Granted, webmaster Benign0 and fellow contributor Hector Gamboa have already said their pieces about the misleading photo on the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on 24th of July, 2016. It would indeed be kind of redundant for me to write another article about it since both Benign0 and Mr. Gamboa have already said in their statements much of what I want to say as well. So instead, I’m going to address the issue at the bottom of this fiasco which is essentially the “culture of victimhood” which is prevalent in the mainstream media whose agenda seems to be to mislead the common people and railroad the way they think.
I rarely watch anything from local TV channels asides from documentaries but when I do make the mistake of taking a peek at a local TV program, here are a few things that I can’t help but notice:
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Being a victim makes one heroic or saintly.
This is probably one of the most common things I notice in local TV shows. The protagonist is almost always a girl who is shown to be a victim of circumstance. She is all too often bullied due to being impoverished or because she doesn’t fit the local standard of beauty (she has dark skin or something similar) and she does little to improve her situation. Note that she isn’t shown to take up a part-time job that will allow her to keep up with the expenses of her peers or to make a move towards joining the right crowd (who will appreciate her friendship) or to take up fashionable changes that will work well with her appearance and make her beautiful. Instead, she remains a victim for much of the show or series and is somehow good simply because she’s willing to take all the flak from other characters.
Fate will change everything for the better.
As mentioned by other contributors, majority of our local shows rely on deus ex machina solutions to problems rather than actual thought-out solutions. It’s always more about waiting for the knight in shining armor to rescue the damsel rather than actually making an effort to change one’s circumstances. It’s always more about waiting for circumstances to change rather than actually getting involved and actively changing them by one’s own volition.
Everyone who antagonizes the protagonist is evil.
As per the media’s preference, everyone who doesn’t sympathize or is just generally antagonistic to the protagonist is clearly a villain. It is very rare that a villain is portrayed in any other way asides from being completely evil. Now, I’ve seen some that have been shown to be people forced into their circumstances and are simply doing what they do because of their family, but there’s little dimension to them asides from self-interest and general selfishness. It’s like the local media is insisting that people who have done bad things or at least things that seem bad to us are and will always be bad people.
So what does all this have to show?
Simple.
The local media wants us to sympathize with criminals and other dregs of society.
Indeed, if one looks at the said newspaper, it’s like they’re telling us that the crying woman in the image is indeed a victim of injustice just as many protagonists in local teleseryes are victims of social injustice. They insinuate that the couple pictured on the Sunday paper are simply people driven by desperation to engage in criminal activity just to survive and that their suffering is understandable and should be considered “heroic” by those viewing.
Alternatively, the people who are persecuting said people are therefore evil, because they are antagonizing them. That goes on to include the current administration as it goes out of its way to wage its war on drugs and all crimes associated with it. The local media wants us to think that these noble policemen who are trying to impose a sense of order in our society are somehow the “bad guys” in all of this because they are resorting to lethal methods to put an end to criminality in the Philippines. Any sympathy for these law enforcers are easily overshadowed by their willingness to resort to violence as portrayed by the local media.
What they aren’t showing or are desperately trying to hide is the fact that the so-called victims pictured on their front page are equally guilty of their own predicament. It’s barely even mentioned how illegal drugs are all too often the cause of the destruction of the youths. Indeed, there are countless children who stop studying simply because of drug abuse and then there are those who become outright criminals because of them. You’ll notice how it’s not even mentioned that the police probably resorted to lethal violence simply because the people they were trying to arrest were resisting arrest and probably resorted to lethal force.
Ladies and gentlemen, it saddens me beyond measure that our culture has been reduced to this state of pathetic thinking. We have essentially lost sight of righteousness and duty and have simply become slaves to emotion. We are forced to decide on things simply out of pity rather than any form of logic or goodwill. While yes, one can note that it is likely that a lot of criminals do what they do out of desperation, it doesn’t mean that what they do is right in any way. Even if they do deserve some sympathy for their troubles that does not mean that they are “good” and that they are wholly undeserving of their fate.
So look, all I’ll say that if the victim had been a child who had been driven to take drugs because of being impoverished and/or because of bad experience, I’d be more than a little sympathetic. But a woman who’s in tears just because her partner had been killed for fighting cops because he himself sells drugs which can destroy the lives and sanities of children is a completely different story.
