Anthony Taberna has a creditable following. The topics he takes up are timely, the guests he invites, generally interesting, the exchanges lively, at times, sharp. That is not to say that Tunying is always right. No one is — and that should be a self-evident proposition, at least after The Fall.
Lately, however, he has come under fire for what, to some is an astonishing silence on the Iglesia ni Cristo’s internal squabbles. His critics claim that, as an opinion-maker, he was supposed to rise above his religious affiliations and convictions and to discuss the issue of the expulsion of some key figures in the church and the dissension that has wracked its ranks. This quite clearly raises a question of supreme importance to the ethics of journalism – print, broadcast or internet. Is a commentator, an opinion-maker, obliged to suspend his credal or ideological allegiances to be able to discuss topics that, though offensive or hurtful to his deepest convictions, are nevertheless of currency and of national interest?
There is no journalist or columnist I know who will accept the proposition that he is under some kind of a professional obligation to take up the burning issues of the day and to take some stand or other. I furthermore reject the proposition that the ethics of the profession demand that one suspend his personal allegiances to be “objective”.
In the first place, “objectivity” — if it means detachment from any subjective consideration — is a myth in the pejorative sense. It was a fantasy people indulged it when humanity knew no better!
In the second place, it is precisely one’s allegiances and partisanship that allow him to influence public opinion. It is a commentator’s job, a columnist’s calling, to provoke debate by taking sides on the basis of his convictions. You read a news report when you want a narration of facts; you read a columnist when you want opinion. And it is precisely because a commentator has convictions that he firmly holds that he can be interesting.
Why should Tunying Taberna be under obligation to discuss a topic he is not disposed to talk about? His profession as commentator obligates him to attempt to form public opinion on some issues. It is demanding the impossible to require him to discuss all. And because he must choose, then he will talk about issues that interest him and leave out others that he believes he should not take up — and no one can begrudge him this choice without seriously compromising the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of a writer or an opinion-maker.
There is yet another related matter. The refusal of a journalist to join in the chorus of condemnation against an object of popular opprobrium does not, without seriously violating the tenets of rationality, support the conclusion of such a journalist’s collusion with the corrupt or the unrighteous or the ungodly. —If it is his right to comment, it is equally his right not to—and a right would not be one, were a negative conclusion to be drawn from its exercise. “Bayaran” is a commonly used label against one who does not join the bandwagon of condemnation.
Sadly, it is a characterization that ends all debate. One never takes seriously a “bayaran”; after all, he says only what he was paid to say. But why should anyone who takes up an unpopular position be “bayaran”? How can discourse flourish when it is unanimity we want at every turn? I think, that is essentially the trouble: While free speech and expression are jealously guarded rights in this country, we have yet to learn the ways of true discourse. We need that maturity that by which we can seriously entertain a contradictory proposition and not dismiss it outright because we have consigned him who maintains what we oppose to the infernal regions of the morally or intellectually bankrupt!
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
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