Keynote Speech to the First National Conference of Alternative Media
at Plaridel Hall, U.P. College of Mass Communications, October 9-10, 2014
By PROF. JOSE MA. SISON
Chairman Emeritus, International Network for Philippine Studies
I thank the conference organizers for inviting me to be the keynote speaker of the First National Conference of Alternative Media, the theme of which is “New Situation, New Challenge: Strengthen the People’s Voice.” I am deeply pleased and highly honored.
I extend my warmest greetings of solidarity to all the participants. I hope that your discussion of concepts and history of the alternative media and exchange of experience, estimate of the situation and plans related to alternative media practice in the Philippines will lay a sound basis for the plenary session to draw up a constitution and program of action and establish an alliance of alternative media organizations.
To be initially on the same wavelength with you, I am using the term “alternative media”. I know what you mean concretely as I look at the list of your participants: Bulatlat, Ibon, Peoples Media Center/Pinoy Weekly, Tudla Productions, Buhay Manggagawa, Kodao, Aklat ng Bayan, Arkibong Bayan, Northern Dispatch (Northern Luzon), Bicol Today, Davao Today, Cobraans (Bacolod), ST Exposure, Sine Panayanon (Panay), FARDEC, Hiligaynon, Lingganay Kamatuoran, Radyo Sagada, CPU, Migrante, Radyo Guimba, KILAB Mulltimedia (Mindanao), and publications of Gabriela, Bayan, KMP/Pamalakaya and Anakbayan.
Preference for the Term “People’s Media”
To refer to the foregoing information media, I prefer to use the term “people’s media”. You yourselves indicate by your conference theme that the media represented by participants in the conference are the voice of the people and that you wish to strengthen it. The people’s media are in sharp contrast to the “imperialist media” based in the US and other imperialist countries, or the “ruling class media” in any exploitative social system, including the government-owned media and the corporate media of the press lords and their presstitutes.
The people’s media serve the people, particularly the toiling masses of workers and peasants, the women, the youth, the intelligentsia, the national minorities, the low-income people, and others who are oppressed and exploited and who have little or no access to the dominant or so-called mainstream media. They report the events, facts and issues that affect most the lives and future of the people. They provide ample space for the expression of the needs, demands and just aspirations of the people. They broadcast the sufferings, struggles and victories of the people against those who oppress and exploit them.
In the concrete conditions of the Philippines, what interest the people most are their own desire and striving for national independence, democracy, respect for human rights, social justice, development through genuine land reform and national industrialization, the flourishing of a national, scientific and mass culture, and international solidarity of peoples and countries for peace and development against imperialism and reaction.
Critique of the Term “Mainstream Media”
The term “mainstream media” is a cleverly minted phrase. It rides on the factual predominance of the media owned, controlled and directed by imperialist or reactionary governments and the private media monopolies in the gathering, processing and dissemination of information, sentiments and ideas that are slanted to preserve and promote the ruling system. Any other kind of media outside of the “mainstream” is by direct implication looked down as “marginal” even if serving public interest far beyond the narrow self-interest of the imperialists and reactionaries.
But the cleverness of the bourgeois phrase-makers does not end there. They avoid proclaiming the binary distinction or dichotomy between mainstream and marginal. What they downgrade as marginal, the tributary or the “other” thing, they often call the “alternative media” or sometimes the “independent media” to suggest emphatically that there is freedom of choice in bourgeois society. At other times, they can be blatantly nasty in labeling the people’s media with adjectives calculated to isolate them, making them appear as deviant or extremist.
With the term “mainstream media”, the government and corporate giants in print and electronic media preemptively appropriate the citizenry and the masses, seek to misrepresent themselves as the main timely sources of facts and the truth, and facilitate their attempt to influence and manipulate the people. They play up the personalities, forces and issues that favor the ruling system, and play down, obscure or vilify those entities deemed dangerous to the system.
