It's Bergoglio, not Tagle. So, where's the media?

Poor Cardinal Tagle. After getting kneaded, molded and stretched like dough into whatever form the media wanted to shape in the public mind prior to the eventual election of Pope Francis, Tagle now sits like some forgotten lump of moist flour on the table.

Media can indeed be that cruel. Not that Tagle may not have secretly relished the hype, but he clearly does not deserve the brusque sweep-aside. As far as the conclave to elect the pope was concerned, Tagle was a media creation. He deserves at least a decent media burial.

This is not to say that as a media creation, Tagle was like a hot air balloon that kept its form for as long as the burner had flames. Tagle had a real shot at becoming a pope, as did every which one of the 114 other cardinal-electors at the conclave.

But the pragmatic reality about Tagle's actual chance of becoming pope got bulldozed away by the seeming certainty with which the overzealous but unthinking Philippine media chose to report the possibility.

So consistent and so sweeping was this kind of reporting by Philippine media that it eventually swallowed its own story, in a manner so convincing even the foreign media could no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction and began swallowing the yarn as well.

Highly reputable foreign television networks such as CNN began seeking out Tagle, as if driven by the pealing of bells and singing of angels. Charging as much as the traffic would bear, the hype became the foremost but sorry indictment against an industry gone overboard.

Proud as we might have been had Tagle been chosen pope, the truth is that it simply was not his time, and one gets truly aghast that media, an outsider to the conclave just as the rest of us are, can seem so certain about Tagle that features about his childhood even started airing.

Nothing wrong with getting excited except that the media never even bothered to check the facts against which the probabilities will eventually be held when reality comes knocking. As any mediaman worth his salt knows, it is never enough to say dengue kills without explaining why.

The foreign media saw no reason to check the locals but instead went merrily with the ride. There is an unwritten code in this business that you do not openly question each other's motives. Besides, the war for ratings is not particularly choosy on the who but on the how much.

Thus, right up to the walk of cardinals to the Sistine Chapel and to each one's Latin avowal of secrecy, great meticulous care was taken to hold Tagle in the spotlight. The impression media gave everyone was that Tagle was it and that it was all over but the counting.

But of course things turned out the way they were supposed to -- according to God's will and not in accordance with media preference, or folly. As everyone now knows, the new pope was someone called Bergoglio and not Tagle. And he is from Argentina, not the Philippines.

I believe the Philippine media owes Tagle a graceful exit from a situation that he never had a part in creating. Tagle is a good and decent man who knew where he stood. What a pity he had to fall victim to media's tendency to go overboard with unbridled hype.

If there is one great weakness that the Philippine media continues to suffer from, it is its inability to stay neutral and objective whenever a Filipino finds himself in a situation where he is ranged against foreign competition.

This happens mostly in sports, where reporters covering, say a Pacquiao fight, can never see the bout objectively and end up cheering the Filipino as fans. Now we know it happens also outside sports. Philippine media saw Tagle as Filipino first, and forgot the rest of the reality.