“A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”
—Albert Camus
By Alex P. Vidal
I COME neither to bury Caesar nor to praise him.
In the first place, Caesar, in my humble opinion, isn’t dead yet.
Before we mount a manhunt against the modern Cassius, Brutus, and their murderous subalterns in the senate, and before Mark Antony and Cleopatra form a triumvirate with Octavian, I implore thee to hold your horses and stop crying.
As a long-time media practitioner, I commiserate with the ABS-CBN when it was compelled to sign off starting May 5 midnight in the Philippines in compliance with the “cease and desist” order from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
Like many of my colleagues in the mass media today, I also denounce the gung ho approach in dealing a mortal blow against a critical media outfit in an apparent retaliatory act from an onion-skinned and vindictive president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
Through his minion and “attack dog”, Jose Calida, whose scandal-ridden stint in the Office of the Solicitor General has practically weighed down whatever gain this administration has scored in the Supreme Court, President Duterte got what he wished: bring down the TV station on its knees.
But, wait a minute.
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My revulsion centers most particularly on the issue of press freedom, the cornerstone of democracy and something I hold dear for more than 30 years as a community journalist.
A closure of any media outlet—small or big newspaper, TV and radio stations, and all the alphabet communication soups—will always leave a bad taste in the mouth for any government locked in a tight disagreement with the mass media and the nature of their work.
I will not cry—literally and figuratively, at least not yet.
By “signing off” didn’t mean the behemoth media station has been cremated or buried in the Bronx’s Hart Island like the #COVID-19 dead.
Signing off is like a temporary hiatus, or merely “putting to rest” the tired and weary faculties; it’s one way of saying “I’ll take two steps backward today, and take three steps forward tomorrow.”
Like Lazarus, ABS-CBN will certainly bounce back to life; not now, at least, but that’s for SURE.
Its physical assets won’t be sold in a public auction or crushed by a bulldozer and an excavator like imported cars in the Bureau of Customs.
Mr. Duterte and ass-licker Calida aren’t married to their present positions. They can’t outlive the people’s strong desire to gain access to news and entertainment, and to be aware and updated of what’s going on around them.
In a democratic state, media institutions will always survive any tremor, tsunami, pandemic, war, and man’s hateful fulmination.
Media institutions fight and live; dictators oppress and/but are ousted. Newspapers, broadcast and TV networks stay; despotic rulers perish and are remembered in history in the most irremissible and lurid description.
“Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
No enemy of press freedom or dictator in history has won a permanent battle against the Fourth Estate.
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No strongman and woman in history has outmuscled the power of ideas.
Some smart alecks have tried but failed to put away the media: Elpidio Quirino (Golden Arinola Scandal), Spiro Agnew (Vietnam War), Ferdinand Marcos (Martial Law), Benito Mussolini (“Fascism and Militant Journalism”), Richard Nixon (Watergate), Woodrow Wilson (“Wilson, That’s All”), Theodore Roosevelt (The Jungle), Bill Clinton (Monica Lewinsky cover-up), Cory Aquino (Soliven-Beltran Libel Case), Erap Estrada (Philippine Daily Inquirer advertisement boycott), Ramon Cua Locsin (Sun.Star Iloilo Libel Cases), Melvin “Dragon” Odicta (Aksyon Radyo Iloilo Raid), to cite only a few controversies vis-à-vis the press.
Thomas Jefferson: “I prefer to have a newspaper without a government than to have a government without a newspaper.”
Napoleon Bonaparte: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
Alexis de Tocqueville: “Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.”
It has been said that press freedom is the first casualty when a leader who wants to become a dictator runs berserk.
Christopher Dodd had warned that “When the public's right to know is threatened, and when the rights of free speech and free press are at risk, all of the other liberties we hold dear are endangered.”
But we aren’t giving up.
By the way, wake me up, when ABS-CBN is back on air—soon!
(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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