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Media and human rights
Links: New pictures in my webshots album, here and here. A religious issue as diversion in Indonesia. Robbers using children in Brunei. Social inequality in Thailand.
Human rights reporting was better during the Marcos years.
This was asserted by a TV news editor during a recent media forum on human rights in the Philippines. What was more surprising was the fact that nobody in that room full of veteran journalists disputed the opinion of the senior editor.
What could be the basis of this harsh judgment? Perhaps the minimal media coverage of human rights issues compared to other more popular topics, like Gabby Concepcion and product endorsements of senators. Underreporting of torture could be another reason. Abusive journalists – those who beat suspects and those who stage-manage brutal scenes inside a police post – are giving Philippine Press a bad reputation.
But are these reasons enough to claim that human rights reporting was better during the Marcos era? Is it fair to insist that the style of human rights reporting during that period should still be applied today? Veteran media practitioners should answer these questions.
I have a different opinion. Many journalists are indeed guilty of sacrificing truth and ethics for higher ratings, vanity and money. But I have to cite the positive contribution of media in highlighting the widespread human rights violations in the country, especially under the Arroyo regime. Media should be credited for promoting awareness and interest about the shocking human rights abuses inflicted on activists and other critics of the state. Consistent media reports on extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances were instrumental in developing an international campaign to force the government to act on these dastardly crimes against humanity.
The result was swift. The “murderous” Arroyo regime was put on the defensive. The number of human rights abuses declined. Human rights became a national issue once again.
The public became familiar with the terms extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearances and to a certain extent, Writ of Amparo. A decade ago, only few would have appreciated the political relevance of these words.
But a cynic may counter: Why praise the media for doing its work? Isn’t the media mandated by law to inform the public about the extraordinary high number of political massacres, assassinations and abductions in the country?
The answer to these inquiries is also simple: Media could have chosen to ignore these stories. They could have preferred not to write about the senseless killings of activists. But they made a brave decision. They reported these unpopular stories. They made Jonas Burgos and his mother the icons of human rights advocacy. The public is still interested about Karen Empeño and Sheryl Cadapan partly because the media is willing to join the search for these missing youth activists.
Writing about human rights is dangerous in this part of the world. New York Times correspondent Carlos H. Conde notes that “human rights and torture are subjects that can emasculate the journalist.” A writer can be called a destabilizer or a communist sympathizer if he/she does not subscribe to the government position. In short, human rights reporting offers few rewards but huge risks. That is why I have to admire the persistence of media in exposing the human rights atrocities perpetrated by state agents.
But why is there a perception about media’s failure to report human rights adequately? Perhaps the public cannot separate the weaknesses of media as a whole (dependence on corporate money, sensational news reporting) and the state of human rights reporting in the country. We apply the negative criticism on media in general to belittle the quality of human rights journalism.
I have another theory. Media has failed to improve the quality of discourse on human rights. Human rights was treated as an ordinary subject requiring traditional news reporting. News stories on human rights contained the elements of basic journalism: Who was killed/abducted/tortured? Who are the suspects? When, where and how did it happen?
But some very important questions were left out: Why was the crime committed? Why are there rampant human rights violations in the country? Why has nobody been prosecuted and punished for violating the human rights of the poor?
Mainstream media reported the crimes and other human rights abuses. But it failed to sufficiently explain the roots of the problem. The public was informed, but not educated about human rights issues.
The media satisfied the public urge to know the number of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The public was bombarded with gruesome visual and numerical details of human rights violations.
But the media citizens were not given adequate information on how to be part of the campaign to stop human rights violations in the country. The effect is disturbing: People are angry over the impunity killings but they are clueless on how to stop these crimes. Hence, they feel powerless.
Media critics in the United States are using the term “green fatigue” to describe the condition when “people are too overwhelmed by the command to be ‘green’ to do much about it anymore.”
Is there a “human rights fatigue” in the country brought about by too much dull human rights reporting? Since people are not told to do something about human rights abuses, they do nothing.
The media should learn something from the judiciary. Appalled by too many human rights abuses in the country, the Supreme Court promulgated the Writs of Amparo and Habeas Data. If the Supreme Court acted like the media, it could have been content in issuing an order calling for the quick resolution of human rights cases in the lower courts. But it did more than that. The Supreme Court recognized the need to implement bold measures to address the rising number of human rights violations in the country.
Unlike the Supreme Court, mainstream media preferred to confront the problem of human rights abuses by being traditional. Media could have done more. There was an opportunity to implement a media version of an amparo: Human rights education in the newsroom. A new internal writing guideline or media ethics on human rights reporting.
Maybe we are asking too much. We cannot ask media to solve all our problems. They are after all, mere messengers of truth. But can we at least agree that the protection of human rights requires extraordinary effort on the part of everybody, including the mighty media?
