In her Rappler.com piece, Chay Hofileña writes that media has the responsibility to “connect the dots.”  Hofileña claims that the journalist, in the quest to arrive at the truth, develops some form of expertise on the matter; that a journalist’s role, facing a “lethargic public, too tired or lazy to do the math, or simply apathetic,” is to rouse and mobilize the masses.  That, as “shapers of informed public discourse, if not facilitators of discussion and debate in the name of truth,” the ultimate check of the media is that “informed public exposed to a marketplace of ideas” would “be in the best position to judge whether what is being fed them is hogwash or scraps.”

Not to be disrespectful or anything, but let’s turn that argument on its head.  What if the public is fed hogwash or scraps?  If the symptoms of public discourse include lethargy, fatigue, laziness, and desensitization, wouldn’t those characteristics be a consequence of what is presented to them by the media?  Isn’t the situation, for that matter, symptomatic and characteristic of the quality of information we have, courtesy of the media?

Enlightening a befuddled public is, indeed, the task of journalism, or for that matter, citizen journalism. Yet we must also remember that (ideally) the formation of opinion – public opinion, at that – occurs after the news, when the remains of the day settle. In other words, public opinion is shaped by the facts fed to the public.

True, the media’s role is beyond the presentation of facts. But connecting the dots matters only if those dots are plotted in the right place by news desks, presenters, anchors, producers, and reporters. The quality of news and information, as it seems, suffers under the sheer quantity of items produced. To paraphrase Lazarsfeld, this proverbial flood of information doesn’t necessarily make us “informed” or “knowledgeable,” but being inundated with so much information has the unintended consequence of making us apathetic to it. It stops, rather unfortunately, at being informed. Add to that the quality of information available from media, and… well, you get the picture. But knowing is half the battle, and in a society where there’s so much information and so little time, half the battle is enough. Lazarsfeld termed it in a most compelling way: “narcotizing dysfunction.”

This sets an interesting position for media going beyond setting information, but setting agenda. Because media sets it so, opinion will be so; ultimately rendering public opinion as a function of media and media alone because the truth is the business of the media. The play on power, at that, is never neutral, just as is the truth that is represented by some approximation. That makes Hofileña’s claim for journalism as more than just a claim of responsibilities, but a claim of how much power media – as an institution and as an apparatus of very public talk – really has.

To invoke C. Wright Mills, the media can – as illustrated in the Rappler.com essay – function as a power elite: it is an intricate network of small connections and groups that share and talk about decisions with a far-reaching consequence beyond national borders. In saying that the media are “shapers” of public opinion, Hofileña goes beyond investigation and reporting in a timely and prompt manner as a function of journalism. Rather, she underscores the inequality of information: that, as it seems, in a society characterized by delivering the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time, only the journalist – the institution and the apparatus of public talk – has the monopoly on truth.

This is not, of course, an attack on journalists and journalism and the good done by Rappler.com. It is, though, that sullen reflection on the state of public discourse in a so-called “Age of Information,” where the condition is never “democratic,” and the inundation of information a public perceived as “passive” (by journalists, of all people) is never emancipatory. Does this underscore the need for quality reporting from the media and insightful analysis from commentators? Not necessarily. The game isn’t played on information, but the use of it.

As the role of media shifts, apparently, to check on the government more, the consumers of media must check on the media more. That while we tout comments and feedback and citizen journalism as a great check-and-balance for the status quo, the challenge is more than to fulfill those means. Yes, but the need is more than that: the quality of the information available to us must make us think more than the need for us to feel. And thinking – and acting – on the information available to us is the best way to do so. That while Chay Hofileña would probably appropriate the search for truth as the business of journalism, acting on the truth is the business of citizenship.

The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected, dangerous flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

- Jon Stewart, October 30, 2010

But I do: if only because you trade off a few things here and there as you do what all other 26-year-olds do.

It started out as one of those usual trips to the Jollijeeps to buy lunch… that was until my senses were tickled by the familiar, delicious smell of that old Filipino staple, tocino.

Like the chicken cheesedog and skinless longganisa, tocino occupies its own place in that realm of the familiar and the taken-for-granted: the Filipino “Frigidaire.” The sugary sweetness and the faint notes of salitre, its special role in caricatures of a failing public school system, and the degree of burning required to make a tocino delicious all make it somewhat complicated. Surely the supermarket tocino purists will have their own debates on the matter of Mekeni vs. Pampanga’s Best, but it is, to me, something rather special:

I haven’t had it in months. Not tocino per se, but the tocino I actually like.

Mind you, it wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid, tocino was regular fare for breakfast and lunch. Mom liked it because it was fairly easy to cook and not prone to spoilage, and I liked it because it was filling and sweet. Every weekend on his way home, my dad always bought home packs of the stuff along with other meaty treats we always had for lunch: chicken hotdogs, longganisa, embutido. Then there were the ham slices that, as years went by, somehow became much thinner, much more round around the ages, and over time, smaller and fattier.

The tocino I had was quite hard to eat, but a steal at around 40 pesos; considering the high prices of food in Salcedo Village, you make do. Not necessarily enjoy.

Living here, though, makes me wish at times for room to cram a stove in my apartment for the sole purpose of cooking tocino, or something like that. Tocino, just the way I like it: thin but meaty strips, crisp around the edges, drippings and oils drizzled around garlic fried rice. The fatty parts crisp but not burnt, chewy and oily. Sweet, a tart note at first bite, with the pleasant aftertaste of anise and saltpeter. Then there’s the egg over easy, the runny yolk drizzled over a few pieces and eaten just as it is: perfect, made at home, simple.

“Make do. Not necessarily enjoy.” That’s a bit interesting: growing up, with a career and all sorts of responsibilities coming your way, the thought of “making do” is somewhat a hallmark of adulthood. There was a time in my life that I thought that my parents will always be there to help me in my time of need – cravings for tocino included – until I grew old enough to realize the kinds of choices and responsibilities involved in something as simple as homemade lunch.

The same goes for everything: dirty laundry, medical checkups, or the occasional need to rant about your problems hoping that they could help. Often, with them being far away and me growing old enough to make choices for myself, it’s often up to me. More often than not, those rants become Facebook status messages. At least, I have outlets. Right.

But these are things that I never really worried about growing up: things like cutting classes for games of Counterstrike or when to return long-overdue library books. And somehow, reaching and exceeding the very low goals I set for myself as I made compromises growing up should “count for something.”

But that’s the thing about “making do:” you set goals low enough for you to reach and be a little more happy for the “little things in life” and “life’s simple joys” to the point that you become your own tocino: raw inside from lack of openness, charred outside from all your failures and showing it to the world as some badge of honor, and mediocre at best. And I’m kind of sick of settling for that and throwing my aggression on people who succeed simply because I can’t, or I don’t, and I settle for what’s there.

And that is so true for too many people. I guess it’s time to go for a better taste.

The tocino I had was in a styrofoam box. It’s a cupful of rice made yellow from chicken cubes and powdered seasoning, the tocino still reddish but not burnt, a cold egg with hard yolk. And lunches sometimes piss you off. Well, at least life’s passions are greater and more important than satisfying a craving for tocino…

And I guess those things are the ones that I shouldn’t leave to compromise. Although it’s interesting what kind of bad tastes in the mouth a bad tocino can leave, etched in your soul. Life, like the taste of tocino, is best lived when you don’t settle for anything less.

HALLER
Translation of “Hello” by Lionel Richie

Ikaw lang kasama ko sa ‘king isip
Sa panaginip ko’y libu-libo ang aking halik
Minsan nakikita kitang dumadaan sa ‘king pinto

Haller, ako ba ang hanap mo?
Kita ko sa ‘yong mata
Kita ko sa ‘yong ngiti
Ang gusto ko ay ikaw lamang
At bukas ang aking mga bisig
At alam mo ang gusto mong sabihin
At alam mo ang dapat gawin
Nais ko sanang malaman mo
Mahal kita

Nais kong makita ang sikat ng araw sa ‘yong buhok
Sabihin sa iyo na ang puso’y para sa iyo lang ang tibok
Parang damdamin ko ay aapaw na

Haller, gusto kong malaman mo
Giliw, ako’y nagtataka
San ka’t anong ginagawa
Ikaw ba’y nag-iisa
O may kasamang iba
Paano ba makuha ang puso mo
Di ko alam ang gagawin ko
Sisimulan ko na lang ng, “Mahal kita”

Haller, gusto kong malaman mo
Giliw, ako’y nagtataka
San ka’t anong ginagawa
Ikaw ba’y nag-iisa
O may kasamang iba
Paano ba makuha ang puso mo
Di ko alam ang gagawin ko
Sisimulan ko na lang ng, “Mahal kita”

I don’t want to chalk it up – yet – to an increasingly cynical Filipino, or for that matter a point of view that perpetuates and fosters cynicism. After all, one is free to criticize, and one is free to disagree. Yet it also pays, I believe, to criticize and disagree with the right things, and to lend perspective in the right way.

