Media critic to ABS-CBN: Why offer facilities to government after 'savaging' at House?
MANILA, Philippines — Media critic Vergel Santos expressed disappointment with ABS-CBN's offer for government to use its transmission network for distance learning, saying this was a show of the company's "meekness" towards the government.
In an interview with ANC’s "Matters of Fact" on Wednesday morning, Santos cautioned the media giant against allowing the government to use its facilities as the country prepares for “blended learning” for the coming school year.
"It seems that ABS-CBN has a poor appreciation of meekness as a virtue and now it is even offering or agreeing in any case to allow the government to run its facilities for education," Santos said.
‘Cowed into meekness’
Santos said that ABS-CBN’s offer to the government is not “magnanimity” but “terror.”
"The ABS-CBN has been cowed into that kind of meekness,” Santos said. He continued: “From the beginning ABS-CBN has simply been too meek going into that hearing. I couldn’t understand how it could stand all the savaging that it got from Congress without putting in some bold word of protest.”
The media critic was referring to the House of Representatives hearing where lawmakers grilled ABS-CBN executives for hours, over mostly rehashed issues.
Santos expressed exasperation at how “ABS-CBN is helping this government” with its offer. "At least make it more difficult for the government... Let them take things instead of simply offering them on a silver platter," he added.
“The more you are meek, the more you are trampled upon,” Santos also said.
'Network may be used for indoctrination'
Santos is among the board of trustees of media watchdog Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.
CMFR warned in 2018 that attacks on media — in President Rodrigo Duterte's speeches and through law suits and criminal charges — have brought "[a] chilling effect [that] has been obvious."
"Never has an administration been given such broad latitude by the press, with reports that merely record the statements of government officials, without correction as needed, without question or analysis," CMFR, which also regularly reviews Philippine news reports, said.
"This president has succeeded into bullying a press that had in the past proven its courage and capacity to speak truth to power, exposing with world-class investigative reports corruption and other wrongdoing in high places. The president has succeeded to instill fear in the press community," it said then.
Santos warned the network on Wednesday: “Does ABS-CBN really think that given the nature of this government, those facilities would be used for proper education and not indoctrination or brainwashing?”
“All we need to do is to put that offer, that arrangement in the context of the character of this government, of how we’ve known this government... Does ABS-CBN really want to be, in the end, accused of complicity with this regime?” the media critic added.
Offer of transmission
ABS-CBN’s offer to use its transmission network for airing educational programs came shortly after President Rodrigo Duterte, in his fifth State of the Nation Address, said that frequencies reverted to government will be used for distance learning.
"We hope to help the government continuously educate students nationwide despite the limitations brought about by the pandemic," ABS-CBN said in a statement on Monday.
Although the chief executive did not mention ABS-CBN’s previously held frequencies, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, among the Cabinet members tapped to come up with a program for this, said he presumes the network’s frequencies are included in the order.
The National Telecommunications Commission has yet to resolve the network’s motion to suspend proceedings on the recall of its frequencies pending their Supreme Court petition.
In the same SONA, Duterte claimed that he was a victim of the Lopezes, owners of the network, in the 2016 national elections.
He also slammed Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon for "defending the Lopezes that they are not oligarchs," while the lawmaker explained that he was defending press freedom and not the owners of the embattled network.
Duterte has long trained his ire on "oligarchs," including the Ayalas, Manuel V. Pangilinan and Lucio Tan, and recently, the Lopezes. — Kristine Joy Patag
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