Related entries:
Impunity
In other words
Political words
Media vs government
Human rights reporting was better during the Marcos years.
This was asserted by a TV news editor during a recent media forum on human rights in the Philippines. What was more surprising was the fact that nobody in that room full of veteran journalists disputed the opinion of the senior editor.
What could be the basis of this harsh judgment? Perhaps the minimal media coverage of human rights issues compared to other more popular topics, like Gabby Concepcion and product endorsements of senators. Underreporting of torture could be another reason. Abusive journalists – those who beat suspects and those who stage-manage brutal scenes inside a police post – are giving Philippine Press a bad reputation.
But are these reasons enough to claim that human rights reporting was better during the Marcos era? Is it fair to insist that the style of human rights reporting during that period should still be applied today? Veteran media practitioners should answer these questions.
I have a different opinion. Many journalists are indeed guilty of sacrificing truth and ethics for higher ratings, vanity and money. But I have to cite the positive contribution of media in highlighting the widespread human rights violations in the country, especially under the Arroyo regime. Media should be credited for promoting awareness and interest about the shocking human rights abuses inflicted on activists and other critics of the state. Consistent media reports on extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances were instrumental in developing an international campaign to force the government to act on these dastardly crimes against humanity.
The result was swift. The “murderous” Arroyo regime was put on the defensive. The number of human rights abuses declined. Human rights became a national issue once again.
The public became familiar with the terms extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearances and to a certain extent, Writ of Amparo. A decade ago, only few would have appreciated the political relevance of these words.
But a cynic may counter: Why praise the media for doing its work? Isn’t the media mandated by law to inform the public about the extraordinary high number of political massacres, assassinations and abductions in the country?
The answer to these inquiries is also simple: Media could have chosen to ignore these stories. They could have preferred not to write about the senseless killings of activists. But they made a brave decision. They reported these unpopular stories. They made Jonas Burgos and his mother the icons of human rights advocacy. The public is still interested about Karen Empeño and Sheryl Cadapan partly because the media is willing to join the search for these missing youth activists.
Writing about human rights is dangerous in this part of the world. New York Times correspondent Carlos H. Conde notes that “human rights and torture are subjects that can emasculate the journalist.” A writer can be called a destabilizer or a communist sympathizer if he/she does not subscribe to the government position. In short, human rights reporting offers few rewards but huge risks. That is why I have to admire the persistence of media in exposing the human rights atrocities perpetrated by state agents.
But why is there a perception about media’s failure to report human rights adequately? Perhaps the public cannot separate the weaknesses of media as a whole (dependence on corporate money, sensational news reporting) and the state of human rights reporting in the country. We apply the negative criticism on media in general to belittle the quality of human rights journalism.
I have another theory. Media has failed to improve the quality of discourse on human rights. Human rights was treated as an ordinary subject requiring traditional news reporting. News stories on human rights contained the elements of basic journalism: Who was killed/abducted/tortured? Who are the suspects? When, where and how did it happen?
But some very important questions were left out: Why was the crime committed? Why are there rampant human rights violations in the country? Why has nobody been prosecuted and punished for violating the human rights of the poor?
Mainstream media reported the crimes and other human rights abuses. But it failed to sufficiently explain the roots of the problem. The public was informed, but not educated about human rights issues.
The media satisfied the public urge to know the number of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The public was bombarded with gruesome visual and numerical details of human rights violations.
But the media citizens were not given adequate information on how to be part of the campaign to stop human rights violations in the country. The effect is disturbing: People are angry over the impunity killings but they are clueless on how to stop these crimes. Hence, they feel powerless.
Media critics in the United States are using the term “green fatigue” to describe the condition when “people are too overwhelmed by the command to be ‘green’ to do much about it anymore.”
Is there a “human rights fatigue” in the country brought about by too much dull human rights reporting? Since people are not told to do something about human rights abuses, they do nothing.
The media should learn something from the judiciary. Appalled by too many human rights abuses in the country, the Supreme Court promulgated the Writs of Amparo and Habeas Data. If the Supreme Court acted like the media, it could have been content in issuing an order calling for the quick resolution of human rights cases in the lower courts. But it did more than that. The Supreme Court recognized the need to implement bold measures to address the rising number of human rights violations in the country.
Unlike the Supreme Court, mainstream media preferred to confront the problem of human rights abuses by being traditional. Media could have done more. There was an opportunity to implement a media version of an amparo: Human rights education in the newsroom. A new internal writing guideline or media ethics on human rights reporting.
Maybe we are asking too much. We cannot ask media to solve all our problems. They are after all, mere messengers of truth. But can we at least agree that the protection of human rights requires extraordinary effort on the part of everybody, including the mighty media?
Related entries:
Impunity
In other words
Political words
Media vs government
posted by: mongpalatino at June 30, 2008 01:00 |
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media
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