As a former newspaper editor myself, I can tell you nothing goes stale faster than yesterday’s headline. Manpower-wise, you’re just NOT going to send your chief photographer to some desolate but by now tranquil village in the Visayas to cover an event that is finished already. You risk missing a more important or “hotter” scoop that could break anytime IN Manila. So don’t expect coverage of Odette’s wake to improve much
Typhoon Odette, according to PAGASA, is second only to Typhoon Yolanda in terms of the damage it caused. The death toll may not be as high—an estimated 6,340 died in Yolanda—but, remember, more than half the deaths in Yolanda occurred in the aftermath and not during the raging storm itself.
The final death toll in Odette may not be known for sometime. With the election campaign period officially starting next month I expect all administration talking heads to tone down or even suppress gloom and doom reports altogether. So we may never really know the correct final tally.
I can’t emphasize enough the importance of disaster aftermath reportage. Beyond slaking the morbid thirst for blood and gore, it is moving images of pain and suffering that triggers the better angels of our nature to spring into benevolent civic action. Coverage of the hellish conditions at the evacuation centers is what throws wide open the donor sluice gates. And THAT counts for more to the typhoon victims than all the empathy that sensational news coverage creates. To be sure, that empathy IS an effective springboard for more meaningful response, though.
Bringing the complete and flowing story of the human odyssey of resilience in the face of suffering to the awareness of a national audience was the specialty of ABS-CBN—that gungho news organization with maverick news crews and a cacophony of tireless opinionated motormouths who can nag your ears off and break open the tightest tightwad into donating.
First of all, I am NOT a rabid fan of ABS-CBN—I hate all the cheesiness, shallowness and banality of their noontime shows, I’d be a happy person if I never saw one more shrieking minute of Vice Ganda’s peacocky swagger. I don’t give a single solitary droplet of s**t if you troll me for saying it.
Second of all, I do own ABS-CBN shares (and you, troll, probably don’t), I’m saying it disclosure-wise here, so don’t waste your time thinking of ways to prove me a Kapamilya basher.
That said, the diminished presence of ABS-CBN in the news landscape of Typhoon Odette is more than unfortunate. With its 52 regional stations both in the AM and FM bands also silenced by the non-renewal of its free air franchise, the countryside rural folk lost their main source of up-to-the-minute weather information, rescue and relief coordination, their access to important general announcements, and overall ‘connectedness’ to the calamity situation.
Peasants do not all have mobile internet or even cellphones. Most of them just have small transistor radios that are not even sensitive enough to pick up broadcast signals transmitting from Manila. That’s where ABS-CBN’s widely-scattered relay and repeater stations fill a void in the national communication infrastructure that government simply could not fill.
Of course, it would be an elusive thing to express in some metrics how much of a deconstructive impact the loss of ABS-CBN’s coverage of Typhoon Odette is. But there is some kind of poetic justice—or injustice—about it too.
There were only eleven congressmen who voted to renew ABS-CBN’s franchise, and none of them comes from the congressional districts devastated by Odette. In other words, the one benevolent media institution with a proven track record of effectiveness in alleviating the kind of suffering Odette’s victims are experiencing was killed by congressmen THEY VOTED into office. Very likely, many of them might even win re-election to go by how dense many rural voters can be.
We can import a lesson from this to apply to our own situation here in Baguio City. At a crucial point of reckoning, when it mattered that city councilors take a principled stand and denounce a failed violent takeover attempt of BENECO, four members of the City Council wimped out: Fred Bagbagen, Benny Bomogao, Joel Alangsab and Vladimir Cayabas, the last one utterly wasting his vote (and opportunity to shine) with a useless abstention.
They can give their crappy justifications all they want—and they have. The beauty of freedom is I don’t have to believe any of them.
You vote, I vote. I don’t like how you voted, I don’t vote for you. It’s that simple. Now, multiply that sentiment 138,000 times--the certified number of active BENECO member-consumer-owners (MCO's) and it should be enough to send a chill down your spine.
What’s more, this lesson can be imported further into the national scene. Our economy is sick because our total outstanding foreign debt is 11.9 TRILLION Pesos—almost three times our national budget of just 4.5 TRILLION Pesos. If you owe in debt three times your salary, you are already spending in January what you will still earn in April. Who can live like THAT?
This administration can give all the crappy justifications all it wants—and it does. The beauty of freedom is I don’t have to believe them. You manage, I vote. You don’t manage the economy good, I don’t vote for you or your surrogates. It’s as simple as that.
I will not waste my one precious vote. Therefore I will give to Leni.
If you don’t want to go through the bitter and helpless regret that Odette’s victims are feeling right now, then LIST DOWN these names of returning ‘moon-and-stars’ promisers who betrayed us.
Don’t just campaign for the deserving.
Campaign AGAINST the undeserving until everybody remembers why they are in politics, in the first place.
They are there to literally suck up to the body politic. We, the VOTERS, are the supertyphoons they cannot control or tame.
We call the shots.
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