I HAVE RETURNED TO LAY WASTE TO OUR ENEMIES!
Victim mentality only creates helplessness, the most maddening, miserable and upsetting of mental states. In fact, it is commonly reported that nothing triggers madness like a sense of helplessness. It is a cousin of paranoia, a sense that the world is out to get you, that there is some opposition, some rivalry between you and the world. This is a warped, twisted mentality that offers no benefits, and, more importantly, is manifestly false.
I think media is not to blame but the people themselves… People only see what they want to see. –The Media is only selling what these people’s desires. Remember that the media is a business, so it just want to profit from what the people demanded. Just a though.
Why don’t these newscasters and their owners put their money where their mouth is and help these people out of their miseries, if they are really concern about them.
I wrote something similar to that one:
Failipino Media and Glorifying the Victim Card Mentality
News programs are the least I watch on tv while I cast aside drama shows.
There is a reason why books will always be better than television.
Hail “Yellow Satan”!!!
As I said before, open up a Pinoy’s coconut and what you’ll find is a beating heart.
Media has conditioned Pinoys to operate this way. It always revolves around fun/feelings and emotion trips.
I’m not one to call out the President much, but when I saw this news, I was a bit saddened:
http://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2016/08/01/1608746/duterte-wishes-eat-bulaga-thousand-more-years
Mr. President, Our stupid TV shows and programs ARE the very drugs that destroy the youth and melt the people’s brains to the point of making them catastrophic failures in the goal of nation building and progress.
Don’t you think it’s about time you HEAVILY TAX these culturally damaging DRUG-PUSHERS to compensate for all the harm they are doing to our people? – Just like sin taxes (from alcohol/cigars) must be used for health care.
The cause of damage must fund the means to fix what has been destroyed. You are making too many promises – where will you get the money for all of them? Gatasan niyo po ang mga walang kwenta at pahamak sa lipunan: Eat Bulaga must pay for all the stupidity they have injected into the system!
I been asking that question since before he was elected.
Where does the money come from for the promises he is making.
Unfortunately at present moment this nation thinks the sun shines out of this current predidents butt.
so please may the dutertards now tell me im a yellow supporter or a chinese mafia member.
Thank you for hitting the nail on the head zaxx.
Where is the money coming from?
I don’t think you and zaxx share the same sentiments.
Yours is more like: “People actually buy Duterte’s promises? He doesn’t even have the money to fund them!”
While zaxx’s is more like: “Mr. President, instead of supporting these evil people, please tax them so you can have the funds to fullfill your promises. Where else are you gonna get the funds?”
So we should legalise drugs like marijuana to get more tax?
Is that what you are saying?
Thats a very good idea.
The president loves eat buluga because that is his kind of entertainment mentaliity.
Scares the shit out of me that someone who thinks that programme and other like it( probably) are good for this nation.
But hey let the masses have their bread and circuses.
Thats the name of the game.
Well thank goodness it wasn’t the tip of your manicured pinky I hit this time Voice 🙂
president duterte is the messenger of God a soldier against satan and his evil ways.
Yes because God would have chosen a foul mouthed womanizer that is prone to violence and is against human rights as his chosen messenger.
I wonder if perhaps its the other way around and u r too full of idol worship and duterte social media brainwashing to see it.?
I hope this comment was satire, if not you just made my brain vomit.
Duterte has some good ideas and some truly terrible ones.
Back the good ones and condemn the bad.
Claiming he is some kind of biblical messenger is too pathetic to even contemplate how a person in this century could even write such a ridiculous statement.
Just fyi. God is all powerful( apparently as i have read the bible).
Why on earth would he need a soldier and why on earth would he pick someone like duterte?
Me thinks u hit your head a little to hard numerous times.
I dunno why but you’re trying to say that God would’ve chosen a lying hypocrite that is prone to incompetence and living in deceit as His chosen messenger. Unfortunately, you vomit your own brains since your comment reeks of trolling.
Yes, God is all powerful. And remember, He chose Joshua, a warrior, to be Moses’ successor. And David, who is a man after God’s own heart, was told by God that he should establish his kingdom by war.
Nice on ignoring your own fallacies, fam.
Did he choose joshua?
Thats what an acient text says but do u really think an all powerful god needed to choose someone to exhibit his will, or just men claiming they were chosen years after that persons demise.
