Promises, promises
ONE OF THE few concrete policy promises Ferdinand Marcos Junior made during his campaign for the Presidency of these isles of forgetfulness was to make rice available at Php20.00 per kilo.
Luis V. Teodoro
Clear and Present Danger
THE dominant press and media are often constrained by the political and economic interests of their owners and even some practitioners. On the alternative tradition therefore falls much of the responsibility to defend press freedom and to provide the citizenry the...
Changes In Media Ownership During A Troubling Regime
WHILE any change in the ownership of media organizations should be a continuing public concern, it has become specially relevant at the present time, when the media need to sharpen their capacity to accurately chronicle and make sense of events and issues during the...
Reinventing Mocha Uson
HOW does the appointment of blogger and die-hard Duterte partisan Margaux "Mocha" Uson as an assistant secretary in the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) mesh with President Rodrigo Duterte's declaration last March 10, during the launch of...
Journalism and General Education
THE MARCH 21 decision of the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) University Council (UC) to cut the number of General Education (GE) units from 45 to 21 – or from 15 three-unit subjects to seven – means that undergraduate students will be...
Death penalty bill: Self-defeating and discriminatory
THE RUSH to pass a death penalty law despite the objections of the Catholic Church, Amnesty International, and even some senators shouldn't surprise anyone. The campaign to restore capital punishment began practically on Day One of the Duterte regime, when the then...
The alternative media in the time of Duterte
PHILIPPINE SOCIETY has been mired in crisis for centuries due to the rapaciousness and incompetence of a ruling elite nurtured by colonial rule and sustained by imperialist intervention. The signs and expressions of that crisis – poverty, injustice, political...
Advocacy and Ethics: the Necessary Connection
AS JOURNALISTS COMMITTED to providing our countrymen the information they need in these exciting but perilous times, do alternative media practitioners still have to abide by the ethical and professional standards to which the dominant media supposedly subscribe?...
Into the Information Breach
CORPORATE MEDIA reporting of conflict has always been erratic, haphazard if not egregiously partisan, and as a consequence detrimental to the search for solutions including the making of peace agreements. The conflict in Mindanao had not received...
A Catastrophe Waiting to Happen
Ferdinand Marcos' widow Imelda is a member of the House of Representatives. His daughter Imee is running unopposed for reelection as governor of Ilocos Norte. His son Ferdinand Jr. is leading the pack of six candidates for Vice President – and whether or not he wins...
The Perils of Foreign Ownership of Philippine Mass Media
ONE of the most common arguments for opening full media ownership to foreign interests is that it will facilitate technology transfer. Senator Grace Poe alluded to this supposed advantage when she declared during the Makati Business Club forum that she favored...
Profit Above Service
CORPORATE interests took precedence over the public’s right to know through access to as many news sources as possible when the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) lead media partners – GMA-7 TV and the Philippine Daily Inquirer – barred live coverage by community...
Exposing imperialist intervention
THE dominant media have either mentioned only in passing or completely ignored US imperialism’s role in the Mamasapano incident of January 25, 2015. That absence is also notable in the reportage of the peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro...