Media people know who corrupts whom
News sources and media
Media people know who corrupts whom
LEONARDO V. CHIU
First published in SunStar Nov. 28, 1992. Adapted in CJJ Jan. 26, 2025.
Columnist “Nards” Chiu (+Aug. 14, 2015) conceded there are corrupt persons working in Cebu news media. But, the writer said, “purifying” media of corrupt practices requires “purging” of the source of corruption. And they include politicians using taxpayers’ money, he wrote.
Who is corrupting the media?
They say many in media are corrupt. But, then, this is only one side of the issue. The other and more important side is precisely the question who is corrupting those in the media.
Indeed there are corrupt media practitioners. The need, however, to purify media of corrupt practices demands the purging of the source of corruption.
Bribe-giver, bribe-taker
Unlike other forms of corruption (e.g. top government officials creating fly-by-night non-government organizations to corner fat government contracts), corruption in media is mainly a relationship between a bribe-giver and a bribe-taker.
Such a relationship may only be a small-time affair between a stingy patron and an insistent panhandler. This, however, does not justify approval.
A public trust as well
It is, therefore, important that media, it being as much a public trust as any other elective position in the government, be rid of corruption. Nonetheless the patron of these corrupt practices must be equally chastised if only to make media as much an upstanding an enterprise as possible.
Now is not the first time that media or some people in media are accused of corruption.
The past saw many civic associations and even a few media groups rallying behind the cause aimed at fostering a cleaner media environment. This did not stir the media.
If this old accusation has now jolted media, it must only be because such an accusation came from individuals who are themselves known in media circles to abet such corruption.
What is, therefore, apparent in the clutter now taking place in the local media is that media practitioners themselves, whether consciously or not, are reacting to hypocrisy.
Indeed politicians — not excepting the star accusers Cebu Gov. Vicente de la Serna and Cebu Fifth District Rep. Celestino Martinez Jr. — are as much guilty of corruption in media as those who are perceived to be corrupt. They of course may deny this role. The important point, though, is that some people in media know who pays whom.
An operator’s account
Recently a small group — composed of Sun.Star Daily metro editor Nini B. Cabaero and reporter Michelle P. So, scholar Resil Mojares and this columnist had the opportunity to listen, behind closed doors, to the account of one operator under whose payola are some people in the local media.
As this group’s request for an on-the-record to session was turned down, the audience was finally granted on the pledge that none of the account would ever be written or used in any investigation.
The reaction to the so called expose on media corruption may have been such that journalists and broadcasters in Cebu media are now clawing at each other. What this clearly indicates is that this perspective on the politi cians playing the other important role in corrupting the media is notably missed out.
Politicians’ role
RELATED: “The House committee hearing on Cebu media ‘corruption’”
And yet it is this very role the politicians play in corrupting media that must first be corrected before things can get better.
One, therefore, wonders why, in reacting to the hypocrisy of these accusations, people in media acquiesce on having themselves entirely devoured in aimless claims and counterclaims of innocence and guilt, rather than holding the politicians primarily responsible for the very indecency they now want queried. The signs are not healthy.
Timid or guilty
For one, they clearly show that, contrary to its assertions of being vigilant and fearless, Cebu media is really timid. Or, perhaps, people in Cebu media might just be, as accused of corruption, too guilty of the accusation that no one is willing to face his or her corruptor.
Politicians — not excepting Governor de la Serna and Rep. Martinez– in this part of the globe have always been known for their pre-occupa- tion with self-interests. With media’s role in shaping public opinion to prop up these interests or upset the interests of competing factions, its mani- pulation becomes an essential blueprint for politicians want- ing to assert at all cost.
There is this need, of course, for cleansing in media. But, then, how possible will this cleansing be, if the progenitors of corruption themselves in this case, the politicians who, for countless numbers of years now, have been using tax money as if it were theirs to lavish on — are allowed to remain faceless and nameless? Surely it is now time to expose them too.
And only then can media really be free. 