Advantages of the Anti-People Media
The governments and private corporations that own and run the anti-people media have certain advantages over the oppressed and exploited people and the people’s media that strive to express their rights and interests and spread the pertinent, significant and interesting information. They have the state power on their side. They have the capital to finance and organize their personnel and build their networks and technological means. They get their profits from the corporate advertisers and even from funds from state agencies, political parties and lobby groups loyal to the ruling system.
We saw how state power was used to close down print and electronic media and suppress press freedom wholesale during the Marcos fascist dictatorship. But even thereafter, state power has been used to prevent and limit the access of the people’s media to information considered secret or confidential by the government and the big corporations. A glaring indication of this is the persistent refusal of the reactionary Philippine Congress to pass a Freedom of Information Act 27 years after the first Freedom of Information bill was filed, and despite the provision in the 1987 Constitution guaranteeing the right to information. Even where there is a law on the freedom of information, as in the US and elsewhere, there are provisions and other laws which can block access to the most vital information. Security forces of the state can actually disable in one way or another any journalist whom they deem dangerous to the state.
The combination of state psy-war and corporate advertising techniques perfected by the big bourgeoisie is able to fabricate a whole universe of lies and pass them off as truths. Thus the anti-people media across the world and in the Philippines can still use highly paid journalists to twist the news so brazenly, for example, as to canonize US imperialist aggression as “protection of human rights” and its installed puppet regimes as “legitimate governments”, and to provide the needed “fog-of-war” smokescreens for its false-flag attacks while demonizing mass resistance as “acts of terrorism.”
The big media owned by the imperialists and reactionary states and by the private corporations sugarcoat their big bourgeois and other counterrevolutionary ideas and interests with petty bourgeois liberal and pseudo-Left phraseology, and use certain editorialists, columnists and reporters for that purpose. The big bourgeoisie and other anti-people forces also use as special agents pseudo-progressive and pseudo-Left media, political groups and trolling troops that pose as “independent” or “alternative media” but specialize in attacking the people’s media and other patriotic and progressive forces. Watch how Rappler, pseudo-independent broadcasters and columnists, Akbayan, Pulse Asia, Social Weather Station, and letter-writing brigades work in concert to serve the Aquino regime and the military.
Even when a certain amount or level of resistance media is legally allowed, the reactionary state continues to violate human rights in a gross and systematic way, outlaw organizations of the people and compel the revolutionary media to go underground. There are tyrants at every level of the reactionary state in the Philippines that target for job dismissal or assassination of journalists that offend them. The Philippines is well-known for the serial killing of journalists and for the Ampatuan massacre of journalists.
It is important to know the social, economic, political and cultural context in which the media operate in the Philippines as well as the dominant interests abroad that currently use such catchphrases as neoliberal globalization, war on terror, and so on. What predominate in the
reactionary media are interconnecting layers of imperialist or big bourgeois, colonial, feudal, and fascist currents of thinking.
These are manifest in the content, methods, and forms that are preconditioned, directed or influenced by the entire ruling system, the structure of media ownership, the dominant political parties, the educational and cultural system, the Church and its institutions, the imperialist news agencies, the entire advertising and entertainment industry, big-budget cinema, the Internet and social media, all the way down to formerly traditional but now commercialized and politicized festivals, concerts and sports events.
All these sources generate ideological, political and cultural messages that resound in the reactionary mass media and incessantly barrage the people’s minds and influence their behavior, in all their waking hours on a 24/7 basis across the whole information spectrum. These messages tell their captive audience what is supposedly righteous, interesting, desirable, beautiful, valuable and beneficial, and what is not.
Reactionary culture predominates in Philippine society so much so that even the most basic and common elements of culture such as language, folklore and traditions have become suffused with reactionary content. Among the vehicles of culture, mass media have become an extremely powerful and omnipresent tool of the ruling classes to deceive and distract the people.
What the People’s Media Can Do
But as in all things, the law of contradiction or dialectics operates in Philippine society as a whole, in its economics, politics and culture, including the mass media. In the struggle against the US-
dominated ruling system of big compradors and landlords, the national democratic mass movement of the people has grown to such an extent that it has inspired, engendered and nurtured the rise of the people’s mass media and has served as the basis of its current strength and further growth. Reciprocally, the people’s media have informed, enlightened and encouraged the people’s mass movement of patriotic and progressive forces.
