We don’t write scathing resignation letters

“The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.”

—Billy Collins

By Alex P. Vidal

I CAN’T recall a single case where a newspaper writer or editor in Iloilo, or Western Visayas for that matter, has written a scathing resignation letter to the local publisher during his departure.

Not even in the national broadsheets, as far as I can remember, at least since democracy was restored after the EDSA Revolution in 1986.

In my time as a post-EDSA community journalist, I witnessed editors and writers, including myself and other regular columnists, transfer from one regional paper to another without any prejudice to the relationship with the publishers and coworkers in the publications we’ve worked with.

There were clashes in principles and political views, but personal and professional ties have remained intact even after the separations. 

We never wrote resignation letters that would burn the bridges with our former media bosses and colleagues like New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss, who recently published a scathing resignation letter she sent to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger on her personal website.

Weiss noted she doesn’t understand how toxic behavior is allowed inside the newsroom and "showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery."

Weiss wrote: “It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.” 

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She then explained that she joined the paper in 2017 to help offer a different perspective, as the Times’ “failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers,” and fixing that issue was critical.

“But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned,” Weiss wrote. 

“Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

Weiss lamented that “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times,” but social media acts as the ultimate editor.

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FOR many Filipinos, the broad daylight and “senseless” murder of ABS-CBN by the 70 congressmen in the House joint panels on July 10, was like a death of a family member.

The same melancholy is felt in the Filipino communities in other parts of the globe that used to wake up and go to bed monitoring the events in the Philippines and enjoying the programs in their TFC channel. 

Many mothers, wives, grandparents, and children, in particular, had considered ABS-CBN as their household companion.

They regularly watched and listened to ABS-CBN’s public affairs program, news, entertainment like soap opera and noontime shows like they were doing their regular private and household chores.

All of a sudden, that important “member” of the family was gone but its nostalgia and good memories.

All of a sudden, the TV channel where they used to tune in to locate ABS-CBN during prime time, is now displaying a rainbow.

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Until now, many ABS-CBN lovers continue to mourn like they are in an actual vigil of the dead in the funeral homes.

Most of them find it hard to accept ABS-CBN’s sudden demise, and the insults and vitriol they hear from people who add insult to their injury are further helping deepen and exacerbate their sadness and agony.

They are aware most of those who hated ABS-CBN were probably motivated only by their canine loyalty and too much admiration for President Digong Duterte, not because they believed ABS-CBN was evil.

If Mr. Duterte did not declare a war against ABS-CBN, those bashers probably would never say a single bad word against the doomed broadcasting network.  

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

Logic and common sense vs ABS-CBN bashers

“Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”

—Lewis Carroll

By Alex P. Vidal

LOGIC and common sense will demolish the arguments of those who continue to cling to an absurd assertion that no violation of press freedom was involved in the harassment incurred by the ABS-CBN from the vindictive Duterte administration.

ABS-CBN is a media institution, not an ice cream or a rubber shoes manufacturing company. 

A media institution is a vital cog of democracy; it’s a flesh and blood of the Fourth Estate every democratic government in the world holds dearly.

Logic and common sense will be the main obstacles in their ridiculous stand as they continue to agitate for the gigantic media network’s permanent closure after it was forced to sign off on May 5 by virtue of the “cease and desist” order of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

It’s actually a battle between facts and data combined and emotions and politics combined.

Interestingly, those who loudly and viciously demanded for ABS-CBN’s permanent closure were mostly characters who loathed any criticism leveled against their “emperor”, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.

They were the “fanatics” who immediately would run berserk if Mr. Duterte was criticized.

For them, Mr. Duterte is a perfect leader who can’t commit a mistake. They will eat alive those who dare cross the president’s path.

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They attacked the ABS-CBN not because ABS-CBN is wicked; not because they were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that ABS-CBN’s existence was inimical to the interest of the public, but because Mr. Duterte was at loggerheads with the leading network.

It would have been another story if they made the same stand and were already spewing venomous expletives against the ABS-CBN with the same intensity even before Mr. Duterte’s conflict with the network became known worldwide.

Such irrational enmity toward ABS-CBN can’t reconcile with common sense and sound judgement. Basta nalang nainis sa ABS-CBN only because the president was inis na inis sa ABS-CBN?

In other words, if Mr. Duterte had praised and made friends with the ABS-CBN, they would also sing hallelujah to the ABS-CBN and would never lambast the network?

That’s why I’m worried if some people have become fanatics which is synonymous to irrationality.

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Below are some of the main claims and allegations of the viral video on the spread of virus that linked prominent personalities in the U.S. taken down by Youtube, Facebook and other social and mainstream media platforms for its inaccuracies and unproven allegations, along with the facts presented by Science.

Video Interview: Dr. Judy Mikovits has been called one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation.

Mikovits had authored 40 scientific papers and wasn’t widely known in the scientific community before she published the 2009 Science paper claiming a link between a new retrovirus and CFS. The paper was later proven erroneous and retracted.

Video: Her 1991 doctoral thesis revolutionized the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Mikovits’s Ph.D. thesis, “Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes,” had no discernible impact on the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Video Interview : At the height of her career, Dr. Mikovits published a blockbuster article in the journal Science. The controversial article sent shock waves through the scientific community, as it revealed that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues was unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.

The paper revealed nothing of the sort; it only claimed to show a link between one condition, CFS, and a mouse retrovirus.

Mikovits: I was held in jail, with no charges.

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The district attorney in Washoe county, Nevada, filed a criminal complaint against Mikovits that charged her with illegally taking computer data and related property from WPI. The charges were dropped, in part because of legal troubles faced by her former employer.

Mikovits: Heads of our entire HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) colluded and destroyed my reputation and the Department of Justice and the (Federal Bureau of Investigation) sat on it, and kept that case under seal.

Mikovits has presented no direct evidence that HHS heads colluded against her.

Mikovits: (Fauci) directed the cover-up. And in fact, everybody else was paid off, and paid off big time, millions of dollars in funding from Tony Fauci and … the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These investigators that committed the fraud, continue to this day to be paid big time by the NIAID.

It’s not clear which fraud and what cover-up Mikovits is talking about exactly. There is no evidence that Fauci was involved in a cover-up or that anyone was paid off with funding from him or his institute. No one has been charged with fraud in relation to Mikovits’s allegations.

Mikovits: It started really when I was 25 years old, and I was part of the team that isolated HIV from the saliva and blood of the patients from France where (virologist Luc) Montagnier had originally isolated the virus. … Fauci holds up the publication of the paper for several months while Robert Gallo writes his own paper and takes all the credit, and of course patents are involved. This delay of the confirmation, you know, literally led to spreading the virus around, you know, killing millions.

At the time of HIV’s discovery, Mikovits was a lab technician in Francis Ruscetti’s lab at NCI and had yet to receive her Ph.D. There is no evidence that she was part of the team that first isolated the virus. Her first published paper, co-authored with Ruscetti, was on HIV and published in May 1986, 2 years after Science published four landmark papers that linked HIV (then called HTLV-III by Gallo’s lab) to AIDS. Ruscetti’s first paper on HIV appeared in August 1985. There is no evidence that Fauci held up either paper or that this led to the death of millions.

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Video Interview: If we activate mandatory vaccines globally, I imagine these people stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars that own the vaccines.

Mikovits: And they’ll kill millions, as they already have with their vaccines. There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA virus that works.

Vaccines have not killed millions; they have saved millions of lives. Many vaccines that work against RNA viruses are on the market, including for influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, rabies, yellow fever, and Ebola.

Video Interview: So, I have to ask you, are you antivaccine?

Mikovits: Oh, absolutely not. In fact vaccine is immune therapy, just like interferon alpha is immune therapy, so I’m not antivaccine. My job is to develop immune therapies. That’s what vaccines are.

In another recent video, Mikovits is wearing a hat that says VAXXED II, which is a sequel to a film that links the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine to autism, a debunked theory. She also repeats several claims made by people who are leading the antivaccine movement. In the PowerPoint presentation she sent to Science, she calls for an “immediate moratorium” on all vaccines. (To be continued)

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

Why are they so mad?

“Get mad, then get over it.”

—Colin Powell

By Alex P. Vidal

THE criticism being aggressively unleashed against the embattled ABS-CBN by some people who claim to be “die-hard” supporters of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte increased in the social media immediately after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issued a “cease and decease” order against the leading national TV and radio network which was compelled to sign off on May 5, 2020 after their 25-year broadcast franchise expired the previous day.

In others, out of the blue, naki sabay (they joined the fray).

Although they based their attacks against the powerful media company on the latter’s failure to secure a renewal of their franchise and corrosively dismissed the angle on violation of press freedom, their motives and aggressiveness were suspect.

We’ve noticed their bad blood against the ABS-CBN didn’t emanate from any personal experience or spat against the giant network.

In other words, their hatred came from nowhere.

Their saber rattling was an afterthought or based on the stimulus of the president’s rage.

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When President Duterte didn’t yet step up his attack against the ABS-CBN early last year, most of these die hard supporters never thought of lashing at the network.

It’s only when Mr. Duterte used profanity and threatened to block ABS-CBN’s renewal of franchise later last year that the die hard supporters also started lambasting the network that employs 11,000 workers nationwide.

Which means that most of them anchored their hatred toward the ABS-CBN on the mood or reaction of the president, not because they had a previous ax to grind against the network. 

Immediately after it became known that Mr. Duterte was terribly mad at the ABS-CBN, some of these die hard supporters discussed and analyzed the network’s supposed litany of “sins” against the law like they were in the trial court, and personally against Duterte, who had been openly protesting that his campaign ads were not aired during the 2016 elections despite making an advance payment.

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The ABS-CBN critics invoked the argument used by Solicitor General Jose Calida—and which most of us already know—that broadcasting networks require a congressional franchise to operate television and radio stations under Philippine law. 

Operating since the mid-1960s, ABS-CBN had last been granted a 25-year franchise extension on March 30, 1995 by virtue of Republic Act No. 7966 (March 30, 1995). 

The franchise expired on May 4, 2020 as upheld by the Department of Justice (DoJ).

The question is, what if President Duterte did not declare an Armageddon against the ABS-CBN?

What if, instead of threatening to block the station’s renewal of franchise, the president extended an olive branch and heaped praises for the largest entertainment and media conglomerate in the country in terms of revenue, operating income, net income, assets, equity, market capitalization, and number of employees for its catchy “In the service of the Pilipino” slogan?

Would those die hard supporters, most of whom have been tagged as “fanatics” and motivated by a canine loyalty to the hard-hitting leader from Davao City, also parrot the same soliloquy?

Your answer is as good as mine.

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I am developing a story that a financial group based in the state of Georgia, which has been facing several lawsuits for allegedly running a pyramid scam, allegedly continues to operate and is “actively” recruiting a lot of gullible Filipino immigrants in San Francisco, California and other parts of the United States.

“The operators of this scam are using the social media to recruit and promise their potential victims a financial windfall and other emoluments,” said a source who refused to be named.

“The sad part is that they are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to lure investors, especially those who have the capacity to invest and those who have received a stimulus from the federal government.”

We will know if these allegations are true.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

Stop crying! ABS-CBN isn’t dead

“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)