As a rule, a spokesman is supposed to make life easier for the person he speaks for, and the people to whom that person speaks. He should be a bridge, not call attention to himself.
Presidential Communications Office Secretary Martin Andanar is the glaring exception to that rule.
Andanar’s obvious main qualification for the job was his experience as a news reader for at least two broadcast networks. This is a vital strength —reaching out to the media is his main task. Knowing their concerns and constraints in going about their jobs is supposed to occur to him, instinctively.
It’s not happening. Not when he was new to the job, and not when he should have learned the ropes already.
Worse, Andanar does not just communicate poorly. He deliberately sows misinformation and makes statements that incense, outrage, and distort the truth.
The examples over the course of just eight months are many. They range from making an announcement about where President Rodrigo Duterte would be seated at a regional summit to blaming the media for “misreporting” the President’s statement about his inclination to declare martial law.
On Monday he accused Senate reporters of accepting bribes of up to $1,000 to cover the press conference of a retired policeman who claims he was part of the Davao Death Squad and who said Mr. Duterte indeed led the squad when he was mayor of the city.
“We, broadcast, online, and print journalists covering the Senate strongly protest the unsubstantiated and irresponsible claims made by Press Secretary Martin Andanar that reporters were given as much as $1,000 each to cover the press conference of alleged former Davao Death Squad leader Arthur Lascañas this morning. To our knowledge, no such incident occurred. Such practice is not tolerated among Senate reporters,” the journalists said in a statement.
“We would like to ask the Secretary to prove his allegations as such statements placed our credibility and our respective media entities under a cloud of doubt. Otherwise, we demand a public apology from Secretary Andanar for spreading ‘fake news,’ truly unbecoming of someone who, just a few months ago, came from the media industry,” they added.
Andanar could have many motives for saying what he did, but it was clear he was never circumspect with his words.
The President is already a handful. We have already been advised to use “creative imagination” when deciphering the words that come out of his mouth. Mr. Duterte’s convoluted, multi-layered communication style already is bad enough. He does not need a communications secretary to make things even worse.