blast and lampoon Tita Cory’s administration over issues with paramount public interest.
Media killings had started to rear their ugly heads five years after Marcos was toppled in the EDSA Revolution.
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The spying and harassment against critical journalists continued subsequently under the FVR, Erap, and Ate Glo administrations even as incidents of media killings had continued to pile up in an alarming rate.
FVR, who was black-eyed in the scandalous multi-billion Amari land deal, used the carrot and stick tactics to ward off humiliation from the expose made by the determined press.
Erap miscalculated and underestimated the power of the press when he engaged it in an unorthodox arm-twisting power play, pressuring advertisers to nix critical newspapers and broadcast networks.
Ate Glo allegedly helped make many critical but corrupt journalists rich by awarding them “lucrative” government positions if not making some of them as “dummies” in some multi-billion anomalies allegedly perpetrated by the First Family and their cronies.
No dictator or aspiring dictator has succeeded in muzzling the press to hide and keep his or her shenanigans under wraps.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
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