Commentary
by Vergel O. Santos
To publish or not, but, again, publish when?
That was the central proposition to the debate incited by the kidnapping of television journalist Cecilia Victoria “Ces” Drilon and three companions in Sulu last June 8. The first half of the proposition should have been easy enough to resolve, since, without question, the kidnapping was news—something of public interest, affecting or bound to affect the lives of enough number of people, requiring therefore to be made public.
It was the second half of the proposition that proved contentious: when to publish—could the news have waited?
Asked that precise question in light of requests from Drilon’s network, ABS-CBN 2, for the media to hold the story, I replied:
The story should have been made public as soon as verified. Indeed, it was a story whose urgency could not be overstated: it was the first case of kidnapping after a long lull in a place notorious for it. That made it only proper that the alarm be sounded so that the public might be roused from any false sense of security.
But what about the captives’ safety? That, on other hand, was the conscience question that dogged ABS-CBN 2. Afraid that further harm might come to them if the story became public, as kidnappers routinely threaten, ABS-CBN 2 tried to manage the news by campaigning for a blackout, and did in fact get some media to go along.
They may have all been convinced in their hearts that they were doing the right thing, but still they should be able to square it with the basic principle that governs their profession, the very reason indeed for which it exists—the people’s right to know. And if they insist on this one case as a moral exception, they will be expected to judge every comparable case that comes along by the same standard, otherwise they will open themselves to the suspicion that they are applying it discriminatorily.
But what exactly is that standard? So far as I can discern, it is a variable and ineffable one, set by what feels right in one’s heart at the moment. Journalists are given wide latitudes, but still they have to validate their judgments and actions against certain express rules and principles.
At any rate, events have overtaken the debate. In fact, probably even before ABS-CBN 2’s call for a news blackout went out, the story had been out in public, heard first and nationwide on dzBB, on the day itself of the kidnapping, and posted on the Mindanao Examiner’s Internet site the next day, the same day I myself got it in text messages, repeated or updated through the night and into the next day. Which gives cause to wonder what practical purpose a news blackout might have served.
But a news blackout did come down all the same, one widespread enough, considering alone that the most widely circulated newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the widest-reaching broadcast network, ABS-CBN 2, took part in it.
Defending the blackout, Inquirer editorial consultant and columnist Amando Doronila wrote:
“If I were the editor...I would have found it reasonable to agree to the embargo primarily on the grounds that human lives were at risk from premature publicity. Public security and national interest would not have been harmed by a one-day embargo that denied the public only tentative information. At that stage, the primary concern was the safety of the hostages.”
Doronila reckoned that “a one-day embargo” was all it would take to ensure the safety of the hostages (in fact, the blackout took longer). How he worked his arithmetic of life assurance to such precision—a day’s allowance, not two days’, not three, not longer—I am afraid I would not be able to follow. Neither would I his point, as he picked on my own, about there being after all no “complete story” to tell.
“He (me, that is) said publishing the story should have alerted people in Sulu [who could] be ‘lulled into a false sense of security,’ adding that the complete story had to be told to...lessen speculation,” Doronila said. I was quoted quite faithfully, but Doronila went on to quibble, “How could a ‘complete story’ be told on the basis of sketchy and still developing events?”
Doronila could have been only quibbling, because it is difficult to believe a man of his years and stature in daily journalism unfamiliar with the sense of completeness that applies to a news story: a collection of material that, properly marshaled and packaged, provides a clear, accurate, and complete account of an event—meaning, whole enough to be able to stand by itself; in the standard guide phrase in the newspaper business, fit to print for the day.
Indeed, in the general sense, no story can be complete. And for a “running story” such as the kidnapping of Drilon and her companions, it is only further revealed as it is chased or as it develops on its own, so that to wait until a story is thus complete before telling it is to wait till kingdom-come.
- The writer adapted this comment for the PJR Reports from a piece he had published in the June 15 issue of the BusinessWorld. |
