Tragic reality show for 11,000 employees

The observation that Congress has “thrown everything at ABS-CBN, including the kitchen sink and the toilet bowl” was quite spot-on (“House hearing on ABS-CBN’s franchise renewal going nowhere,” Letters, 7/2/20). President Duterte’s “hatchet men” in Congress really went to town and tore their quarry to shreds, not leaving even the most asinine queries unasked. Truth to tell, those “due process” hearings are just laughable, were it not so excruciatingly painful for the starving families of that network’s 11,000-plus employees who will be jobless due to Mr. Duterte’s order to have it shuttered.

Granting his “grandstanding sycophants” in Congress the benefit of the doubt about their earnestness in “protecting” the Constitution, they should have subjected GMA Network Inc. to the same treatment when it also recently applied for the renewal of its own franchise. Who knows if that network might have committed the same violation (e.g., its own admitted issuance of Philippine Depositary Receipts, also available to cash-rich foreigners) of the constitutional provision requiring 100-percent ownership by Filipinos or Filipino companies?

With ABS-CBN out of commission and the other minor networks rendered irrelevant, Mr. Duterte would be most pleased to have the mass media industry dominated by the People’s Television Network (PTV—the government’s miserable excuse for a broadcast network) airing nothing but praises to his kakistocratic regime, and a lot of insufferable nonsense through his Communications Secretary Martin Andanar and that termagant par excellence, Mocha Uson.

Danica R. Mortiz
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