Checking the government

While the media inform, educate, build consensus and entertain, they largely function to check the government. The media guard against government abuse, thus helping keep the government on course to serve best the public interest. But in the course of doing their work, practitioners are sometimes persecuted. It behooves them to be valiant, fair and uncompromising. The public should look to the media as ally and protector of human dignity.

When there are perceived or flagrant anomalies in the government’s exercise of its powers, it becomes almost automatic that the media, both in the pursuit of their duty and in the interest of truth, would probe these irregularities. Data are gathered, sorted, arranged and presented to for an adequate, clear and unbiased treatment of the report. Readers or listeners should not be expected to waste their time on garbage.

The Philippine media have to be free and unassailable, a vibrant mouthpiece of the people’s will, and an exponent of the truth, which is the wellspring of their strength, power and influence.

To check the government is a function of great responsibility. The media’s careful and meticulous analysis, review and investigation of government programs and projects

redound to the public good. There should be no room for mediocrity and reckless and malicious intent. The leader who sees the media’s genuine advocacy for good governance should embrace being checked by them, for this accelerates the attainment of what he or she wants the government to achieve.

To some extent, the government walks the right path, survives or succumbs to people’s uprisings, and even sustains its balance because of the media. To maintain the fulcrum, the media have to be strong and effective, with credibility untarnished. It is unfortunate that there are some practitioners who are unworthy of the calling as they allow themselves to be victims of the unscrupulous.

It is obvious that baseless, false, or fabricated stories are circulated for certain selfish ends. Also, many exposés of alleged anomalies have remained unresolved and are now mired in oblivion. When some sectors of the media fail in their duty, it results in futility and extinction.

But it should be clear that the private media are distinct from state media, which function primarily as the mouthpiece of the government. For example, PTV-4 and Radyo ng Bayan are there to tell the people what the government is doing. But they are not expected to criticize it. As part of the government, state media cannot and will never check themselves. That would be absurd and ridiculous. Nobody would believe them. As such, they may also be part of what the private media look into.

State media adhere to the law of supply and demand, where rumors abound when there is paucity of information where needed, and information is viewed as mere propaganda when superfluous.

Stifling the media is akin to stifling press freedom. We are part of the freest media in the world, and we recognize what free media do for us.  But why are practitioners being killed? It may be because the media are doing their job well, or some boundaries may have been violated. That should not stop the media from pursuing their mission. Is there any field free of scalawags? That remains our struggle.

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German Delos Santos Caccam is a former member of the Philippine Agricultural Journalists and of the Public Relations Organization of the Philippines.