Category: media

no live coverage of ampatuan trial :(

Supreme Court spokesperson Atty. Midas Marquez said that only 30 accredited media, close relatives and counsels of complainants and defendants would be allowed inside the court room.

“I am asking for everyone’s cooperation. We are doing this for everyone’s sake, we’re not doing this for us, we’re doing this for everyone’s sake: for the accused to have a fair trial and for media to be able to access the hearing. So let us please coordinate and cooperate with one another,” Marquez said in a press conference.

Security will be tight inside the court room as well.

Media would have to pass through three “stations” for security check and proper verification of identification. Only one reporter from each media outfit is allowed inside the court room. No cellular phones, recorders, and other devices are allowed inside the court room, Marquez said.

in a tv newscast i heard marquez saying it was to “avoid trial by publicity”; in an interview by pia hontiveros that i caught the tail of, he was saying it was to avoid a situation like joseph estrada’s impeachment trial that saw people taking to the streets, or something to that effect.

but but but senator rodolfo biazon is right to ask for full media coverage:

“The PNP (Philippine National Police) and the government must give full transparency,” Biazon said. “The executive department must provide transparency to eliminate any doubts, to disprove (speculations) that the Ampatuans are supported by the military and the government.”

“Halimbawa, dapat makita itong trial,yung court hearing na naka schedule na gawin sa Camp Crame. Talagang special na mga nilalang ang mga Ampatuans dahil talagang naghanda pa ng court para sa kanila (For example, this court hearing in Camp Crame must be made public. The Ampatuansare really special because a court has been prepared especially for them),” Biazon pointed out.

hmm.   i wonder if ampatuan’s lawyers have anything to do with this supreme court directive.   suddenly i’m remembering what alex magno said about andal jr.’s very matinik lawyers:

We know now the Ampatuans have hired the best lawyers money could buy — and I have phrased that as carefully as I can.

Those lawyers will throw in every rule in the book, find every loophole in the law and develop every excuse to invalidate evidence. They will fight tooth-and-nail, if not to clear their clients, make it impossible to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

…A judicial ruling, after all, is shaped by the give-and-take of the trial proceedings — not by the strength of conviction in the public mind about the guilt or innocence of the accused.

yeah, this is one of those times when “due process” works in favor of the accused, sorry na lang ang mga biktima.   let’s hope that prosecution witnesses stand firm in their face-off with the notoriously crafty sigmund sigfrid fortun.   too too bad we’re not going to see any of it :-(

last-minute blues

there must be another way of handling the comelec registration process.   alam naman natin na may last-minute mentality ang pinoy.   comelec should have expected, and prepared for, the swarm instead of saying, kayo kasi…   lalo na’t merong concessions made to the rich and famous, like satellite ek-eks in kris aquino‘s case, and good old palakasan as in manuel buencamino‘s.   these, while masses of ordinary pinoys without connections had to line up for hours to register, if they were able to at all.    paano ka naman matutuwa sa ganyang palakad.

***

i can’t believe people are raving about the noynoy video hindi ka nag-iisa.   what’s so powerful about that torch-lit parade led by noynoy that went nowhere.   i’m like, they love this?   c’mon people, taas-taasan naman ang standards natin.   we already know na hindi siya nag-iisa.   tell us something new, let’s hear him talking platform.   hindi porke anak siya nina Ninoy at Cory ay okay na, siguradong he won’t lie, cheat, or steal.   that’s just too low a bar for a presidential candidate.   i need to hear how he’s going to address the problems of poverty, land reform, environment, education, foreign debt, chacha, atbp.   i will not take him, or anyone, on sheer faith.    i leave that to the pink sisters.

***

ayon kay senador nene pimentel tuloy tuloy ang pag-benta ng gma administration ng government assets, tipong ‘midnight sale,’    mostly to raise money pampuno sa napakalaking budget  ng 2009 or puwede ring pangkampanya sa 2010.    whatever, hindi lang pala ang food terminal inc. sa taguig at ang government shares in san miguel corp. at pnoc energy exploration corp. ang ibinebenta.  pati pala the sprawling properties ng national center for mental health at ng welfareville sa mandaluyong, gayon din ng national penitentiary sa muntinlupa city at ng home for the aged sa quezon city, “in complete disregard of their importance in providing vital social government services.”   ano ba yan.   ubos ubos biyaya.   and then what.   pag naubos, nakatunganga.   there must be a smarter way of handling our resources.    let’s demand that presidentiables be honest, yes, but also creative and wise.

environment 5: ormoc & security

ORMOC: TOWARD ECOLOGICAL SECURITY

Junie Kalaw

The Philippine environmental crisis took what is possibly its heaviest and cruelest toll on human life in Ormoc City. According to eyewitness reports by survivors, the waters had come abruptly, almost in the wink if an eye, sweeping everything in its path, a veritable deluge which the camera conveyed as so many bloated bodies floating like so many discarded dolls.

