ABS-CBN must walk the talk

The Lopezes that own ABS-CBN are truly shrewd operators. How smug they must be contemplating the landscape and seeing how they do not need to even lift a finger in their own defense. People who do not earn a cent from their empire are waging their war on the mistaken notion that they are fighting for what they have been brainwashed into believing was a good, just, and valid cause.

Without meaning to be disparaging, fish vendors mourning the loss of “Ang Probinsyano” are beating their breasts raw in press freedom's name as if that ephemeral notion was something as familiar to them as waves washing on the shore. And the Lopezes do not care if this support is as invalid as driving without a license, for as long as it was noise in its favor.

The problems of the Lopezes as far as ABS-CBN is concerned are legal, even constitutional. They are not about the right to speak or security of employment. Not only has the network an unrenewed franchise, the Lopezes may have contravened a constitutional prohibition on foreign ownership. If a constitutional violation is so important it can impeach a president, certainly it can padlock a mere corporation.

Anyone seeking the clearest, most erudite dissection of the Lopezes' problems should read the ageless former senator Juan Ponce Enrile's piece in The Manila Times last May 8 entitled "The ABS-CBN Problem." Enrile may be lawyerly with his facts and figures but he is very common man in his explanation even a Grade 4 student will understand how press freedom and the employment of thousands are never in the picture.

This resort to shameless courtship of misery offers us a glimpse of the ruthlessness of the operation. By their silence and acquiescence, the Lopezes are tacitly allowing the use of their employees' fate as a weapon for their corporate defense. They are allowing the taking of their employees as virtual hostages.

Instead of reassuring their workers that no matter what happens they will at least, in the spirit of Kapamilya, get some aid from the multi-billion empire if their jobs could not be saved, the fate of the workers is being used as foot soldiers in the corporate defense. You go after us, our workers will lose their jobs. It is no different from allowing a driver to drive without a license lest he and his family will starve.

It is, of course, unfortunate that thousands of workers will lose their jobs as a result of ABS-CBN's closure. But such an unfortunate consequence cannot have a trade-off where the government must simply look away and ignore a violation. If we allow that, today it may just by ABS-CBN, tomorrow it will be the entire gamut of commercial operations.

The law is there for a purpose. It is there to instill order. The media, of which ABS-CBN is a major player, is supposed to be there as a partner of government, a voice for the people, a mirror for society. It cannot ask to have its own shortcomings ignored or tolerated just because it is media. That is so wrong it is embarrassing. At the forefront of what is right, it cannot wink at a cop to let a violation pass. It must walk the talk.