WORDS
MANILA, NOVEMBER
25, 2011 (MANILA TIMES) SOME commentators have wrongly
castigated President Benigno Aquino 3rd for the most applauded part of his
speech at the celebration on Wednesday of the 75th anniversary of the National
Bureau of Investigation.
This is our rude translation of what the President said in Tagalog:
"These past days, meaningless diatribes, innuendoes and barbershop tales have
again proliferated against us.
We are allegedly too aggressive in the pursuit of the crooked, the
malefactors.
My reply to them is this: The speed and might with which we will make them
answer for their corrupt deeds will be triple their aggressiveness in stealing
the people's money when they were in power. (The President got an applause at
this point.)
We are prepared to do this because reason and truth, and above all, the
people are on my side. The people gave us the opportunity to serve our country,
so we owe gratitude and fidelity to them alone—and no other.
Therefore, whether you are a garbage collector or a former president, a
driver or a justice, if you have taken advantage of the Filipino people, you
deserve to be pursued and made to account for your liabilities, pay for the
damage you have done."
Nothing in these words the President spoke at the NBI's Diamond Anniversary
convocation can be construed to mean that the President was giving "hints" to
"defy all unfavorable SC rulings" and that he would take steps that would cause
the "worsening of the ongoing constitutional crisis and bring it to a head in
his bid to establish a dictatorship."
Yet, the words in quotations marks in the foregoing paragraphs were in the
lead sentence of a broadsheet's banner story yesterday. And some broadcasters
echoed those sentiments.
When media distort reports of an event, they give a reason for politicians—as
the President has done a number of times—to complain. And, wrongly, even blame
us for some of the problems in our society.
Some broadcasters also distorted one of the stories in our Sunday Times page
1 special report of November 20 about the arrest of former president Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo.
That story, the bottom item in the special report, ran under the heading
"Ex-president joins parade of arrested Asian leaders."
The story begins with Filipino former presidents and high executive
officials—our hero Andres Bonifacio, the late statesman President Jose P.
Laurel, President Aquino's grandfather Benigno Aquino Sr. and former president
Erap Estrada.
The foreigners mentioned are Burma's pro-democracy heroine Aung San Suu Kyi,
Pakistan's Zulficar Ali Bhutto, Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim, China's Jiang Qing and
the Gang of Four, Indonesia's Sukarno, Korea's Roh Tae-Woo and Chun Doo-hwan and
Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian.
Guess what some broadcasters did? They attacked The Manila Times for
comparing former president Arroyo with Aung San Suu Kyi—which we did not!
We in the media have a duty not only to sell our newspapers and make our
columns and radio and TV commentaries exciting. We also have a higher calling to
tell the truth or at least the true facts.
We in The Times also believe media have a duty to contribute to making the
national discourse rational, less emotional and more illuminating.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS
ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
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