A sovereign citizenry’s right and duty of monitoring and evaluating public issues and problems, and of commenting on them and proposing alternative approaches and solutions, are best served by a free press. But because their hold on power partly depends on being perceived as infallible, most governments including the Philippines’ own detest criticism, hence their antipathy to press freedom and free expression.
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The Department of Health (DOH) has stopped the local government of Marikina City from testing its residents for COVID-19 despite the considerable efforts and costs of setting up the facility. The DOH said it should be located in a separate building all its own.
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With over 500 cases in the Philippines, the COVID-19 threat is already serious enough to concern everyone. But its unwanted presence has also further exposed Filipinos to the authoritarian virus that to this day has survived the 1896 Revolution, World Wars I and II, the EDSA civilian-military mutiny of 1986, and the untiring efforts of human rights defenders, independent journalists, committed artists and academics, civil society organizations, and social and political activists to combat it.
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It’s been said before, but has never been taken seriously by the members of a community whose egos are as vast as cathedrals: those in the media criticize anyone and anything except themselves. In more times than can be counted, irresponsible and ethically clueless practitioners excuse their own behavior no matter their consequences to the public they’re supposed to serve. They argue that they’re merely doing their jobs in behalf of the people’s right to know and the exercise of their rights to press freedom and free expression.
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Perhaps the most outlandish lie ever concocted by one of the most notorious disinformation hirelings of the Duterte regime is that the Marcos kleptocracy was overthrown in 1986 because of the “fake news” that the communists and the “yellows” had supposedly been spreading about Ferdinand Marcos, his wife, his family and his government.
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