How would Teddyman handle present scandals at the Palace

The passing away last week of former Press Secretary Teodoro "Teddyman" Benigno literally left a big space to be filled by The Philippine STAR where he wrote his thrice a week column, "Here’s the Score!"

Much accolade have been said of Teddyman as a journalist par excellence.

Allow me to give my own simple tribute to Teddyman as the first Press Secretary whom I was able to work with at Malacanang Palace.

Teddyman and I started working at the Palace together at the same time in September 1986, or a few months after former President Corazon Aquino was swept into office during the February EDSA People Power Revolution. He stayed on as Aquino Cabinet member until May 1989.

I was then covering the Palace for the defunct The Times Journal, which gave me my first break to cover the seat of government, until I left the halls of power March this year after being promoted as news editor of The STAR.

Teddyman had always remained a journalist at heart whenever he performed his job as press secretary. So his appointment to this Cabinet post was warmly welcomed by even the young reporters like me at that time, knowing the former media bureau chief of the Agence France Presse (AFP) was our insider in the inner sanctum of the Presidency.

Teddyman served as our "pool’ reporter in the closed-door meetings of the Cabinet, courtesy calls of foreign and local visitors of Mrs. Aquino at the Palace.

So everytime he conducted his press briefings after each of these events, Teddyman gave us the lowdown, from the ambience of the meeting to the exchanges during the talks, particularly the most quotable quotes of Mrs. Aquino and her callers.

Most of the time, his rich vocabulary and grasp of national and world events turned his press briefings into lessons in French history, philosophy and spelling, too.

Teddyman came at the time while Mrs. Aquino was still very much sought-after by the international media for leading the country’s return to democracy. The problem though of Teddyman at that time was having a President who was still smarting, or hurting, and did not feel exactly in good terms with the Philippine press.

Given her experience during the Marcos-controlled media which ignored her and the opposition leaders, Mrs. Aquino made herself more accessible to the foreign press which gave her and the opposition the media space they did not get from the Philippine press.

So Teddyman had a falling out of sort with us in the Malacanang Press Corps after the young breed of journalists, enjoying the new found press freedom in the country, went on a black shirt, sit down strike against this perceived bias of Mrs. Aquino against them.

He did not stop us but after that, Teddyman admonished us. It was more of a father trying to talk reason with his rebellious sons and daughters, about the finer points of journalism and reminded us we’re not supposed to beg for news but seek it out whereever it would lead us.

His words of wisdom became forever embedded in my memory and have become my everyday challenge since then.

And this I did through those years of covering the Presidency and the Palace several decades and several press secretaries later after Teddyman.

As press secretary, Teddyman was a veteran of seven failed coup attempts against ex-President Aquino and he quit as Cabinet secretary only after he gained the high moral ground in his personal battles in the so-called "snakepit" at the Palace with Cabinet collegues and Palace factotums.

Presidential spokesman Ignacio "Toting" Bunye, concurrent press secretary of President Arroyo, could draw inspiration from Teddyman, especially in these times of crisis after scandals at the Palace.

Bunye’s woes at the Palace were far worse than Teddyman’s because Mrs. Aquino was a widow and most of her troubles emanated from her relatives.

As press secretary, Bunye took the bold move to preempt what the Palace feared could be an explosive expose to appear in media against President Arroyo on wiretapped telephone conversations with one of her supposed political leaders on how to go about the results of last year’s presidential elections, particularly those coming from Mindanao.

Bunye released last Monday to Palace reporters copies of the wiretapped conversations as re-recorded in compact discs.

Now for his bold moves, here comes Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita telling Palace reporters two days later that Bunye did this on his own volition, although saying he supported this course of action of the press secretary.

But knowing how Bunye does his job, he would not even confirm or deny anything without prior imprimatur or clearance or go-signal from the President or Ermita himself.

Apart from the question of who actually wiretapped the President’s private conversations, what is alarming is the very existence of the sophisticated means of prying into other people’s private communications and being able to alter them to mislead the public.

If it could happen to the President of the Republic, it could happen to anyone!

I’m sure all telephones at the Palace, including those at the Palace press working area, are bugged since Marcos’ regime.

This is an assault on an individual’s right to privacy in his or her communications and correspondence.

Innocuous or perfectly legitimate conversations can be manipulated to present an altogether different or even malicious picture at times, as has been done in the case of the two versions of wiretapped telephone conversations purportedly between President Arroyo and Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.

I was just wondering what Teddyman would have done if he were in the shoes of Bunye as press secretary caught during these times of crisis due to the jueteng payola scandal at the Palace with its twists and turns.

With his wealth of knowledge about the French Revolution, which always turned him waxing romantic, Teddyman, I’m sure would be poetic in his defense of the Republic.

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