Watch out ‘bad boys!’

It is rather disconcerting to note that every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country now wants to be called "bad boy" right after no less than President Arroyo complained about how the Philippine media has supposedly earned this image.

Radio commentators, in particular, bombarded the airwaves with their self-confessed admissions of being the "bad boy " alluded to by Mrs.Arroyo. This was after the president rebuked the media in a speech before the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters ng Pilipinas (KBP) managers’ conference in Baguio City last Nov.10.

The President’s litany of complaints against the media has been mixed all together and unfairly lumps all the members of the Philippine press into one bunch of "drag" that slows down national takeoff.

Mrs.Arroyo mentioned a few specific sins committed by certain members of media. Without pointing to any particular media entity, Mrs.Arroyo griped at the KBP conference on the live airing by a TV news network of her mock trial by the Citizens’ Congress for Truth and Accountability (CCTA) on the "stealing, cheating, and lying" charges that were already "killed" by her allies in Congress during the impeachment proceedings last September. I don’t see why Mrs.Arroyo should make this an issue if the Palace disregards it and calls it nothing but a "kangaroo court."

She also in particular cited the criticisms showered on her after she revealed intelligence reports that linked ABS-CBN news anchor Julius Babao to the alleged terror suspect Dawud Santos and paid his bail. (This was immediately denied by Babao himself. With the full backing of his network, Babao explained that allowing Dawud to ride in the ABS-CBN van was part of plain journalistic pursuit to get exclusive stories.)

While she singled out Babao, in his individual capacity as a journalist as allegedly going overboard in doing his job, Mrs.Arroyo stopped short though of zeroing in on the specific media outfit which was really the object of her wrath. Instead, Mrs.Arroyo went on a shotgun denunciation of "some sectors" in Philippine media and naturally, she reaped the ire of the press.

By way of personal recollections of the past Presidents I have covered in the Palace for almost two decades, Mrs.Arroyo was less than forthright in handling her problems with the press and obviously did not have the guts to confront a media giant like ABS-CBN which is the flagship of the Lopez conglomerate.

I had first-hand and some inside track on how previous Presidents handled pesky Philippine media, especially those who covered the Palace.

I was victim at one time of these "power plays" at the Palace when my negative but definitely accurate stories got too close for comfort for some officials in the past. But never mind that. It’s part of the territory, as they say. I survived it because my credibility as a reporter prevailed.

But how could I forget the time I got to see the presidential bedroom when an enraged former President Corazon Aquino took us to her Arlegui residence just to belie an item in the column of the late Star columnist Louie Beltran. A visibly pissed off Mrs.Aquino did not find funny when Ka Louie wisecracked in his "Straight From the Shoulder" column that "the Commander-in-chief hid under her bed" during the attack on the Palace in August, 1987 in the bloody military coup d’ etat led by then Col.Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan.

After showing to us Palace reporters her bedroom in the morning, later that day, Mrs.Aquino personally motored to the Manila City Prosecutor’s office to file the multi-million libel suit against Beltran and the rest of the Star editors, including our publisher, Max Soliven.

One of my former Palace media colleagues was suddenly yanked out of the Palace beat when former President Fidel V.Ramos called up the businessman-owner of a broadsheet and personally complained to him of a big inaccuracy in the published news. It was about the supposed "flip-flopping" of Ramos in his policy on the on-going peace talks with Muslim rebels which was at that time at a very sensitive stage. The presidential ire was justified since his pronouncements in his press conference were indeed not accurately reflected but truly twisted.

It was so quietly done and not even the reporter concerned knew what hit him because he was re-assigned to a new beat which he really liked. For senior reporters like him, the Palace beat was nothing but a hardship assignment. So off he went to his new assignment at the Senate with a big smile and rejoiced when he left the Palace beat.

And of course, who would not remember the time when former President Joseph Estrada barred two Palace beat reporters from Philippine Daily Inquirer in retaliation for all the scandals and rumors printed against him even before the presidential campaign in 1998. Subsequently, businessmen-friends of Estrada joined the fray and declared a boycott of subscription and advertising placements in this broadsheet.

When The Manila Times called him "godfather" to an alleged scam in the IMPSA contract, Estrada took a different tack by filing a multi-million libel suit against its publisher, editors and reporters. Estrada’s rifle shot hit the target directly and there was no collateral damage in the rest of the Philippine media.

As a personal anecdote, it was only during the time of Estrada when I got the least expected presidential call at my home which I initially thought was the voice of the great mimic Willie Nepomuceno. I was humbled by that presidential call when Estrada gave me his hotline telephone number so that he said I could readily get his side on any controversy.

The relations of the President with media has been and will always be adversarial, no matter what. For all we know, President Arroyo has something up in her sleeves to deal with "bad boys" in the media. Watch out bad boys!

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