It’s almost unreal. According to a breaking Manila Bulletin report, ABS-CBN has signed off and has gone off air in compliance to a cease and desist order from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) after the network’s license to broadcast expired yesterday. It was lights out following its final TV Patrol broadcast.
Opposition groups were, as expected, quick to denounce this development as (what else?) an “attack on press freedom”. “Social news network” Rappler issued its usual slanted reporting on the subject suggesting that ABS-CBN was essential to the dissemination of important information related to the raging COVID-19 pandemic…
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Media organizations also questioned the “untimely” decision and urged the government to keep ABS-CBN open, as Filipinos need updates about the coronavirus pandemic.
…perhaps selectively forgetting that there are many other media organisations and “thought leaders”, not to mention the state broadcasting agency itself, already providing ample reliable information on the subject. Is ABS-CBN News “reporting” really that special as to be regarded as a big fat pillar of the country’s information infrastructure as Rappler “reporter” Ralf Rivas makes it out to be? Many Filipinos would beg to differ.
One would be hard-pressed to put up a eulogy to ABS-CBN painting it as a paragon of virtue. It makes most of its money off low quality unoriginal entertainment programs that have long known to contribute to the intellectual bankruptcy of Philippine society. The late Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz referred to the entertainment industry within which ABS-CBN skimmed off the lion’s share of profit as a “wasteland” in an Inquirer editorial dated the 16th June 2006…
The Philippine entertainment industry is not only a vast wasteland, as television has been described in America, but a vicious instrument for the abatement of the nation’s intelligence. The shows it offers for the supposed recreation of the people are generally vulgar and smutty, usually with some little moral lesson inserted to make them look respectable, but offensive nonetheless. On the whole, they are obnoxious and unwholesome and deserve to be trashed.
Indeed, the industry deserves to be trashed. The shuttering of ABS-CBN in a sense fulfills a long overdue need for a hard reckoning. Philippine media would have been in an excellent and unique position of power to influence Filipino thinking by uplifting it to a level befitting that of a true 21st Century society. One would expect the exceptional power wielded by an enormous corporation like ABS-CBN to be used to strengthen independent thought and eradicate the comfy poverty of originality so deeply-burnt into the fibres that weave the very fabric of Philippine society.
Suffice to say, ABS CBN did not step up to that role it had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fill.
To be fair, like any other for-profit private enterprise, the management of ABS-CBN owes its loyalty wholly to its shareholders. This was made clearly evident in the lengths its management took to circumvent the law, even going as far as engaging the “services” of the Philippine Senate itself tapping the influence of one of its shareholders there, Senator Grace Poe, to lead a dishonest “senate inquiry” into the matter of its fate. This despite the obvious conflicts of interest considering that a web of family ties and relationships past and present form a matrix of interconnection between Poe and the embattled media conglomerate. Indeed, ABS-CBN is not just a broadcast and media network, it is a political network in and of itself.
Taking all these facts about ABS-CBN into consideration, any suggestion that the corporation is some sort of Messiah figure to the Filipino people and, as such, a “victim” of some imagined government crucifixion comes from the hopelessly addled minds of so-called “thought leaders” whose thinking hadn’t evolved much since the 1980s.
What is it exactly that Filipinos are losing if ABS-CBN goes dark forever? People should think about the answer to this question using clear heads not bent to the perverse narrative of partisans who remain rabidly loyal to the Aquino-Cojuangco feudal clan (a.k.a. the Yellowtards). What Filipinos are actually gaining from the closure of ABS-CBN is an opportunity to quit mediocre and unoriginal entertainment products cold turkey. More importantly, they will see a newly-leveled playing field in the important practice of broadcast news.
The future looks bright and Filipinos should embrace this change and the chance to build new and better things now that ABS-CBN no longer stands in the way of innovation in Philippine mass media
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
ABS CBN is the Propaganda machine network of the Aquino Cojuango political axis and the YellowTards. Some politicians , like Grace Poe and her family, have financial connections to the network. They use it for their political interests and for their business profits. It is a “win-win” situation for them.
For many years, this network has been used for disinformation and misinformation of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis, against their political enemies. It is also being used to promote the “virtues” of their YellowTard candidates.
