Category: social media

vitug, UST, online journalism

read on (the) line: credibility, the academe, journalism for radikalchick‘s take on marites danguilan vitug‘s UST breaks the rules to favor Corona (rappler.com) and lito zulueta‘s response, UST: CJ Corona earned Ph.D. (inquirer broadsheet).

not surprisingly, the online community, beyond taking sides, vitug vs. corona, is most offended by zulueta’s, or is it UST’s, clear disdain for online journalism and rappler.com.

“Is that a legitimate news organization? What individuals and entities fund Newsbreak and Rappler? Do these outfits have editors? Who challenged Miss Vitug’s article before it went online so as to establish its accuracy, objectivity and fairness? Why was there no prior disclosure made? What gate-keeping measures does online journalism practice?”

to which the center for media freedom and responsibility (CMFR) responded with Specious and Ingenuous, referring to zulueta’s piece, and taking the side of vitug in no uncertain terms.

The argument that as an example of online journalism Ms. Vitug’s article did not go through the gate-keeping process standard in print journalism is similarly misleading. Gate-keeping is indeed an issue in online journalism, but as editor-at-large of Rappler, Ms. Vitug is herself that site’s lead gatekeeper. Vitug, who has been a journalist for 30 years, is also the founder ofNewsbreak, “which has operated as a magazine and online for more than a decade until it joined Rappler in December 2011.”

CMFR notes that Ms. Vitug’s attempt to get the side of UST and Corona, and her disclosing that she was either rebuffed or ignored, were both in keeping with journalistic ethics and protocol.

hmm.  i must confess, it feels strange to be disagreeing with CMFR on this one.  but UST’s tack, which everyone presumes is zulueta’s, questioning the credibility of rappler.com if not of vitug, a journalist of long standing, was the perfect riposte.  by the standards of mainstream journalism, vitug’s piece failed to put the dissertation issue in the context of the big picture — is it something that happens, too, in other universities?  did corona pressure UST into granting him exemptions, or was it purely on UST’s initiative?

that she tried to get the side of UST and corona but was rebuffed shouldn’t have stopped vitug from further investigation.  in keeping with journalistic standards of verification and fairness, her researcher could have checked out the matter with CHED, and maybe she would have learned what zulueta gleefully pointed out, that UST is allowed by CHED to grant academic degrees to individuals “whose relevant work experiences, professional achievements and stature, as well as high-level, nonformal and informal training are deemed equivalent to the academic requirements for such degrees.” then perhaps she would have come to a different, less biased, conclusion, as befits a journalistic piece?  unless, of course, it was part of a diss-corona campaign in aid of his conviction sa impeachment trial, no more, no less.

interesting tuloy ang tanong ng UST about who’s funding newsbreak.ph and rapper.com.  pro-palace ba?  pro-RH and -FOI malamang, in accordance with the majority mood.  pero pro-what else?  anong agenda?  at puwede rin namang wala, banat lang nang banat according to the wishes of the crowd, which would not help the discourse any, but it would keep netizens all fired up all the time, good for digital advertisers which that ceo maria ressa hopes to attract for a “sustainable commercial venture.”

but wait.  isn’t advertising the no-no of what ressa calls “uncompromised journalism?”  googled it and found this definition (from Politics: An Introduction to Modern Democratic Government pages 151-152) that’s specific to public radio and tv broadcasting but would seem applicable to new media as well, where “funding comes from the state … and broadcasters are…released from the imperatives of pleasing advertisers and appealing to the markets that advertisers want.”

so where is rappler’s funding coming from?  who’s spending for the iligan coverage, for example?  the state?  the palace?  philanthropists?  NGOs?  the rappler team mismo?  if any of the first four, then what’s the trade off?  if the last, then mabuhay kayo, good job, i wish you all deep pockets!

interesting din yung question about gate-keeping.  so vitug gate-keeps herself and that’s okay?  but that’s so like blogging, which i do, and which is nothing like rappler’s thing.  radikalchick is right: if the site wants to be taken seriously, ressa et al must define  terms, draw lines, and maybe rethink their concept.  that is, if rappler hopes to earn the respect of mainstream and online media and, in the process, upgrade the quality of and standards for citizen journalism in the pinoy blogosphere and social media.

otherwise, puwede rin namang status quo lang, let rappler be whatever it is they envision claim it to be, pero stop with the grand promise of inspiring smart conversations and igniting a thirst for change, because the question becomes: what kind of change?  small change a la phnoy?

my only prayer is, let it not be as blogger benignO fears: More traditional “branded” journos = more inbred thinking.

