The Manila Times
Rigoberto Tiglao wrote a very sharp-witted article titled “A classic instance of Western media
spin” which paints a different picture of what is really happening in the
country. As all media outfits they have been always distorting basic facts and
truths for the sake of fat salaries, popularity
and thousands of views/hits which as always describes the country in a very bad light.
Full quote of the
article is provided below:
I SPILLED my
coffee watching CNN’s 8 a.m. news, when its ticker tape flashed: “Duterte
orders police to kill those resisting arrest, followed by “Duterte: Kill the
idiots.” *
Rappler's Maria Ressa, being interviewed by Australian news outfit, knowing her do you think she will paint a good Philippine president? (photo from Manila Times) |
A newsreader then
simply repeated those statements, adding, as it does every time there’s news
now about the Philippines, that Duterte’s war vs illegal drugs has killed
“thousands”.
I googled ”Duterte
kill the idiots,” and the search results showed two dozen items showing the
same headline, by news organizations such as American network ABC, the
internet-only The Daily Beast to small news outfits like Panay News. Credit its
going “viral” to a dispatch by Reuters, whose correspondents have the knack for
finding the sensational spin.
I initially
thought, “Has Duterte gone mad, and has followed Trump?” As is my habit, I
searched to hear exactly what he said. I managed to get quickly a video of
Duterte’s speech, at the National Heroes Day celebration the other day, where
he purportedly made those statements.
What follows is my
word-for-word transcription of Duterte’s relevant statements. You judge if
those news reports are really accurate or represent a classic instance of how
Western media, or any media can spin a particular quote so as to shock people.
“In the
performance of their duty, tell your men that whenever their life is in danger
and they are in the actual performance of their duty, your duty requires you to
overcome the resistance of the person you are arresting. Not only just to shout
to him to surrender because it is a [indistinct], and if he resists and it is a
violent one placing in jeopardy the lives of my policemen and military, you are
free to kill the idiots.” *
That the news
story has become viral is of course partly Duterte’s fault. “Kill the idiots”
is such a great attention-grabbing quotable quote, on par with that classic
“Kill all the lawyers.”
Of course, one can
insist that still, Duterte categorically said “free to kill the idiots”. But do
you think Duterte would have instead said: “If they resist arrest and are
violent, shoot them in the legs?”
Impossible
Anyone who’s used guns knows how impossible this is, unless you are a professional sharpshooter: to aim for and hit the legs of someone about to shoot you. The training of police and military organizations all over the world is for their men to make it their second nature to aim for the center of the body (and thrice), as that would minimize the likelihood of missing the target – which certainly won’t be case if you aimed at his peripheral parts. Coincidentally, a human body’s center is where the heart is, so in effect you are shooting to kill. If only God had located humans’ hearts in their legs!
Anyone who’s used guns knows how impossible this is, unless you are a professional sharpshooter: to aim for and hit the legs of someone about to shoot you. The training of police and military organizations all over the world is for their men to make it their second nature to aim for the center of the body (and thrice), as that would minimize the likelihood of missing the target – which certainly won’t be case if you aimed at his peripheral parts. Coincidentally, a human body’s center is where the heart is, so in effect you are shooting to kill. If only God had located humans’ hearts in their legs!
Would it have been
better if Duterte instead said, “If they resist arrest violently, aim for the
center of their bodies”?
Would it be more
informative if the news organizations’ headline was instead: “Duterte
authorizes the police to shoot-to-kill, if those resisting arrest fight back.”
That would be more accurate really. But would that make shocking, “viral”
headlines? *
And the use of
idiots? That’s Duterte’s normal uncouth language that he is used to, but
expletives certainly aren’t his monopoly. I can imagine Trump similarly using
“idiots” if had to refer to criminals, if he stops himself from using
“motherfuckers.” Should Duterte have used cock-suckers as a Trump aide
described one of his colleagues?
Let’s face it,
Western media, which we think – given their reporters high salaries and its
centuries of evolution –are so professional, just aren’t. Listen to CNN and Fox
News, and you’ll get a total contrasting picture of Trump and the US situation
now.
