The hypocrites among us

Maybe it is because Pablo John Garcia grew up in a friendlier environment that he is able to comment on the world around him with a much higher sense of humor than I could. Me, I tend to be more dour and angry.

Nevertheless, I am very pleased to learn that I am not, after all, the only one who noticed the reeking bias with which the ABS-CBN News Channel, or ANC, has been covering political events in this country, and then dared to talk about it.

I just loved the way Pablo John made fun of the way the ANC "brat patrol of anchors" covered last month's public display of childish tantrums by the ostensibly highly disciplined but now discredited Philippine Marines at Fort Bonifacio.

And he is right. Ricky Carandang and his bevy of anchors at the studio were clearly flushed with a preconceived notion of how the situation would go and then sputtered when things just did not go according to their expectations.

Good if their expectations were born of that honest desire common among journalists to get caught up in something exciting. But I have reason to suspect their expectations run parallel to some other motive.

My suspicions hark back to the time when there was an attempt by the political opposition in Congress to impeach President Arroyo, with ANC the only television station that covered the entire proceedings live.

To be sure, extra care was exercised to make sure reporting on the proceedings do not deviate from what people can see with their own eyes. It was when the whole thing came to an end that the true color of the ANC anchors literally exploded in full public view.

When the impeachment complaint was thrown out by the House of Representatives, which was admittedly dominated by Arroyo allies, all the ANC anchors and reporters, to a man (or woman), came out dressed in black.

There were just too many of them to consider the monochromatic sartorial display as a mere coincidence. Filipinos are not stupid. I certainly am not. I saw that as a public display of sentiment that has no place in a supposedly objective exercise of professional journalism.

In a commentary program, or in an opinion piece such as this, sentiment is of course the essence of discourse. But in a news coverage, any public display of personal sentiment is a big no-no. And yet there they were, the ANC news team, all dressed in black.

It was a statement that spoke louder than words. And yet, what really set me thinking was whether it was possible for so many people, with presumably very diverse personal interests and tastes, to suddenly come to the same decision to wear black.

I do not think so. I honestly believe the choice of color was agreed upon, in which case it was deliberate, done by design. And that not only made it very unprofessional, it was very malicious as well.

And yet this is the very same station, belonging to the very same network, that is making a lot of noisy bellyaching about press freedom. Well, I guess constitutional guarantees cover everyone, including the hypocrites among us.

And that makes for a very sad commentary of the state of democratic freedoms in this country. When the media uses its vast powers and influence to impose on people its own standards, no matter how biased, democracy has little chance of flowering into beautiful little freedoms.