In the comparably torrential rush to absolve itself, the government attributed the denudation of forests in the Ormoc area to logging activities harking as far back as the 1950s, declaring that there hadn’t been any logging in the area in recent years. Media caused more disturbance by reporting intimations from sources within the government itself that politicians, military officials, and Department of Natural Resources (DENR) officials were, in some as yet indeterminate sense, culpable. The partisan character of government’s response once more evaded the fact that ecological responsibility is shared beyond the time-frames of electoral politics; similarly, the readiness of certain quarters within government to blame their cohorts indicates a tendency to pass the buck. But this is the way that government mocks the people’s suffering. We would have been surprised if it got around to pointing out how the geothermal facility in Ormoc contributed to the disaster, for that would have come too close to its plans for Mount Apo in Mindanao.

Our concept of security needs reorienting. We erode fertile topsoil at the rate of one billion cubic meters a year, enough land to produce 10 million sacks of rice. There are 13 badly eroded provinces in the country today that qualify as unrealized security risks. If conditions in one or two areas decline enough to reprise Ormoc next monsoon, will the new administrationsimilarly wash its hands of responsibility?

Disaster relief operations in the country are usually undertaken by the military, who admittedly may be relied upon to fulfill this function. During such occasions, they are said to be diverted from their normal task of overseeing the country’s security. The frequent occurrence, however, of environmental disasters today compels us to ask if the current definition of “normal” military duties requires updating, having been drawn from an old and narrow perspective of national security. Isn’t it time that this old concept be amended to include ecological security, with the army tasked to protect our forests: the navy, our coral reefs and fishing grounds, and the air force our atmosphere?

For far too long, in all countries that have not had the fortune of having a long history of neutrality, the military has competed for resources that have promoted violence instead of peace, its concern being to maintain and modernize its armature, which amounts to a potential for violence. It will be argued, of course, that peace is precisely what is expected to bring about to the extent of adopting a functional rationality in the extreme case of war. However, it may in turn be argued that the concept of war has already changed substantially, as when the government itself speaks of the need to do war against ignorance or poverty, or when an industrial society exports toxic waste to secure its own people’s health, or strains another country’s standards of safety for its own profit.

The idea of ecological security entails the use of information as a weapon and shifts the focus from human targets to natural structures. Securing the integrity of natural structures then becomes a limit beyond which the military becomes obsolete because it will have transformed itself from being an instrument of genocide into a facilitator of the life process

10 November 1991

plagiarism and, uh, karen davila? is that you?!

while it was great that upon cory’s death pinoy tv was swamped with docus that revisited her exalted place in philippine history, one docu, Laban ni Cory,  produced and aired many times by ABS-CBN 2 from august 2 onward, raised my ire and my eyebrows.

my ire because some of karen davila’s narrative spiels covering the period of the snap elections through to EDSA sounded oh so familiar, so very close to, if not my very own words in, Himagsikan sa EDSA — Walang Himala! and yet there was no attribution, as though karen davila herself researched and wrote the stuff (wow ang galing), something that took me all of twelve years, lol.

I
KAREN DAVILA:

(010) Sa paniniwalang sila ang tunay na nanalo sa eleksiyon, isang victory rally ang inilunsad sa Luneta nina Cory at Doy, na dinumog naman ng mahigit isang milyong tao.

(013) At bilang tugon sa malawakang dayaan sa eleksiyon, inilunsd nina Cory Aquino at Doy Laurel ang civil disobedience campaign, Himinok ang taong bayan na huwag magbayad ng koryente, tubig, at iboykot ang media, bangko at iba pang kompanyang pagaari ng mga tuta ni Marcos. Marami ang sumangayon at sumunod sa panawagang ito. Wala pang isang linggo mula nang unang manawagan ng boycott si Cory nameligro ang ekonomiya ng bansa at nataranta ang mga negosyante.

