Meddling mad middling media?
I was a campus journalist. I am a public information officer of organizations and offices and a journalist myself. I copywrote for a PR firm. I taught journalism classes and delivered journalism lectures. I was a radio journalism fellow. I do not criticize media organizations and colleagues openly as a matter of course. The past few days though I don’t like the things that capture media’s shifty attention.
There seems to be nothing else on television these past few days but the capers of some showbiz personalities. US media seemingly talk of nothing else but Paris Hilton; local media are practically tripping all over themselves over Ruffa. I don’t know if we have the same cable TV provider but I am sure you read the Inquirer as much as I do. Yes, even the venerable daily is caught up on both Ruffa and Paris.
I admit I am interested. But not as much as wanting to see them on the tube from my morning coffee to my bedtime beer. Sobra na. Marunong din naman akong maumay.
I won’t go into whether Ruffa and Paris brought these unto themselves and deserve it. Many feel they are to blame for the withering scorn heaped on them. What I feel though is both are getting way too much media attention they are becoming victims already instead of being mere subjects.
US talk shows and stand up comics make out Paris as an un-person, incapable of hurt. She’d been called a “rank skank” by a talk show host and one comic said she thought Paris might mistake her prison bars as penises. Sure she drove while drunk and sure she violated conditions of her probation twice. But even I wince when absolutely no respect is shown her person by the US media.
As regards Ruffa, the biggest issue here is that she fled her abusive husband who, according to her, tortured her for hours on end. Sure, her previous marriage she kept hidden from the public is salacious information we all want, even deserve, to know. But to devote as much time reporting about her first wedding or her constant partying is trivializing what is really important. Can we not take this as our chance to discuss domestic violence instead and not just focus on the scandal(s)?
All I am saying is, would it kill us to respect the subjects of our reportage or comments a little? Does “entertainment” or “journalism” involve meanness now? (These girls do not have blood on their hands, unlike Philippine police and military—in whose cases I’d be the first one to yell “Bastards!”) In the same vein, would it kill us to show a modicum of respect to our viewers? Do we really need to feed them junk even if the ratings game show us they lap it up most of the time?
As a media worker, I know the value of airtime and column inches. I only wish all those airtime and column inches used on these two women were spent reporting about rights violations in Guantanamo Bay or the Philippines. You know, something like what PDI is doing with the Jonas Burgos case.
C’mon! Very bad things are happening! With the stories we are printing and broadcasting; with the stories we do not write about as much as we should, what are we telling the people? What and who are we?