Whatever are their limitations and disadvantages, the people’s media can strengthen themselves as the voice of the people by increasing their efficiency in gathering and disseminating the information and ideas that pertain most to the suffering of the people and their struggle for national and social liberation. The broad masses of the people themselves can spread further what the people’s media disseminate because this upholds their rights and interests and substantiate their complaints and demands for a better kind of life and bright future.
The rich experience of our own country’s propaganda movement has produced study materials and
training kits on how to develop the people’s media as powerful weapons in a propaganda movement with a just cause and with a truly mass character. All people’s media practitioners study the principle and methods of the mass line applied to media work. In this regard, Mao Zedong’s “A Talk to the Editorial Staff of the Shansi-Suiyuan Daily” remains an excellent point of reference.
The people’s active role in amplifying and spreading the news can make up for the financial and technological limitations of the people’s media. The current status and further development of the people’s organizations against the ruling system at the level of the legal mass movement and the revolutionary mass movement can always foster the continuous realization of the high potential of the people’s media. With the use of the internet and social media, the people’s media can now transmit information far more efficiently than ever before to mass organizations and the people at large.
By providing the facts and speaking the truth, the people’s media establish their high prestige and credibility. The people themselves on their own circulate the significant and interesting content by word of mouth and through the internet and social media. At the same time, the people’s media must constantly expose and oppose the anti-people character, strategies, tactics, and the most arcane tricks of the imperialist media and the local reactionary media and how these spread outright lies and disinformation. Such critique should help to counter, weaken and defeat imperialist and reactionary propaganda.
Even as giant media firms are controlled by the big bourgeoisie, they will always employ members of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia and the working class to operate their media facilities and operations. There are also the small community and provincial media that are owned and operated by smaller firms or as family-owned enterprises — which are susceptible to big-bourgeois and bureaucrat control (e.g. via ads and payolas) but also exercise a certain degree of independence in certain cases. In addition to these are the non-commercial media outlets such as Church and NGO newsletters, campus newspapers, and, since the past two decades, online journalists or bloggers.
The rank-and-file media professionals and workers and small media owner-operators, as part of the petty bourgeoisie, are open to revolutionary and progressive ideas and to reflecting more truthfully the lives of the masses, if only on the basis of exercising the right to press freedom and artistic expression, and increasingly in more politically radical terms as their work and living conditions are adversely affected by the crisis. Philippine history is rich with examples of patriotic and progressive journalists who worked in big-bourgeois-controlled media (e.g. Amado V. Hernandez, Henry Romero, Antonio Zumel, Satur Ocampo and Antonio Nieva) and eventually joined the ranks of the revolutionary movement.
Building an Alliance of the People’s Media
I welcome the common determination of all the media outfits now gathered in this conference to build an alliance and network for sharing, coordination and cooperation in a number of projects and activities. I understand that you wish to enhance your respective capacities and create synergies to maximize your capabilities for meeting the challenges and carry out the tasks in the immediate struggle against the anti-national and anti-democratic US-Aquino regime, and in the long-term struggle against the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.
I am aware that you have prepared a program of action to make a greater and more effective use of social media, to make a regular (possibly daily) internet news and analysis program and organize for the purpose a nationwide network of reporters and correspondents. I suggest that aside from producing texts for the internet and print publications you develop internet-based radio & TV broadcasting. You can develop modes of opinion poll survey to break the monopoly of the imperialists and reactionaries in using this sort of activity to misrepresent the people and condition their thinking. At the same time, you must constantly be aware of the limitations and disadvantages of social media as an information-education tool for arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses.
While the core of your alliance should necessarily be composed of the media outfits that are categorically and solidly part of the people’s movement and working closely with or organically within the mass organizations, you should also exert more effort in reaching out to organize and involve in your work wide sections of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia working in big corporate media and related service industries and, in coordination with the youth movement, the students of journalism, mass communications and fine arts colleges, and the schools.
