Bongbong Marcos’ non-appearance at Jessica Soho’s Presidential Interviews has triggered a firestorm of controversy. Pro and anti-Marcos supporters have been twisting in the wind coming up with arguments defending and excoriating Marcos’ actions in their own bid to get a leg up, depending on which side they’re on.
It has opened up the debate which began in 2017 over which does the public believe more? Mainstream media “journalists” or social media “journalists?” Both are in quotation marks because one of the basic tenets of journalism, which is objectivity, has been flushed down the toilet. Nowadays, it is the norm to for “journalist-activists” to show their bias. This trend has been established by the rise of “populist dictators,” such as Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump and Narendra Mohdi.
In the Philippines, Rappler has been leading the charge against the Duterte administration, aided and abetted by media organizations owned and controlled by anti-Duterte oligarchs. The closure of ABS-CBN has is being made to be an election issue, along with the alleged “persecution” of Rappler and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, all of which have incurred the Presidential ire for its biased coverage.
Of course, the Marcos’ have long been subject to a demolition job even before the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986. It has continued to this day simply because the then opposition to Marcos, which is again the opposition against Duterte, has made the Marcos family the bogeyman for their failures in leadership.
Duterte has been pro-Marcos since he ran for President but hasn’t extended any special favors to the Marcos’ except for the burial of Apo Lakay at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The President had warm relations with the siblings Bongbong and Imee until the former declared he was running for President and finalized his team-up with Presidential daughter, Sara. Since then, Duterte has characterized Marcos Jr. as a weak leader, spoiled brat and a cocaine user.
The post-Marcos Philippine media is Asia’s most rambunctious group of journalists in the region. ABS-CBN was characterized by eminent political strategist Malou Tiquia as the largest political party in the country prior to its closure.
Maria Ressa’s Rappler has been at the forefront of “fighting” for press freedom and freedom of expression. Courage on and hold the line are Nobel Laureate Maria’s battle cries. Rappler is now allied with all anti-Duterte and anti-Marcos groups. There is no objectivity whatsoever in any of Rappler’s news stories. It has bolstered its reportorial line-up by taking in Inday Espina Varona from ABS-CBN, Joel Pablo Salud from the Philippine Star and John Nery from the Inquirer. It has trained its guns on Marcos, Duterte and their allies.
The Duterte administration is not without its own allies in media. There is the Manila Times, The Tribune and the Manila Standard broadsheets and the Iglesia ni Cristo’s Eagle News Network and SMNI, which is the broadcast arm of Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ religious sect. The Tribune’s ownership has supposedly passed between the heir of Ninez Cacho-Olivarez to that of Alfonso Cusi, the Secretary of the Department of Energy. Both the Times and the Standard have managed to keep their op-ed pages objective, with a healthy mix of pro and anti-Duterte and Marcos columnists. The Inquirer and the MVP Media Group are all rabidly aligned with Rappler and what remains of ABS-CBN, which continues to operate in the digital broadcast space.
The furor was reignited by Marcos’ claim that Jessica Soho was a biased program host which led BBM to decline to participate in her program’s Presidential Interviews. But prior to this, Marcos had been generous with his appearances among the pro-Duterte bloggers. These are the so-called DDS Bloggers, which predictably started going after each other’s throats in 2017 all through 2020 after the failure of Duterte Loyalist Mocha Uson to win a party-list seat in the House of Representatives despite her 5M following on Facebook.
Mocha and her manager, Byron Cristobal, maintained their ties with Bong Go and former House Speaker Alan Cayetano. Thinking Pinoy and Sass Sasot broke their ties with Mocha and Byron. Bruce Rivera’s group broke up, not due to differences amongst themselves , but more due to a change of personal circustances leading to only Rivera and MJ Quiambao Reyes keeping their following on social media. Drei Toledo has gone on to publish several books about the CPP-NPA with her mentor Mimi Fabe and the first book on the Duterte administration entitled Disruptive Innovations of the Duterte Presidency.
The other DDS core group composed of Trixie Cruz Angeles, Mark Lopez, Darwin Canete and Ethel Pineda are all still active with a program on the DZRJ UHF channel, Pugad Bloggers. While they still have ties to RJ Nieto and Sasot, they aren’t that close to Uson and Cristobal anymore as the two are now with Senator Bong Go. Cruz-Angeles has gone mainstream due to her being made a part of the Karambola radio program on DWIZ after the untimely death of Jojo Robles. Nieto quit the program to relocate to Baguio after joining the SMNI News Network of Pastor Apollo Quiboloy.
Uson hasn’t been active on social media after her page was taken down by Facebook for spreading fake news. Cristobal has taken over her blogging activities and has gained a following because of his closeness to SBG. He has been hitting out at BBM during the time SBG was still a Presidential candidate.