Their third rate shows, and their nonsense telenovelas, are used to “dumb down” Filipino viewers, who patronize their shows…this was the reason many actors, show biz people, became politicians and are elected. Although, they are barely educated and do not know anything about public service; much more how to run the government.
We, the clueless Filipinos, think, that these idiotic actors heroism in their movies, will be translated to their heroism in their public service. How stupid can we get ? We got what we deserve, for being stupid and ignorant !
no filipinos dont think that. thats why fpj and his daughter grace lost in their election bids remember? try again.
a private corporation doesnt need to be anything other than what it wants to be, that is the definition of private ownership and free markets. it doesnt need to impress isagani cruz or benigno. the people will decide via their remote what they want to watch and the loser will go bankrupt. no one is forced to watch what is so difficult to understand? dutertards are now tolerating “we know whats good for you” authoritarian rule as long as its directed at the perceived yellows god save us
That’s right. So then the Yellowtards should realise that and see the idiocy in painting ABS-CBN as some sort of national hero that champions the cause of “press freedom” and swoops in to the rescue with “special” information about COVID-19.
I think the government should ban ALL FOREIGN sources of “fake news” that is damaging to the pilipino people. *clap *clap *clap
It should especially BAN the FAKE NEWS site GRP run by the Turd called benign0 who lives in Australia.
This should be the philippines NUMBER ONE priority in a time of coronavirus crisis. We should not let the TURD benign0 continue to disparage and insult the strength and the pride of the pilipino people.
We must DEMAND the Australian embassy repatriate the TRAITOR benign0 the TURD for spreading insulting lies against the pilipino people.
We’re not a news site though. So it’s baffling that you regard us as “fake news”.
You still didn’t learn about the fact that blogs are not ‘journalistic pieces’.
Are you really that dumb or you’re just trolling? It seems you represent the latter.
Lemme guess: according to your insane mind, you will go yapping about Pinoy Ako Blog as “true news” and you will hail that fat dumb bitch Jover Laurio being more ‘legit’.
No wonder why you keep on insulting/personal attacking the writers of this site: you’re just as vile and vicious as she is.
Not even the Australian embassy will take seriously a “demand” from a troll whose user name starts with “Darth”.
Get real, Australians deal with more important matters than utterly stupid requests like yours.
What kind of a subspecies creature uses that silly username “Darth M”? Ewww.
I can only agree with what Greengrin stated regardless of what foreigner invested in that media outlet.
‘the law may be harsh, but it is the law’
Abscbn failed to secure their franchise before it expired. That is that. The blame lies on both abscbn top brass and congress(es), not NTC. NTC was just doing its job.
For the politicians saying, why they issues cease and desist on may 5. The answer is plain and simple, their license expired on may 4. But the cease and desist does apply only to airwaves. So abscbn can technically operate over cable networks, or the internet still. So it isnt a total shutdown as some outlets make it out to be. Ive seen some mentions of it, but most seem to leave that out as a footnote.
Now, congress just needs to do its job. And is thete merit to the complaint by fitcap (the cable group about abscbn channels, and not just channel).
If it is about application for multiple channels or frequencies, i wondered why abscbn did not just apply for their main frequency for renewal, while the other channels or frequencies as a new application? Is it because it will be an admission of wrong doing during the time of their original franchise that was approved?
Hope it gets sorted accordingly. But i believe NTC did not do wrong in issuing the cease and desist. Their chairman i do believe did give false hope during a congressional hearing earlier this year only to go back on it since he had no legal backing for his claim. He can be charged with that for giving false statements.
….and who should pilipinos believed Benigno or the yellowtards?
I only believe and side with Spain, the Roman Catholic Church, and the EU. Period
I wonder why people haven’t questioned whether the congressional franchise system should be scrapped, and the job of broadcast regulation be given to the NTC. Congressmen have better things to do than study a company’s broadcast license. It’s probably a holdover from the old days, when there were so few accessible radio frequencies so congressmen were somehow assigned this job. Now you have Internet and all other media, so it makes no sense to limit it to congress.
http://www.thelobbyist.biz/perpectives/polwonk/855-congressional-franchise-reform
Then, even today, the Philippines has no public broadcasting network.