Not sure how commenting on such an outrageous comment is classed as trolling, but alas i forgot.
If you have a difference of opinion here you must be a troll.
i forget sometimes what culture im addressing.
The truth of the matter is.
If god was going to choose a messenger( which is highly unlikely as he would have to exsit first), you are telling me it goes Jesus, with his love everyone and forgive everyone message.
Too duterte and do as i say or ill kill you?
Perhaps you and I have read a very different book.
please no more comments that duterte is a god messenger.
You sound like a simpleton.
And Noah was a drunk. Look what he accomplished.
He’s not even commenting about Duterte being “God’s messenger” but I just want to remind you that whining and blaming on one tainted surname makes you a simpleton.
#HypocrisyExposed
is twain in your reading selection? I guess not, since you dont get a satirical remark even if it bit you in your gluten-free ass.
friendly advice. not everybody believes in god. deal with it. atheists openly mock deities and laugh at the butthurt for being so goddamn literal.
satan’s way of destroying the youth was exposed. the appearance of president duterte is the second coming in the biblical as saint Michael to save the children away from darkness. he who don’t see what’s happening are the swords of evil.
Ummmm. Wf?
Victim mentality began with Cory Aquino. She was portrayed by the Philippine Media as the “suffering Widow”, with overwhelming piety. Her serfs/tenants were suffering from poverty, and were massacred mercilessly. However, she was featured as very saintly !
Out came his son, Benigno Aquino III. Many murders; massacres; widespread corruption; Jessie Robredo’s murder, because he was investigating an unholy Drug alliance; the “Lag lag Bala” extortion/scam, at the Manila International Airport(NAIA); the Mamapasano SAF massacre; the Drug Lords; the proliferation of the illegal Drug, Shabu; the conversion of the Bilibid Prison, into Drug Lords’ Hilton Five Star Hotel; and Shabu Mfg. Company; and armory of high powered arms; and Bank inside a Prison, complete with money counters. Bilibid Prison also became the Command Center of their Shabu distribution. The Cheating of the 2016 election, with the aid of the Chinese Triad Mafia crime syndicate…made Porky Drilon, top the Senatorial list; elected the crooked, De Lima; put the grieving widow, Leni Robredo, as Vice President. This Chinese Triad Drug Mafia crime syndicate , even took hold of the COMELEC and SMARTMATIC…
Many officials in the Aquino administration, became multi millionaires, due to this Shabu illegal Drug Trafficking. Politicians, became Drug Traffickers, themselves !
Being a victim is the way they manipulate our mindsets and sympathies; so that they can cover their wickedness.
Look at how they featured, the slain Drug Trafficker…they featured this criminal, as “Jesus Christ”, his lover, as the “Virgin Mary”, holding him ! Complete with a Priest, blessing, the grieving lover and the dead criminal… They are even using religion, as a means , to justify their evil ends !
It’s like ISIS, using religion, to justify the murder and the cutting of the neck of that old French Catholic Priest, in Normandy, French!
This media conditioning mentioned earlier that are aimed for the masses came from the U.S. I’m referring to the popular tv daytime soap operas, those melodramatic and never-ending serial programs that later metamorphose into telenovelas, teleseryes that mesmerized millions of Feelippinose.
For a trivial pursuit try asking some rural kababayans why they were called soap operas and maybe they will all tell you, “of course, ito kasi’y nakakalinis.” Was that really the intention of the original daytime soap operas sponsors, the American soap manufacturers? Do we think our kababayans will admit that what they were viewing everyday are titillating societal excesses and extremes as well as reliving all their own private dysfunctions and decay?
For behind the pasty make-up and crocodile tears of these characters in the soap operas, are shared chapters in the life of the majority of Feelippinose who are face with the quiet desperation of their own real-life dramas looking in them for an answer: How can I be set free or will I ever be washed clean?
Ah, pity you my fellow Feelippinose. You have been conditioned by the numerous ads about shampoos, bath soaps, detergents and fabric conditioners that are forever competing against each other to gain your favor and give you in return a drama that you will follow till the end to placate your grieving heart because you can relate to someone with the same unfortunate fate that you have.
Now, I know why we love laundries and why most every house has “sinampay” even during the rainy season. It shows out our cleanliness culture except for our surroundings. But then again, we also felt interested and showed pity for a “sosyal” victim who can’t help but air out her dirty linen.