It was the 2016 campaign of Duterte which harnessed the power of social media. While Facebook came to the Philippines in 2008 and played a role in the two campaigns of Barack Obama in the US, internet penetration and the establishment of a mobile broadband service by telcos delayed Facebook’s impact on Filipinos, particularly politics, until 2016. It was only this time that Nic Gabunada, pioneered in the utilization of social media as a campaign platform, when he used the same to target overseas Filipino workers for the Duterte campaign. .
Duterte’s succesful Presidential run turned the focus on social media as an alternative, or rather the main platform, for every Juan to express his opinion about anything and everything. In fact, the campaign of traditional media “journalists” and the prominent personalities among the opposition’s ranks against the Duterte administration, has largely failed as Duterte will finish his term with the highest trust and approval ratings of any post-Marcos President. From the plurality which elected him in 2016, Duterte has consolidated his base and shutout the opposition in the 2019 midterm election.
It’s now the turn of the pro-Marcos bloc to “cancel” mainstream media in defense of Marcos’ non-appearance in Jessica Soho’s program which has reignited the debate over the credibility of mainstream or “lamestream” media.
The media landscape has changed drastically with the advent of social media platforms. Anyone can be a content creator nowadays with the only difference being whether one is successful or not. It’s not just on one platform either. You increase your chances of success by being on multiple platforms. It’s not limited to Facebook anymore given the strict enforcement of community standards which has Facebook tightening what can be or can’t be posted specially if it’s political content.
The supreme irony is at the time we have access to information at our fingertips, the more fake news proliferates and is taken to be the truth.
This is the direct result of the quantitative nature of digital media where performance is easily measured in terms of clicks, likes, shares and posts gone viral. It’s not like in the old days when readership and circulation were the key metrics for print and ratings were for broadcast. The metrics are more sophisticated in the current setting.
Investigative journalism has takes a backseat to sensationalist journalism which was how it was during the 19th century. Clickbait is the operative term given the shorter attention spans of audiences who are less inclined to read but more inclined to watch and listen. There are more viewers now than readers and there’s only a small segment which will bother to read a “long” article. Long is defined as being over 500 words.
Memes have also emerged as another means of conveying your message in the digital media realm. They are a combination of an image, a set of images and text. They are commonly referred to infogs, short for infographics or art cards, as the case may be. Memetic warfare is now a buzz phrase in the context of political campaigns.
If there are candidates who run for elective posts “for the funds of it” there are also “journalists” who write for the benefit of the envelope. This has long been a practice in the industry by what was then referred to as the “tabloid journalists.” Things got out of hand when the journalists themselves became media personalities who began endorsing products by appearing in commercials. This trend began in the media frenzy which accompanied the network wars between ABS-CBN and GMA. Much like political parties, there is a revolving door between the two networks, three if you count TV5 of the MVP Group which also began competing for top news talent even if their broadcast signal is still the weakest among the three.
Social media influencers who have a multitidue of followers can command “professional fees” but it’s not only reach that you’re paying for but also the quality of content generated. As of the last count, there are supposed to be 66M Filipinos who have social media accounts. The Comelec has the projected number of voters for the 2022 election at 63M. While smartphones have fallen in prices thanks to Chinese OEMs which continue to saturate the global market, internet connectivity is the last stumbling block for the rest of Filipinos to become connected to the wireless world.
Throw in cancel culture and wokeness in terms of political correctness and you have the perfect formula for bedlam and anarchy in the digital media space. There is a very thin line which separates serious articles over those which would be categorized under the Entertainment section in the old days. As such, the current debate over the Presidential interviews and debates is the level of bias, for or against, a particular candidate, continues to rage.
The reality is not all Filipinos have access to the internet which serves as the gateway to social media and the online version of mainstream media. In these areas, traditional media such as print and radio still lord it over the public. Free TV, radio and cable TV up to an extent, are still the best way to reach these voters in the regions.
The conduct of the campaign for Halalan 2022 has been hampered by the pandemic and this has also contributed to the frenzy we are seeing now. The public is aware of both the spin and the bias and it is really up to them what content they would like to consume, biased or not. Cognitive bias is real.
The Filipino voter is maturing at a faster clip owing to the exigencies wrought by the pandemic which has had an effect on the usual complacent attitude of “bahala na si Batman.” The Aquino versus Marcos narrative is still in play. There is the also the Duterte card though the President has been lying low after his experience with his prodigal daughter. But media is only one factor which will determine the outcome of the election. There are a whole lot of others in play.
Social and mainstream media are not the end all and be all of an election campaign. Not all content creators are made equal. If we are to finally progress as a nation and as a people, we have to elect our leaders on the basis of their stand on issues affecting us and not be as trivial as we were in the past.
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