Killing orders, days of the dead: A TV overkill

There seems to be only two things the TV networks find important enough to extensively report these days: The air offensive against Moro bandits in Basilan, and the run-up to the long weekend culminating in All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

 To repeatedly report on something way beyond its actual importance and capacity to interest the public or be relevant is called an overkill. How ironic the overkill would involve both a killing campaign and the days of the dead.

 Prior to the air offensive, almost every other Filipino was for the launching of an all-out war against the Moro bandits who massacred and mutilated 19 soldiers in Basilan, as well as several more soldiers, policemen and civilians in a followup rampage in southern Mindanao.

 But when the all-out war came, euphemistically described as all-out justice, public interest swiftly declined when it became clear the offensive was not exacting the revenge the public had come to expect.

 Television news footages, repeatedly shown by the networks even to this day, show two Air Force OV-10 Broncos, turboprop light attack and observation aircraft, either taking off from an undisclosed base or making gentle sweeps over rolling terrain in Basilan.

 The footages show a few plumes of white smoke indicating what might have been explosions from bombs or rockets fired by the Broncos. Then a couple of Vietnam War vintage Huey helicopters appear, quite propitiously, since Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang is here for a visit.

 The reports accompanying the footages say a rebel here and there (fewer than what you can count with the fingers of one hand) perished in the air offensive. Injuries were also reported, probably from dog bites as the Moro bandits fled their camps and blended into civilian villages.

 In other words, the grand display of air superiority by two Broncos and two Hueys, and the extended airtime by the two giant TV networks, did not produce results commensurate with the effort and the hoopla.

 It is unfair, of course, to expect much from the Broncos. While they can be used, to a certain extent, in some fighting, they are essentially not the kind of fighters one may expect in the context of today’s modern air forces.

 In all likelihood, the Broncos were used more for intimidation than for a real offensive. As to the Hueys, well, armed primarily with machineguns, they are merely used for ground support and evacuation.

 So, as things turned out, the air offensive was more like a media event for TV purposes. And while ground troops did eventually overrun a few camps, all they found were bamboo benches that indicated life once thrived there. All-out justice apparently prefers quiet places.

 As to the repetitious reporting on the yearly exodus of people for the days of the dead, one wonders how the networks can devote so much time on such a dead subject. People crowding the terminals and how much flowers and candles cost do not require 58 days of non-stop reporting.

 Unless Jesus suddenly comes to judge the living and the dead, there is not much to report about what the networks call “undas.” Yet, from the time you switch on the TV, to the time you switch it off, “undas” is all you ever see. In addition, of course, to the air offensive.

News, like any other product, has a shelf life. Unless a story takes a sudden dramatic shift, it should only be good for three days tops, much like the time a soul lingers on earth after death before meeting his Maker. Any longer and it comes back to haunt, like a dead story.