US TV networks abdicated role, shamed themselves

Several US television networks cut off their live coverage of President Donald Trump late Thursday (Friday in the Philippines) as he spoke for the first time since the November 3 presidential election. The networks decided that Trump was lying, that he did not have the evidence to support his claim of being cheated.

I am aghast, angry, and ashamed of what the US TV networks did. They have literally gone overboard in their hypocrisy and self-righteousness. They have abdicated their role as members of the media. They have forgotten that, as media, their role is precisely what their name mandates and signifies --to act as a medium, a means, a conduit, a conveyance, a platform.

The media are not courts of law where truth is tested and determined against lies. They are not judges who make such tests and determinations. It is not up to the US television networks to judge the veracity of Trump's words. That is the job of the American people. By doing what they did, the US TV networks also passed judgment on the American people, determining them to be so stupid not know the difference between truth and lies.

Was Trump lying? I do not know. If he was, then the results of the election showed that the American people already knew that he was a liar and did not need the TV networks to tell them. There is a reason why people, not just in America or the Philippines but everywhere, can sometimes have such a low regard for the media. And that is because the media can sometimes be too arrogant, too all-knowing, too self-righteous, too all-important.

When the American TV networks decided to cut off Trump, they not only overstepped their bounds as being merely a medium of communication, they also violated one fundamental principle of journalism or the press: They deprived Trump of his right to air his side of the story. If Trump thought he was cheated, then that was how he perceived his predicament. The networks had no right to intervene in his narrative.

The media cannot change the narrative of anyone just because they do not happen to like it or that they think it had been exaggerated, embellished or plain made up. If that is the case then the media, especially the American TV networks, are working in the wrong place. They should all be in heaven where everybody speaks nothing but the truth. But there is a reason why the media is rooted on earth. They cannot make it past the Pearly Gates.

What makes this sad and sorry episode even more sordid is that it happened in America, the so-called bulwark of freedom and democracy. But where was the freedom for Trump to speak of whatever he pleases? Why did the American media that had always been so eager and quick to invoke press freedom and free speech become the very first to have the shameless gall to deprive their own president the right to exercise his?

There is one quote that is almost always associated with America, on the assumption that it embodies all that is good in the American spirit and character: "I may not agree with what you said, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Given the prevailing mood in America, underscored and emphasized very clearly by this glaring excess and abuse by the American press, the implosion of this once-great country is inexorably sealed.