For a government agency whose troubles with everything from budget to copyright have been well within the field of vision of the public eye, it’s hard to pull off anything without some degree of criticism. And it goes without saying that it should be: as far as tourism goes, we should get it right. But part of getting it right means making it work. The exercise of making the national tourism slogan is not a matter of advertising alone, but a matter of pulling together to stand by one national idea. Getting it right, and making it work.

It’s easy to see why people don’t like the new tourism slogan. It’s wordy, it’s a bit too long, the word “fun” is a bit arbitrary. Our notion of the “national slogan” has been steeped in the idea of “Wow, Philippines” for too long that indeed, we do well to resist that change. “It’s more fun in the Philippines” is a leap from that: it’s different. What’s “hardworking” for some may be “overworked” for others. Some of us nitpick over details like colors or fonts or messaging, or that a 1951 ad from Switzerland looks all too familiar.

I say, though, let’s get it right. And as a people, let’s make it work.

We’re faced here with a slogan and a hashtag: not a strategy, not a plan, but a short boost in social media that for now, from what’s visible, represents a hypothesis for what can be campaigned and what possibilities can arise. We can – and we should – fault people for that. But to say that the plan does not exist, or that a greater strategy is absent in this matter, is a sweeping generalization that does nothing but doom this project from the start. Surely the end result is not just a slogan and a template for banners and posters, but an entire project for Philippine tourism.

And that, I think, is what we should be concerned of, and where we should be raging and defending from: the big picture, the complete proposal, the totality of every strategy and execution that makes this campaign what it is. True, we should be concerned about the slogan for the fact that it is what is available for the moment, but to treat that as the be-all end-all of the entire exercise is to be as short-sighted as the logo is claimed to be. Yes, let’s take the slogan, but we should clash it against the other cogs in the wheel. What’s the long-term project for purism in the country? How will it impact our economy? What are our key indicators, milestones, metrics, and other scores that would justify this campaign to be called a success? What is the slogan’s role in all of that, and what are the roles of those milestones in determining the truth for the slogan?

Those are questions that cannot be answered by the slogan alone. And perhaps the Department and its representing creative agency should answer to that, and present that complete work. Or show – not tell – that the work-in-progress reaches goals that are attainable.

I’m pretty sure that if, on the very first step, we’ll allow ourselves to be hindered by the notion that we don’t have it right, or that if we go out of our way to not make it work, it will never be right and it will never work. It doesn’t mean that we should only have good things to say about a slogan that we may not agree with, but it also doesn’t mean that the whole effort should just be what it is for the moment.

Do I like the DOT slogan? I wish there were fewer words. I find it hardworking, but I have yet to see the components of strategy and execution that would make it work. Do I support it? Let’s wait and see until we can assess the totality of the work in a more complete way with deference and respect for the work done and still to be done.

And after all that is said and done it is up to us to get it right and make it work, because we’re all in this together not just as taxpayers and as tourists, but the best tour guides and ambassadors for the project of Philippine tourism. And yes, while this is an idea, and while great minds do discuss ideas, there is a bigger idea in play: a strategy and plan for Philippine tourism that, for now, is seen through one slogan.

To elevate the discourse beyond that cog in the wheel is something that remains to be seen. Sooner, I hope, before all the fun is taken away from it.

No, this isn’t one of those indictments on the state of the “social media sphere” for the past year, but rather a reflection on weight.

“Lay your burden down,” the old blues refrain goes, and somehow for many of us that’s the same refrain for this year.  For me, 2011 was not a year to wallow in despair or bask in glory, hype the highs or lament the lows, curate them every now and then… those are things that bear too much weight for things that are really important.  Things, people, events, and memories that are worth their weight.  Things, people, events, and memories that are worth bearing.

Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, wrote a little nugget of wisdom that I’ve somehow carried throughout the years: “Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.”  This year, I stopped believing that completely.  There are a lot of things that have, in time, become valuable to me.  There are things that have no worth in others’ eyes that have become valuable to me.  And the world works because of that: we weigh things not according to the concrete but the abstract, and nonetheless real.

When we lay our burden down, that’s when we know what things in that burden weigh the most.

It’s the end of the year, and this is usually a time to catalog things, to frame our achievements, to reflect on our failures and whatnot, hoping for more blessings in the year to come.  This year has been one for trending topics and controversies and viral incidents, promising to ignite the fires of revolution and stopping the motor of the world.  Yet here we are: in a world buffeted from all directions by the winds of change, it’s that comfortable cradle of the mundane and the predictable that shields us, lends us a bit of perspective.

