A FAVORITE sport among spokesmen and apologists for President Duterte these days is to blame journalists for the gaffes that they or their boss commits. The recent controversy over Mr. Duterte’s remarks likening his anti-drug campaign to the Nazi Holocaust because he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts, is certainly the most dramatic, but certainly not the only example.
After stories—and video footage—of the President’s remarks triggered an international firestorm of criticism, Palace officials blamed the media for wrongly reporting on his statements.
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella described the reporting on the Hitler gaffe as “sensationalist,” and said it was “another crude attempt to vilify the President in the eyes of the world.”
He said critics had long been comparing Duterte to Hitler during the campaign, and what the President was doing last week was to reject that comparison, Abella said.
“The President himself flatly rejected the Hitler comparison as can be seen in his reaction. The President recognizes the deep significance of the Jewish experience especially their tragic and painful history,” he said.
In his Sept. 30 speech, Duterte noted that Hitler ordered the massacre of millions of Jews, then said: “Now there are three million drug addicts… I’m happy to slaughter them.”
“At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have you know…,” he added. “My victims, I would like to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”
Not to be outdone, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay accused “unscrupulous journalists” of deliberately twisting the President’s statements.
“The misconception or misunderstanding or misinterpretation is not on the basis of what the President has said, but on the basis of what is written on the media,” Yasay said in a TV interview.
“There is a deliberate scheme or distortion or attempt to distort the statement of the President to make the public misunderstand what he is saying,” he added.
Was it sensational for the press to play up the President’s Hitler remarks? Did media distort what he said? We hardly think so. The journalists who reported on the President’s remarks were just doing their jobs—picking as they are trained to do—the most newsworthy thing that Duterte said that day.
Video footage of the speech is easily accessible on the internet, where anyone can view it and verify the accuracy of the reports and make up his or her own mind. From where we sit, it was clear that it was the President and his spokesmen who were not doing their jobs—he for not thinking before he opened his mouth, and they for failing to avert disaster.
Journalists are an easy mark, especially for people who do not understand the news business.
In the aftermath of the flap over Duterte’s Hitler remarks, one political observer even blamed the media for asking “provocative” questions that they knew would make the President fly over the handle. For the good of the country, he added, journalists must learn to couch their questions in terms that would not provoke the temperamental President.
We would like to know when it became the job of journalists to appease or second guess those in power. The last time we looked, that was not part of our job description—except maybe during the Martial Law years.