Wrong priorities during Seniang

Bobit Avila is right that no one warned Cebuanos about Seniang. But he is only partly right. The truth of the matter is, no one warned anybody about Seniang. No, that is not entirely correct either. Actually, there was ample warning made by both the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council and the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration or Pagasa.

So where did the slip-up occur? Who is to blame for a slip-up that resulted in so many lives lost from lack of preparation for the devastation brought about by one of the most underrated storms ever to hit the country? I think the accusing finger points directly at a national media that is too Manila-centric, or Luzon-centric if you will.

Seniang was forecast to make landfall in Surigao, cut a northwest track across Bohol, southern Cebu, Negros, and then on to the Sulu Sea, with Palawan next on the list. In fairness to the NDRRMC and the Pagasa, both agencies did make periodic reports about the progress of the storm. The problem was, national television, to which most Filipinos turn to for weather updates, was pretty much preoccupied with something else.

Believe it or not -- and this is verifiable from video recordings that the networks keep on file -- virtually all national television channels were bannering the crush of people who descended on Bocaue, Bulacan to buy all sorts of New Year fireworks for which the town is famous for. That's right. Even as Seniang was already making landfall in Surigao, all the network news still focused on Bocaue.

The funny thing is that, after Seniang started to make its presence felt in Mindanao and the Visayas and the networks began to realize something bigger than the holiday air in Bocaue was in fact going on, some news anchors still didn't realize the seriousness of their oversight. I particularly remember -- because I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears -- Noli de Castro asking a weatherman why no ample warnings seemed to have been made.

The weatherman, God bless him for his bluntness, told Kabayan to his face that the NDRRMC actually called for a press conference but only three or four news reporters showed up. If not for his decades of experience, de Castro would probably have frozen speechless by the slap in the face. Recovering deftly, the former vice president mumbled something and deftly proceeded to another topic, leaving Seniang to the next news update, which by then was already a must.

So why did the national television networks (local tv stations only have pinhole segments in the national programming, sandwiched between endless episodes of soap opera dramas, while the national newspapers only devote, at most, a palm-sized space for weather in their pages) seem disinterested in Seniang, as opposed to the number of people who flocked to Bocaue to buy fireworks?

Hard as I did to rake my brain for any plausible reason, the only one I can think of is that, to the Metro Manila-based networks, Seniang was a low-category storm that did not pose any threat to Metro Manila and Luzon and, therefore, did not merit the same concern than if it did. I do not think journalistic standards had anything to do with it.

I have been a journalist for nearly forty years and every journalistic bone in my body, including those honed by nearly 20 years as a correspondent for Reuters told me that a storm, no matter what category, was always a better story the moment it hits populated land areas than people buying firecrackers. But the Metro Manila-based networks, high and dry in Luzon, did not care about unheralded Seniang because it only threatened Mindanao and the Visayas.

In the mindset of the Metro Manila-based networks, a storm in a faraway place only merits attention when the death toll starts ringing. I have often wondered about the mindset of these networks, how early each morning they could not find anything better to dish out to the entire nation than news about vehicle collisions and stabbings in Metro Manila.

Maybe it is time these networks wake up to the fact that Metro Manila is not the Philippines, that the Philippines is made up of more than seven thousand islands and that any storm that threatens any of these islands is a concern of the entire country. Indeed, it is time Metro Manila give these islands the importance they deserve, in the same manner that taxes from these islands are important enough to subsidize the travel expenses of Metro Manilans on their rickety MRT and LRT.

The national networks should not be too Metro Manila-centric. We here in the islands have self-worth and self-esteem that are just as valuable and as high as yours. In fact, the promdi dignity is far more unsullied than the corrupted values of the big city. We are just as educated as anybody else, our standards, tested by honesty, probably even higher.

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