Maybe we like to think that the world and all its affects – society, economy, communication, politics, and so on – travel faster than ever before.  Some of us feel the need to keep up and keep the pace because we don’t want to get left behind.  In our urge to fly with the times we shed a lot of weight in the process: sometimes, the weight that keeps us grounded and perhaps even sane.  Things like common sense, taste, fun… and yes, love.  And in shedding all that weight our perspectives become as twisted as the world around us: the urge to be number one, the urge to be influential, urges that twist us to be just like all that information around us.  Fleeting, temporary, flighty, always connected but never grounded.  Or of being so up there already, but indeed, not carrying weight.

So I guess it’s time to weigh: lose the things that don’t have valuable weight and hang on to the things that keep us grounded.  Carry a burden every now and then, not for the sake of self-mortification but to have enough to keep ourselves weighed down in spite of the tides of change.  Or that the weight of the world is too much for one’s shoulders to carry, and that it should be shared.  Laying your burden down doesn’t mean surrender, but reflecting on all that weight. What should be lost, and what should be gained?

And that sometimes, it helps to just stop… and take a load off. So to speak.

Happy New Year, everyone.

* – Yes, that’s The Band song covered by Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page in “It Might Get Loud”

Former Rep. Teddy Boy Locsin – who recently gained some measure of infamy for his “Teditorial” on NAIA, branding bloggers who criticized the airport as “homeless gays” with a not-so-subtle dig with “kneepads in restrooms” – is at it again.

This time, Mr. Locsin calls Inquirer’s tribute to the victims of the Ampatuan Massacre “just plain baduy.”  Without the homophobic innuendo, Locsin rambles on with contrarian pontifications criticizing the pictures of the columnists: kesyo the columnists who closed their eyes are in the act of forgetting, kesyo the columnists should open their eyes, kesyo the stunt was baduy, etc.  It’s as if Mr. Locsin held the monopoly of knowledge in meaning, in semiotics, in expression – whether artistic or journalistic – and that the schoolyard pejorative should make for a good summation.

While we’re no strangers to editorial segments in newscasts – the late Frankie Evangelista excelled at that – I guess we can all agree that editorializing has its functions as well as its limits.  For the lack of a disclaimer, as well as a lack of prudence in editing the talking-head piece, the caricature of Locsin has not only painted itself as an ultra-conservative elitist who does not hesitate to betray deep-seated homophobia, but now it also paints a caricature of a cantankerous nitpicker who forgets the importance and relevance of symbols and metaphors.

This, a week after the commemoration of the second year of the Ampatuan Massacre.  The other, a few days shy of Pride Day.

Again, while we’re no strangers to editorials, we should know by now that while an editorial will offend people at one point or another – especially those in positions of power – that is not its primary purpose.  The editorial should enlighten, should make sense of the news, or at the very least present an opinion of the paper outside of what it is reporting.  This is not to say that papers or news organizations should be devoid of opinion, but knowing that Locsin’s opinion takes center stage in a nightly newscast – without the benefit of a disclaimer or a knowledge of why it’s there in the first place – is a bit unsettling.

Which brings us to the problem: if Teddy Locsin is the “chief commentator” (for lack of a better term) of ANC, do his opinions represent ANC, The World Tonight, and ABS-CBN in general?  I don’t think so: not with the homophobia and elitism and self-aggrandizement present in his previous “Teditorials.”  I don’t think he should, either, as should his own pieces and commentaries be edited prudently by the organization (in this case, the newsroom) to prevent them from being offensive.  Or at least having a clear disclaimer.

What difference does it make if you’re rich or poor, gay or straight, to have a properly functioning airport?  Are those remarks and innuendos necessary to make a point against current plans for rehabilitating NAIA?  So what if Inquirer chooses to pay tribute to their murdered colleagues in the media?  Baduy as it may be to Locsin, walang basagan ng trip holds as much – if not more – weight.  And more than that, what do these innuendos and remarks do to elevate discourse and conversation about the NAIA mess and the Ampatuan Massacre?  Yes, it’s important to “read between the lines” and all that, but if between those lines are the unnecessary and uncalled-for remarks of a talking-head on television, then the lines should be raised and, more importantly, drawn.

J. William Fulbright writes, “When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.”  In the case of Teddy Locsin, it is more than just outrageous and baffling: it is, for a segment in a much-watched telecast, unacceptable.