As Philippine
print media used to be, especially during the past administration (remember the
anti-Corona frenzy and their idolatry of the President?), US and European media
occasionally are afflicted with that virus called herd mentality.
In the US case,
such herd mentality even allowed President Bush to invade a sovereign nation,
Iraq, destroy its cities and kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—on the basis
of the total lie that it had weapons of mass destruction.
Media herd
Media herd mentality is probably one of the most dangerous social phenomena now, as it brainwashes entire peoples to believe even a total lie, so that governments could start a war that that can throw the entire world into conflagration. The global scourge of terrorism now is almost entirely due to the US invasion of Iraq that its media sold to Americans. *
What is worrying –
and sickening – is that herd mentality afflicts not just the most mediocre of
journalists but even the best.
Consider my former
colleague Sheila Coronel who abandoned Philippine journalism to teach rich
Americans investigative journalism at Columbia University in New York, to
become the director of its Stabile Center of Investigative Journalism and then
academic affairs dean of the journalism school itself, considered the best in
the US. (That’s like a doctor trained at taxpayer-subsidized PGH and at public
medical centers to become the best tuberculosis physician, only to teach
tuberculosis treatment at a New York hospital catering to billionaires.)
Instead of doing
investigative journalism on Trump’s real wealth or connection with Russian
oligarchs, or such important, but hard topics relevant to Columbia University
as how American wars are responsible for US technological breakthroughs,
Coronel has rushed to join the anti-Duterte mob of American journalists, and
wrote several pieces in prestigious New York publications that pay unbelievably
high fees painting Duterte as, to use her term, a “blood-bathed” President and
Manila’s streets as littered with corpses.
While Coronel
writes well—in her melodramatic 1980s style using colorful heart-tugging
anecdotes—I’m quite sure one of her qualifications that made editors buy her
stories would be that she was a Filipino “investigative journalist.” In fact,
she bolsters her demonic portrayal of Duterte by referring to her coverage of
him as Davao City mayor back in the 1980s, implying that he was already a
killer then and she is the expert on his soul. *
But Coronel wants
to have her cake and eat it too, to live and work in the US, yet still pretend
to be an expert on the Philippines, as most ranting anti-Duterte Fil-Ams (the
most prominent being billionaire Loida Nicolas-Lewis) are fond of doing. She
bases her data on what’s happening in the Philippines on what other American
journalists have written, and forgets the investigative skills she learned at
the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
In her recent
article in a journal, “A Presidency Bathed in Blood,” Coronel wrote: “The drug
war, which Duterte officially launched on his first day in office, has claimed
the lives of as many as 9,000 suspected drug dealers and users.”
9,000 number
I asked her through Facebook’s Messenger where she got that 9,000 number, a topic of considerable interest to me as I wrote three columns debunking that figure, which was based on a completely wrong article in internet-only news site Rappler. (In my column, “How Rappler misled EU, Human Rights Watch, CNN, Time, BBC — the world,” Manila Times, May 19, 2017)
I asked her through Facebook’s Messenger where she got that 9,000 number, a topic of considerable interest to me as I wrote three columns debunking that figure, which was based on a completely wrong article in internet-only news site Rappler. (In my column, “How Rappler misled EU, Human Rights Watch, CNN, Time, BBC — the world,” Manila Times, May 19, 2017)
She replied:
“Numerous news reports quote that figure.” She even gave me the link to her
Google search results. I asked her why she “didn’t bother to verify if this is
fake news, used mostly by Western media. “ *
I told her that
even the Google search results she sent me had several reports specifically
disproving that figure, yet she ignored those articles.
She didn’t reply
after that. She “unfriended” me as a Facebook friend, obviously so she won’t
read my posts that disturb her New York world-view.
If a professor and
dean of Columbia University’s journalism school throws journalistic rules of
verification and objectivity, and on the President of her former country, what
can you expect from old, weary wire correspondents rushing to file dispatches
as fast as they can to fulfill their daily quota, or from mediocre TV
reporters?
0 comments