Many of them welcome the opportunity to express in the people’s media their own pro-people ideas and creativity that can’t find space in reactionary media, to volunteer their time and skills in support of the propaganda movement, and as opportunities arise, to push for a degree of pro-people content within reactionary media. Sometimes, patriotic and progressive content can find its way in some reactionary media because of an avowed or even pretended policy of liberal democratic, objective, all-sided and enlightened journalism, or in cases where the media owners are in contradiction with more reactionary entities.
You should pay attention to organizing or supporting the organization of media workers along the national and democratic line. When they can, people’s media practitioners can join the National Press Club and the provincial press clubs. Historically, patriotic and progressive leaders and currents have arisen from these press clubs, as have ultra-reactionary ones at certain times. You should also be able to form alliances with owners of small printing-press and internet café establishments that continue to proliferate in main and secondary urban centers, provide a wide technical base for the needs of people’s media, and are traditionally supportive of media rights.
Former activists and progressives, whether still in touch and supportive of the movement in various degrees, or who may have lost direct contact for some time but have not lost their interest and desire to contribute to the struggle, can be found in all major media corporations and most if not all of the minor ones in practically all urban centers, at practically all levels of the media structure. They are your potential ready-made seed elements for building such broad alliances and networks in media.
To realize this potential and activate them effectively, you must not only reestablish and strengthen linkages with them, but simultaneously and with their collaboration conduct the necessary social investigation and studies on corporate interests, structures, owner-management-worker relations, political affiliations, linkages with international/imperialist entities, etc. These will be the basis for further expanding organizational work and discovering opportunities in the dominant media to augment the people’s media and the people’s voice.
It is fine that you are resolved to take up urgent issues, such as the Ampatuan massacre, media killings with impunity, charter change calculated by those in power to further denationalize the economy and make boundless executive power, the growing US military basing and intervention, the need to have genuine freedom of information, ensuring that no cybercrime law is enacted to tighten imperialist and reactionary control of the media, and the dismantling of the pork barrel system. You can take up many more domestic issues that involve the people’s national and democratic rights and their just struggle for national and social liberation.
You must disseminate the most important Philippine events and issues among the Filipinos abroad and among the people of the world. There are people’s media abroad that you can cooperate with. Foreign friends and Filipino compatriots have progressive information networks. You must reach out to overseas Filipinos in every way possible through their organizations and their own media facilities and internet channels. They are hungry for solid news and analysis as well as literary and art works from their homeland, especially from their home provinces.
You must imbibe and be moved by the spirit of international solidarity. You must engage in mutual support and cooperation with other peoples fighting for their rights against imperialism and reaction. You must take up international events and issues in order to prevent the imperialists and reactionaries from using the media to mislead the people. You must always be alert to international events and issues that call for the Filipíno people’s solidarity and support for other peoples in need, even as you are concerned with those events and issues relevant to and impact on the Filipino people and the Philippines.
Long-term Direction of the People’s Media
As the people’s movement grows in strength nationwide, it shall gain much higher capacity to promote, support and further develop the people’s media. While the struggle will yet undergo many twists and turns — and we should be alert to the possibility of more repressive regimes imposing draconian measures to suppress media rights, as during the Marcos dictatorship — the general trend will be for the new-democratic culture to rise to dominance and for the people to finally have the capacity to gain full access to and control of all available media technologies and facilities.
Even now, the people’s media should vigorously campaign for a comprehensive program of building new-democratic media in the service of the people and within the framework of a national, scientific and mass culture, and implement those components of the program that can be immediately implemented. A united front among people’s media outfits and other media formations and circles should be continually expanded and consolidated in the context of a broad cultural united front.
As the crisis of the world capitalist ruling system and that of the domestic ruling system worsen, the information gathered and circulated by the people’s media will ring louder and the growing mass movement would accelerate the spread of the information. In the history of revolutions, the ruling system and the rulers direct and use the biggest instruments of propaganda until close to the victory of the revolution.. At any rate, despite limitations and disadvantages, the people’s media even now are able to provide information and enlightenment to inspire and guide the people and their revolutionary forces.###
