The mainstream media will never admit they are no longer engaged in the dissemination of information, but deeply engaged in propaganda. The propaganda against President Rodrigo Duterte is not really about human rights violations presented in its most graphic way of public execution of suspected drug pushers, but of the truth that the oligarchy, which controls the so-called mainstream media, has been given the green light to discredit his administration.
To be accurate, the term mainstream media is a misnomer. Rather, it is a syndicated media controlled by the oligarchy whose interest is indivisible to the interest of their Western brokers. The thrust of their denunciations on the surface is about human rights and the extrajudicial killings much that they easily elicit human emotion than educate the people on how the state should operate to work for their interest. Gullible people, especially the youth whose idealism is apparent by their raw understanding of freedom, reject the idea that the mainstream media are capable of deceiving them.
Even those who profess to have a highly developed sense of political consciousness would insist that for the media to maintain its independence, it should remain in private hands, but would not accept the same proposition that if given the chance, would allow the private media to compete with the state-owned media in the same way that the neo-liberals continue to malign state-owned media as nothing more but a propaganda mouthpiece of the government.
The belief that only the government is capable of carrying out propaganda is rooted in the fact that freedom of information can only be expressed to the fullest if in the hands of the private sector. Unfortunately, this weak point has been used as entry point of foreign governments to interfere and subvert in our domestic affairs. The cover of Time magazine showing a bullet-riddled dead body whose face was wrapped with masking tape has a serious impact about the EJK allegedly being carried out by the government.
The picture is more than enough to convey what the saboteur of the government means. It reduces one’s thinking of issue to something personal. To abate the gangland execution of alleged drug pushers would deter discussion why many of our people go hungry, why squatters proliferate alongside luxurious condominiums, and why there is chaos in our society with a great number of our population afflicted with maladies of drug addiction, crimes against property, prostitution, and a general decline in law and order. Yet, the same mainstream media are always quick to caution the government about martial law because it will violate their hypocritical principles of freedom and democracy.
Any drastic measure to cleanse our society of the dregs that live side by side with our corrupt politicians is dangerous if the President happens to express his disgust of the deep economic and social wedge in our society. For instance, it is far difficult for our people to understand why we have to make a paradigm shift in our alliance with the US or to stop the forays of terrorism in Mindanao than in showing pictures of suspected dead criminals soaked in their own blood for which the mainstream media are quick to condemn as morally unacceptable.
Invariably, any attempt to disseminate information of what the government is doing and what it has accomplished is easily branded as propaganda. To them, the media should confine itself to disseminating information, not to educating our people. These wrong notions embedded in the public mind are being exploited by the oligarchs and the foreign enemies to demolish the credibility of our government. The mainstream media could hardly comprehend the distinction between public interest and that of the private, in relation to the role of informing the people.
While the oligarchs do not tell media people, which literally are their employees, what to say and what not to say, this has become pivotal. When President Duterte became critical of the US, they automatically aligned themselves with their Western partners. This explains why the mainstream media or the private sector media seldom go beyond their duty of critically analyzing issues that would allow the public to narrate their status in relations to the government that provides them scaffolds for their economic well-being.
Right now, it is President Duterte who is doing the role of educating our people, explaining it to them his plans in their own language. President Duterte is lucky much that in his time, the oligarchy and the imperialists no longer have a monopoly of the media. They thought they could forever manipulate public opinion to promote their own vagaries. Today, the social media reflect more of the opinion of people who defy what the mainstream media peddle as news.
A misinformed, not uninformed, public brings about divisiveness in our perception of the issue presented as news. The mainstream media tend to blackmail the government, thus automatically derailing its noble objectives of serving the interest of the people. This explains why newspapers have greatly declined in circulation, and many of those who have cable television shy away from the traditional Western cable news outlet like CNN, Fox News, BBC or Al Jazeera in favor of CCTV and RT.
What many of our people do not know is that in the dissemination of information, the trick is to present specific and narrowed down topic that would touch on the raw nerve of people like EJK. That could easily ignite passion and hatred against the President. The mainstream media and their foreign consort instantly easily get the desired result.
Once the sitting President becomes so unpopular, that would then pressure him to resign. The Left, having assumed the role of perennial agitator, could not detach itself from joining the bandwagon, because that would deepen their isolation from the people or worse, be accused of betrayal. Despite the fact that President Duterte is considered by many as independent-minded, a populist, and nationalistic, the Left has no choice but join because the people have been conditioned to their strategy of street indignation.
At present, they are committed to support President Duterte because of the peace talks with the NDF; for his appointment of leftist personalities into his government, even if some of them disobey the official line like his desire to have President Marcos buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani; the paradigm shift in our relations with the US, and of his contempt for the oligarchs.
Given this possibilities, could the Left continue to support him in the event he is forced to impose martial law, the same recourse that President Marcos did to save the Republic? Already, many of them feel uneasy in explaining and defending the alleged human rights violations and EJK being raised against President Duterte by the yellow oligarchs. As said, the President is on the right track in talking straight because it is the only way for our people to understand. But the sensationalism of alleged human rights violations only shuts off serious public discussion about poverty, unemployment and hunger that now stalk our nation, which reason why Duterte ran for President.
rpkapunan@gmail.com