I’m sure it’s time now to use the supersoap that our kababayans had long forgotten. It will surely clean everybody’s life because it is the simple message of Jesus Christ.
Media everywhere portrays evil people as victims, so it happening in the Philippines doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes this is done for political reasons. The newspapers publishing pics of deceased drug dealers is not done because the media cares about them; they are doing it solely to demonize Duterte and create a narrative. They were publishing no pics 6 months ago when innocent people were harmed, or other major problems were happening there. This is solely political.
There is a new sickness in the world today. This sickness is the political correctness of pandering to evil people. Some people like to make excuses for bad behavior – but only for certain people. This is very confusing because it doesn’t make much sense. It borders on mental illness.
I am going to provide an example of media bias that is a perfect example of this type of propaganda; it has to do with the U.S., so I don’t mean to bore or disrespect Filipinos who don’t want to hear it because this is a Philippines site; the example is so close I feel it’s relevant.
The U.S. media, not long ago, tried a smear piece on Donald Trump( by the way, I don’t personally like Trump and probably will not vote for him). The media invented a story about Donald Trump being associated with the KKK, because Trump did not immediately denounce Caucasian racist David Duke. Trump was NEVER associated with him and actually left the Indepedence party years before (among other reasons) because he was in it. Trump also made a club he bought open to black people for the first time in its history. The media tried to say David Duke and Trump in the same sentence to try to frame him; the whole thing was total bullshit. Trump had denounced the KKK and Duke previously.
Meanwhile, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd, a former KKK leader, was elected senator by Democrat voters and the same media said nothing. Bill and Hillary Clinton spoke highly of Sen. Byrd and Bill said it’s ok he was a racist because he was a young guy, growing up in the south, and that’s what you did then. Yeah you just joined the KKK and lynched black people. Yeah, right, what an excuse. Can you imagine if Trump praised a friend, who was a white supremicist leader? Can you imagine the media? Oh, but Hillary and Bill Clinton speak highly of the flaming RACIST Byrd, and it’s ok. Where’s the media?
Also, Hillary Clinton said young black men should be made to heel; as in heel like a dog! She said black men are super-predators. She also joked that Gandhi ran a gas station; this is a racist comment playing off of the joke that many Indian-Americans own gas stations and convenience stores. Hillary Clinton is a racist. You won’t hear it from the propagandist BS media, though. They will paint the narrative that Trump is in the KKK and is the racist.
The point I am making is the U.S. media doesn’t care if Clinton is a racist; they don’t care about racism, period. They use the race card tactic to score political points. They have no moral, just whore values. No mainstream media cares about drug dealers or what happens to them. It is all political theatrics.
the difference i noticed between local and foreign tv shows is that in foreign shows, the characters think critically. even in japanese anime – there’s this scene all of the time where in the protagonist will get a close up shot, then he/she will talk to herself/himself – critical thinking – it will take half of the episode though (hahaha!).
example of tv shows in US:
House – they brain storm about certain elements which causes the patients illnesses
Big Bang Theory
smart converstaion of characters.
our local entertainment industry needs to shape up.
Is there any our TV media company in our country who’ll dare to show Death Note in their network? That anime or live action series are a great story & it tells about vigilantism & swift justice. Extra judicial killings? Maybe there is but not much but there’s a moral lesson to that series, and that is CRIME DOES NOT PAY and if you want to end the impunity, just give them a shock therapy. Being too soft to solve this kind of problems like crimes & corruption is just a BS!!! THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS! If we could make a lasting peace of our land, then prepare for this kind of bloodbath & it’s not a walk in the park, my friend.
It is a very good thing for many of these commentators that there is no such ting as a religious grammar police because if there were such an entity, then most of the people writing comments would have lost their heads long ago.
It would take me 10 hours to fix the language so normal people would be able to properly respond. Just now I’m kinda tired and want to enjoy my evening rather than giving free English lessons. Normally I get paid $13.00/hour to teach English so I’m just not inclined to teach English for free.
Having said that, I will easily give philosophy lessons free to anyone who is intelligent. (Onion-skinned Pinoys need not apply)
Many of the commenters here speak and write English as their second or third language. Seeing as you voted for Obama multiple times, any ‘philosophy’ lessons you provide likely have little to no value.