HIMAGSIKAN SA EDSA–Walang Himala! page 40 last paragraph

Ika-16 ng Pebrero, sa isang “victory rally” sa Luneta na dinumog ng mahigit isang milyong tao, inilunsad nina Cory Aquino at Doy Laurel ang kanilang civil disobedience campaign. Nagpilit si Cory na siya ang nagwagi sa eleksiyon at nangakong pupuwersahin niya si Marcos na magbitiw, sabay hinimok ang taong-bayan na sabayan siya sa pagsuway sa mga utos ng diktador — huwag magbayad ng koryente at tubig, iboykot ang crony media at crony banks, gayon din ang Rustan’s Department Store, San Miguel Corporation, at iba pang kompanyang pag-aari ng mga tuta at katoto ni Marcos.

page 42 paragraph 2

Wala pang isang linggo mula nang unang manawagan ng boykot si Cory…

page 41 paragraph 1

Nataranta ang malalaking negosyante, gayon din ang multinationals …

II

DAVILA:

(022) Kakaiba na noon ang ihip ng hangin. Palaban na ang taong bayan, sabik sa pagbabago at may natatanaw nang pagasa, salamat sa biyuda ng isang tao …

HIMAGSIKAN page 42 last paragraph

Salamat sa biyuda ni Ninoy, kakaiba na noon ang ihip ng hangin. Mapanghimagsik na ang timpla ng taong-bayan, punong-puno bigla ng pag-asa, sabik sa mga naamoy na pagbabago, noong bisperas ng EDSA.

III

DAVILA

(063) Naghudyat si Ver ng all out attack sa riot police, sa marine artillery, sa mga helicopter gunship, at mga jet bomber.

(067) Naririnig din si Marcos sa radyo. Isinusumpang lilipulin ang mga rebelde.

HIMAGSIKAN page 135 paragraph 2

Sa Fort Bonifacio, naghudyat sina Ver at Ramas ng all-out attack sa riot police, sa Marine artillery, sa mga helicopter gunship, at sa mga jet bomber. Naririnig si Marcos sa radyo, isinusumpang lilipulin ang mga rebelde.

IV

DAVILA

(070) Pumosisyon ang mga sundalo at nagkasahan ng mga baril. Subalit walang atakeng nangyari. Lumapag ang mga chopper sa Crame. Isa-isang lumabas ang mga pilot, may hawak na mga puting bandila at naglalaban sign.

HIMAGSIKAN page 138 paragraph 4

Napakagat ng labi ang mga sundalo, nagkasahan ng mga baril, pumosisyon.

page 139 from last paragraph page 138

Isa-isang lumalabas ang mga piloto, may hawak na mga puting bandila at nagla-Laban sign.

V

DAVILA

(076) Ala singko ng hapon, sa kabila ng banta sa kanyang seguridad sumaglit sa EDSA si Cory …

(081) Sa main entrance ng Philippine Overseas Amployment agency o POEA building nagbigay siya ng maikling talumpati sa mga taong nagtipon sa kantong iyon ng Ortigas at EDSA. Pinuri ni Cory ang mapayapang pagkilos ng mga tao…

HIMAGSIKAN page 165 paragraph 1

Bandang 5:00 ng hapon, nagpakita sa wakas sa EDSA/Ortigas si Cory Aquino, na Sabado pa ay hinahanap na ng mga Coryista. Sa main entrance ng Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) building, sa kanto ng EDSA at Ortigas, siya dumaan kasama ang kanyang pamilya at mga tagapagtaguyod.

paragraph 5

Sa kanyang talumpati sa mga taong nagtipon sa kantong iyon ng Ortigas at EDSA, pinuri ni Cory ang mapayapang pagkilos ng mga tao …

the docu’s closing credits list the writers and researchers.   i expect the researchers cited their sources of info, it’s part of the job, and  if so, who decided not to mention na lang these sources, the writers or the hosts?   na okay lang naman as long as magaling sila and they can write the material in their own words.   but even then, dapat ay mayroon pa ring acknowledgement sa dulo ang sources of information na hindi pa common knowledge.

kung hindi pala sila ganoong kagaling, dapat ay inamin nila by writing-in “ayon kay…  sa librong so-and-so….”    or maybe it was karen davila who couldn’t be bothered with “ayon sa’s”, akala niya ay makakalusot?   whatever, whoever, wittingly or un-, she committed plagiarism by lifting and appropriating my words for her own use without a by-your-leave or a thank-you,  how unprofessional, how dishonest, how disgraceful.

nakakataas ng kilay kasi it doesn’t take much time and effort to cite and acknowledge sources.   unless of course the idea is to give the impression that hosts and writers of ABS-CBN News & Current Affairs productions are all-knowing and sufficient unto themselves?

so, okay, now that i’ve vented, what next?    what do i expect?   well.   iniisip ko nga.   an apology?   too easy to shed crocodile tears.   credits on the docu?   rather too late, unless of course they have plans of selling dvds, in which case, okay, credits, and a share in the profits?

suggests a writer friend:  like a lawyer can be disbarred, a beauty queen forced to abdicate, ask for the head of the plagiarist in the form of dismissal or suspension.   or how about punishing the culprit by having her write a million times in longhand a very long mea culpa — the equivalent of 20 years of keyboarding chores or tendonitis.   oscar lopez could also buy the next edition of your book to give away to all libraries nationwide.

sounds good, all of the above ;)