 ***

BREAKING NEWS from radikalchick

Or what to do after UST shoots you down, invoking academic freedom and autonomy

Vitug et al could have gone to the CHED website, searched for ETEEAP, clicked on the link that explains what this is exactly, scrolled down this ETEEAP page, and  found a downloadable document entitled “list of HEIs.”  upon opening that document dated December 2010, they would have discovered that while the University of Santo Tomas is indeed granted by CHED the right to give any person a degree based on years of experience etc etc., a Doctorate in Law is not included in that list of degrees.

University of Santo Tomas (UST)
Bachelor of Arts; BS Engineering; BS Nursing; BS Music;
Graduate Programs (MBA; MA Music)

granted the possibility that this list has since been updated, this was still the right “journalistic” reaction to UST’s statement, yes?  and it took me all of five minutes to do.

 

The Piolo predicament

has gone viral.  posted just two days ago by gma news online, the link has been shared 44,500 times!  the charice challenge, that made it to the list of Best Music Writing 2011’s honorable mentions, was shared some 2 to 3,000 times, and we thought that was a lot.

protecting a plagiarist

when mainstream media can and do ignore the scandalous plagiarism of a krip yuson, when he continues to write a column for the arts and culture section of philippine star, if he continues to write for rogue magazine, when he continues to shepherd aspiring writers in the dumaguete writing workshop, if he continues to teach creative writing in the ateneo, if he continues to be a presence in the palanca awards night, what does it say of our mainstream media, our academic institutions, and our literary culture?

at least in social media he has been exposed and excoriated, as he deserves to be, and gmanews online has fired him as editor-at-large.   i am sure it helped that no less than the center for media freedom and responsibility — executive director, melinda quintos de jesus; deputy director, luis teodoro; directors jose abueva, fr. joaquin bernas, fulgencio factoran, maribel ongpin, paulynn paredes-sicam, and vergel santos — jeered at yuson from its website for attempting to legitimize plagiarism.

so again i ask, what does it say of our mainstream media, our academic institutions, and our literary culture when a krip yuson is allowed to go on as if nothing happened?   as if plagiarism by a much-admired writer is forgivable.   microcosm of the macrocosm?   if danding cojuangco can get away with the coconut levy funds, if the marcoses can get away with plunder and human rights violations, if jocjoc bolante can get away with a fertilizer scam, if gma can get away with hello-garci and extrajudicial killings, if the aquinos can get away with hacienda luisita, if the supreme court can get away with partisanship and plagiarism, if the bishops can get away with lying about sex and reproduction, if angelo reyes can get away with suicide, why not krip yuson with plagiarism?

mainstream media and academics and the righteous showbiz burgis were so quick to jump on willie revillame for the janjan episode.   this renders their silence on krip yuson’s plagiarism and arrogance both deafening and shocking.   more so when one asks why kaya the silence, and the only answer seems to be that they are protecting their own kind, condoning their own sins, tell me if i’m wrong.   wonder no more what’s happening to our country.   they are all complicit in this damaged culture.

in the spirit of disclosure: krip and i were friends until we had a falling out over a personal matter many years ago.   i’ve since kept out of his way as he has kept out of mine.   so, if we were still friends, would i be saying all these in public?   given the way he has handled it, YES, and i would not have hesitated to scream at him to his face, or over the phone, for being so stupid as to think he was big enough to get away with it.   not in my book.   friend or no friend.

no, krip, this isn’t fun

it is hardly of any consequence that the usual lynch mob that marauds through social media is having such a fun time indulging in vituperation.

no one’s “having such a fun time“.   rather, it’s a sad sad sad state of affairs.

here’s a piece i solicited from a suki in my comment section, whose perspective on plagiarism i share.

