A lesson when someone slanders the press

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“Don’t hate the media, become the media.”—Jello Biafra

 

WE have been always trying our best to maintain objectivity when we covered political issues because, as members of the Fourth Estate, it’s the right, the most logical and decent thing to do.

Our credibility rests on how we perform our tasks and how we embrace and uphold the tenets of journalism.

In making comments and reporting about the events in the United States these past years, we did our best to be fair and objective, to tell the story as it is—but it was always based on facts, data, and veracity.

On my part, I have been very careful when I wrote a story not to sound favoring certain political figures or parties; I was aware that in the United States, media practitioners have been tagged as either belonging to the “liberal media” or the “conservative media.”

But in the recent tumult at the Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. that made shocking headlines all over the world, lines have been drawn.

 

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Even during the tense and most horrific moments in the morning on January 6 when disgraced President Donald Trump was egging his unhinged and unruly loyalists-turned-thugs to storm the Capitol and disrupt lawmakers from certifying President-elect Joseph Biden’s and Vice President-elect Kamal Harris’ Electoral College win, the President continued to irrationally attack the press.

He has been belittling and slandering political enemies like he was swatting the mosquitoes in a dirty kitchen, and the Americans ignored and tolerated him for four years, knowing fully well he was always at odds even with the unknown shadows in the porticos.

But Mr. Trump’s continued antagonism with the press by constantly calling media establishments “fake news” even during normal press conferences was both perplexing and incomprehensible.

In our local dialect it’s already a “wala na sa lugar” or not anymore normal or nonsense.

 

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The press is only doing its job—to report and mirror the truth.

Politicians like Mr. Trump who are easily annoyed at critical press presumably don’t really understand the role we play in a democratic world.

When a certain story doesn’t sound favorable they go ballistic and defame the reporter who authors the broadcast or written item.

It has been happening again and again, and it has emboldened bullies and thugs masquerading as public servants to use the opportunity to undermine the credibility of the media.

Again, because the press is only doing its job, it’s not in a business to engage these ruffians in public office in a sustained mudslinging or vendetta; its role is bigger than that.

The press may be confrontational by nature, but non-combatant in principle.

In the end, however, these good-for-nothing public leaders like Mr. Trump, in particular, go down in infamy and are harshly and humiliatingly judged by history, while the free press survives and continues to serve in democratic societies.

No dictator or authoritarian ruler in history has succeeded in bringing down the Fourth Estate, which survived even during the more frightful French Revolution hundreds of years ago.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)