The CAMMA Awards

We would be guilty of a serious omission if we fail to congratulate, although belatedly, The Freeman staff, headed by editor Jerry Tundag, for bagging three of the four major slots of the Cebu Archdiocesan Mass Media Awards. This paper's editorials were adjudged the best along with its editorial cartoons and Fr. Roy Cimagala's write-ups.

The awards are indeed a vindication of the bold step taken by this paper's chairman Jose R. Gullas and president Miguel Belmonte a year ago when they agreed on a joint venture in publishing the oldest newspaper in the Visayas. The move not only strengthened the business infrastructure of the paper, it also enriched its pool of experts whose handiwork is the newspaper Cebu public is now getting: A creative and dynamic publication with an unwavering commitment to public service and promotion of ethical values.

Service and values are compulsive abstractions close to the heart of former congressman Dodong Gullas. These are a Gullas legacy straight from Freeman founder Paulino Gullas and his brother Vicente Gullas, also a founder but of a different endeavor.

The CAMMA Awards, inspired as these are by the apostolic aim of His Eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal to make Cebu Media supportive of Christo-centered values, therefore touched a soft spot in the heart of the Chairman as well as of everyone of the paper's work force. Again, congratulations!

Some people have asked this writer why the Cebu Church has been particularly interested in the quality of media outputs in this part of the country. The question is not difficult to answer even for a lay man like me. But it is difficult to understand why it is asked in the first place especially by baptized Christians. It is sad, but whoever doubts the propriety of the Church in guiding the media, if "guiding" is the right term, must have failed to understand the role of this religious institution in the affairs of society.

Informed Christians are aware that the Church's obsession is the welfare of every man and woman. Man is the be-all and end-all in its economy of faith and salvation. "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church… whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven…" Jesus said to Peter. The Church is for people and people are for the Church. In fact, the people are the Church themselves because with baptism they become children of God. This being the case, the entire affairs of the Church are undertaken in the interest of men and women insofar as their physical and spiritual well-being is concerned.

Like the Church, the Mass Media are also people oriented institutions. Although generally organized as business outfits, community service is usually a major commitment and attitude development is among media's concerns. Media practitioners may be earning their keep from the profits generated by their outputs, but most of them are conscience-driven people whose credentials are more than verbal fluency or word-smithing ability. Idealism is not uncommon and the desire to do good is almost always in the heart.

But being secular in nature, the Mass Media need an infusion of the spiritual concepts and outlook from the Church. Without this there is the ever-present danger of getting mired in the mudhole of crass materialism and the neglect of humanistic thrusts on both the temporal and supernatural plane. In an authoritarian society, for example, the Mass Media are used to brainwash people towards a state of mind supportive of those in authority. One needs only to look back to martial law days to get an idea of how the fourth estate was muffled from disclosing the truth to serve the megalomaniac designs of the dictator president.

The Mass Media are therefore like a two-edge sword. It can be employed to serve humanity or to disparage it. It can build a social order or scuttle it. It can forge unity or foment divisiveness. That is why the Church has to enter into a continuing dialogue with the purveyors of information and formators of opinion if only to share its light in the resolution of issues affecting the people. In the current scenario of political confusion, for instance, the Church has made its stand which, dispersed through media, has been a sobering guide for all for us. It has also articulated the cancerous lumps afflicting our socio-political life and has enjoined the lay faithfuls to seek refuge in prayers, thus conveying to all concerned the roadmap of its social apostolate.

The CAMMA awards in a way are the local Church's statement of that apostolate articulated through Cebu's Mass Media.