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[av_heading heading=’A portrait of the media as Mocha Uson’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER ALBAY
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FOR once I agree with Mocha Uson.
On Wednesday, self-appointed mouth-piece of the DDS (Duterte die-Hard supporters) Mocha Uson condemned the violent dispersal of a protest in front of the US Embassy in Manila.
“Dapat ay managot ang dapat managot sa nangyaring ito!” she posted on social media. “Para sa akin, kahit anong rason, wala man silang permit o tinangkang agawin ang sasakyan ng pulis, hindi pa din nararapat na sagasaan ang mga rallyista ng paulit ulit na parang hindi mga tao ang tinatamaan niya.”
The protest on Wednesday was led by members of the Indigenous communities from all over the country, joined by sectors and youth groups sympathetic to their cause. Moros and Lumads alike rallied for their right to self-determination and called for the end to militarization of their ancestral lands.
Unexpectedly, the demonstration took a violent turn when a police vehicle rammed through the protesters leaving dozens severely injured and a handful in critical condition.
The recurring battle cry of Mocha Uson and her followers is that “the mainstream media is biased”. Her accusations can often sound far-fetched but the coverage of Wednesday’s tragedy seems to back-up her conspiracy theorizing.
On Wednesday evening, the news broadcast of a certain big television company seemed questionably leaning in favor of the police that initiated the brutality. They focused on the accounts of the cops involved with their chief plainly stating “they don’t condone violence”.
They focused on how the protesters managed to intrude on the US Embassy, and showed the account of the police present during the clash – the subtext being, the police got hurt too, then flitting past interviews of injured rallyists.
I kid you not, there’s even a laughable clip of the reporter asking a police officer where he got hurt, the latter pointing at his forearm to a barely-there bruise – while scenes of rallyists falling between the wheels of a police vehicle and bloodied protesters being dragged to safety by their peers, cut in and out.
Meanwhile, the broadcast of the above channel’s archrival painted a much more credible picture of the police using unneeded violence to disperse a protest that was about to close with a program and leave peacefully.
Mocha Uson is many things, a peddler of false information, a rogue self-taught “journalist” without a glimmer of understanding of media ethics, and sometimes even a fearmonger, but you can’t hold this against her: she’s right that the mainstream media can often be tainted by bias.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer has 2,636,423 likes on Facebook, Rappler has 2,956,193, while Mocha Uson’s blog outnumbers them 4,304,054. She’s out-ranked only by the two biggest media conglomerates in the country, ABS-CBN and GMA. It baffles most people how this can be possible, the answer is simple: the masses have also grown to distrust mainstream media.
The irony of course is that Mocha Uson herself is a biased “media source”, always standing proudly to raise the flag of our President Rodrigo Duterte, may his actions be admirable or reprehensible, ever-ready to jump in his defense and bash his detractors.
What we wish for and badly need in this country is in-depth reportage, unbowing and uncompromisingly always on the side of truth. There are plenty of alternative media outlets, but none that have the audience and reach of large media conglomerates often tainted by insidious political agendas and the need for profitability.
Right now, we have Mocha Uson, she’s not the type of “journalist” we need, she’s the kind our backward convoluted country deserves./PN
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