Astounding double standard: Mainstream media mum over government intimidation of political bloggers

Chalk another one up for the double standard of the Philippines’ mainstream media. On one hand, they would be up in arms over even the slightest hint of government and powerful politicians’ influence — much more suppression — of citizens’ rights to express themselves in a public forum. At the core of this “debate” over freedom of expression is the assertion by politicians that certain bloggers and content creators are exploiting their large social media followings to disseminate information of questionable quality. Then again, if one would stop to step back from the tech media available today and look at the first principles here, how different is blogging and social media posting from the act of stepping onto a soapbox in a public square and shouting out one’s views?

To be fair, many digital content publishers apply malicious intent in the delivery of their craft. Some have, rightly so, been called out for the outright falsehoods they liberally pepper their work with. Then again, “journalists” employed by traditional media organisations would also be hard-pressed to prove a lack of balance or malicious bias in their work. Indeed, look no further than the suspicious circumstances surrounding the founding of “social news media” organisation Rappler in 2012 — impeccably timed to coincide with the impeachment circus against the late Chief Justice (at the time) Renato Corona that was about to erupt. Rappler then joined other mainstream media organisations in an all-out demonisation campaign against Corona, publishing and amplifying outrageous and unverified information about him.

Worse things were perpetrated by this mob back then. Rappler “online reporter” Magtanggol de la Cruz published the balance of one of Corona’s foreign currency deposits in an article that bears the ironic title ‘Secrecy in foreign currency deposits‘ dated the 8th of Feb…

The latest one that has grabbed my attention has to do with whether or not a Philippine bank can be compelled via a subpoena to disclose information relating to a foreign currency bank deposit of its depositor, in this case, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The scuttlebutt, of course, is that Justice Corona has a US$[bleep] deposit held by the Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank) and that the prosecutors even know its account number.

…refering to a previous article dated the 4th of Feb where “online reporter” Carmela Fonbuena reveals not only that dollar amount but the account number where it is deposited as well…

The $[bleep] deposited in account number [bleep] is supposedly just one of 14 accounts that the Chief Justice and his wife Cristina individually and jointly own with daughter Carla Castillo and her husband Constantino III. Prosecution wants the branch manager of PSBank Katipunan branch to appear before the court and bring the bank documents on February 7, Tuesday.

All the above were potential criminal acts that reflected badly on the integrity of the then Senate impeachment trial court which, it can be argued, became party to violations of bank secrecy laws when it allowed admission of evidence obtained by unlawful means.

The short of it is that really bad things were done by supposedly credentialled “journalists” working for “reputable” corporate institutions such as Rappler. Why then is Congress today giving the time of day spending precious taxpayer funds turning the screws on small fry such as these personalities within the so-called “Duterte Die-hard Supporters” (DDS) blogger community? Perhaps these content creators are, in fact, perceived to be a significant threat to today’s powers-that-be — a government and political camp that had, in fairness to them, handily outwitted their vastly more popular nemesis camp.

The camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte, unfortunately, have not much left other than an ability to stir up public discontent via the messaging of its cadre of political bloggers. In light of this, perhaps it would be sensible for the DDS community to carefully consider the quality and soundness of their methodology seeing that a desperate foe becomes more dangerous as their desperation escalates.

benign0

benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.