The Real Issue with ABS-CBN Is Money, Politics and Power

Volume 1, Issue No. 45

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .

Our latest as of Tuesday, May 19, 2020 

~ A Philippine national artist for literature has offloaded his sentiments about ABS-CBN and the controversy generated by its closure. Rather than press freedom, the main issues revolve around money, politics and power. That's the view shared by author, publisher, and journalist F. Sionil Jose in a commentary in the Manila-based Philippine Star.

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F. SIONIL JOSE, NATIONAL ARTIST, SAYS:

ABS-CBN 'Not Crucial' to the Philippines' Survival

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

"Do not mock a pain that you haven't endured - Anonymous

TORONTO - "The real issue with ABS-CBN and its owners is not press freedom," according to F. Sionil Jose, the multi-awarded novelist, publisher and lecturer, and one of the Philippines' 17 national artists for literature. "It is money, politics and power".

The 95-year-old is commenting on the shutdown of "the Philippines' largest network" following the expiration of its 25-year franchise on May, 4, 2020. On that same day, the National Telecommunications Commission issued a cease-and-desist order demanding an immediate stop to its operations. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RexihfFtXo).

"ABS-CBN is not crucial to this nation's survival nor does its closure mark the end of press freedom," Mr. Jose wrote in his Hindsight column on Monday, May 18, 2020, published by the Philippine Star, a broadsheet daily identified with the so-called Yellows, the political opposition that President Rodrigo Duterte had defeated at the 2016 presidential elections.

He continued: "Hundreds of TV and radio stations and broadsheets will continue to purvey news and views. And there is the omnipresent social media wide open to both idiot and intellectual".

"In fact," he said, "the removal of this media giant will contribute to the levelling of the playing field and the strengthening of democracy". (Background: https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/national-artists-of-the-philippines/f-sionil-jose/).

Mr. Jose's comments were the strongest among Manila's intelligentsia unsympathetic to the plight of the radio and television empire owned by the affluent Lopez family whose business interests at one time encompassed shipping, sugar plantations, electric generation, and banking.

The brothers Eugenio Lopez Sr. and Fernando Lopez - a vice president of the Philippines for three terms - were the chief architects of the business which eventually grew into a conglomerate that included the now-defunct Manila Chronicle, and ABS-CBN, the country's largest network.

"The real issue," said Mr. Jose, "is x x x how power is acquired, how it is abused and maintained, and most of all, how it obstructs this country's economic and democratic development". (Related video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z6-skUR25k).

ABS-CBN appears to have influential connections in the two-chamber Congress of the Philippines, which consists of the 24-seat Senate and the House of Representatives of 304 members.

Last week, for example, the Speaker of the House, Representative Allan Peter Cayetano, proposed giving the network a provisional franchise - essentially a temporary permit - to allow it to operate until October 31, 2020. But legal experts claimed the scheme violates the Philippine constitution.

On Tuesday, May 19, 2020, Manila time, the Supreme Court ordered the government to comment within 10 days on a petition by ABS-CBN to resume operation. The court also asked the network to respond within five days. 

The shutdown of ABS-CBN has become fodder for the opposition and its most unlikely ally, the leftist organizations some of whose members are in Congress, to denounce President Duterte, saying the network's closure was an attack on the freedom of the press. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZbdunLl4KM).

To which Mr. Jose reacted, saying: "All too often, we are lulled into acquiescence, if not apathy, by the seductive allure of slogans of universal abstractions like freedom and the gloss and glitter of instruments like ABS-CBN. Yes, ABS-CBN indeed has its uses. 

"But reduced to its very core, it is pure entertainment. History is full of similar even analogous examples. When the ancient Romans were restive, the Caesars gave them parades and circuses. 

"As for freedom, it is the camouflage of the true nature of ABS-CBN just like the sea that hides the iceberg. Freedom is also the sugar coating that attracts the libertarians, the sincere believers in human rights, who have no time to look deeper, beyond the glossy surface". (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).

The quarantine that followed the coronavirus pandemic has been a kind of blessing for Mr. Jose. "I am very grateful to the Lord for letting me live this long – I am 95 – without the ailments that cripple the mind. This isolation enforced by the pandemic gave me time to think more deeply and read and review some of what I had written".