FAILED INSTITUTIONS

It appears hubris has made another man mad.  Stuart Santiago is absolutely correct lumping the pang-masa Willie and the ur-conyo Krip Yuson in one post.  I am a writer myself and I pity the man for losing his grasp of reality.  Since I don’t really have one, I seldom use my name even as I flood the Interwebs with my thoughts, some of them pretty jarring if you’re one of those pedigreed types that compete yearly for best at Madison Square Garden.  Yuson, who has a name, is on the verge of losing it.  The first stage of grief is universal and we sympathize, but not to the point of selling out our future.

Perhaps it is only fitting that it was a real man who outed him. Yuson has this smell of alpha dog about him.  His first apologetic letter had the manly signature of admitting one’s mistake without really admitting it.

But let me give you my simple thoughts on the issue, based on fact and common sense.

Yuson edited the Joble piece for GMA News Online.  FACT.

Yuson wrote the Rogue magazine piece under his byline.  FACT.

Fact:  Jaemark called him out on April 6, calling his action plagiarism.

Fact:  Yuson replied, admitting he had “joined the list of perpetrators of plagiarism,” apologizing to “readers, as well as the entities involved” and predicting he “will beat my breast for a good long time, make that a long awful time.

Now on his 2nd writeup on the matter, we have a man less contrite than he was a week prior… FUCK! Instead of being raked over coals, he says he “might just break wind” over the entire thing. Fuck!

It also appears he has taken back his former admission of committing plagiarism, calling it “alleged plagiarism,” as it seems that an “editor can lay claim to part ownership of written work, as has been argued about in the past.” FUCK!  And another FUCK:

“… in all truth, the quotation marks and initial attribution to Rey Joble and GMANews Online were dropped, intentionally by me as the marks made the chunk look so clunky. I thought I’d work the credits back in somehow, once I was about to finalize the submission for Rogue. That didn’t happen, and that’s my grievous fault.”

Now for some common sense questions:

DO you dear readers accept this excuse for leaving out proper attribution: quotation marks look so clunky?

DO you my fellow gullible indios believe for one second that a writer who had the good intention of properly attributing said passages would forget to inform his editor on his sprightly omission of quotation marks?

Please take your time. Then here are more questions:

DEAR members of the academe, do you for one second believe that an editor has a write to recycle a “chunk” of another man’s writing into his own piece without quotation marks or other but equally obvious marks that indicate the “chunk” isn’t from the byline?

DEAR Atenistas, do you for a single minute believe that Yuson, being editor, is automatically part-writer?  OK, never mind that.  Let’s say you believe he is part-writer of the Joble piece, placing a comma in the original Joble:

“He was regarded as the man responsible for the revival of the popularity of the Philippine Basketball Association.  It was under his watch when the pro league agreed to send the first-ever all-pro national men’s basketball team to the Asian Games and when the Asia’s pioneering pro league institutionalized the annual PBA All-Star Game.”

DO you all honestly think it is all right for him to recycle said piece?  Have you ever heard of the word “self-plagiarism”?  How about double-dippingDove-tailing?

DEAR Rogue Editor.  Do you allow double-dipping?  Ok, let’s say you do since this is R.P.  Do you allow cross publication of a piece without crediting the first publisher?

DEAR Krip Yuson.  If indeed you intended to credit Joble for the passages, then why did you have to EDIT the piece – “The further ‘rewrites’ you cited were no attempt to paper or layer over the piece that appeared in GMAnews online, but simply efforts by me to make it read even better, or so I thought at the time.” Didn’t you already edit it on its first publication on GMA Online?  Did it sound too much like Joble?

Statement

I believe Yuson’s first crime is punishable by suspension from the institutions he is associated with.  His second and third crimes, the grave crimes of palusot, is punishable by expulsion.  Why are these latter crimes more serious?  Let me ask the faculty of Ateneo that.  Why is Yuson’s palusot a serious crime in academe?  To Philippine Star … what am I saying?   To GMA News Online … Are you seriously supporting Mr. Yuson?  Do you seriously think silence is a virtue, under any circumstances, in journalism?  To Krip’s friends…  I know you are no better than this guy, but do you honestly think he can get away with it?

To Stuart Santiago.  I hope your suggestion I write a post about it for your blog pays off.  We get satisfaction from explaining the obvious.  Such is life in this country.

BRIAN