Volume 2, Issue No. 20
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 Sunday, September 27, 2020
~ Whenever a story displeases some people, they resort to veiled threats. They come up with ad hominems. They fabricate, they lie to feed and please the devil within them. Those are risks common in the practice of investigative journalism. At the community level, it's far worse than one would expect. People one thought to be neighbours and friends are actually the enemies.
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A BLAST FROM THE PAST?
Toronto Tabloid Threatens Blackmail
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“Freedom of speech doesn't mean threatening the freedom of others.” ― Corpkshetra
The way she conveys the message to me by email appears as if I had hidden something wicked before I moved to Toronto 10 years ago. The hint is obvious - "skeletons", if indeed they are, exist about me.
San Diego was my hometown for almost 20 years. My parents had planted their roots there after immigrating from their ancestral place in Cavite province. My siblings had grown their own families in that Navytown to other states in the US. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk-2dCAzGps).
My memories of America's Finest City had been both austere and casual. It was there that I began the practice of community journalism, which is a far cry from the global reporting I did as a foreign correspondent at a major international news agency based in Hamburg, Germany. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0AXXyPXaE).
The threat by Teresita Cusipag, Balita publisher, to put out whatever dossier she has about me is really nothing new. What I resent is her attempt to leverage it to stop me from writing about her and her cohorts in their misguided crusade so-called to bring down her personal enemy.
"I have a whole package of documents here that they are requesting me to publish," she says without identifying who "they" are. But I already have an idea. From the time my own newspapers in San Diego came out in 1998, efforts to strangle me were underway.
Such attacks have rendered me immune. I know where the dossiers are coming from. I also know the people peddling them. However, I don't know much about people who unquestioningly lap them up.
It's an old trick to neutralize me personally and professionally, then and now, and the articles I've written about Ms. Cusipag since she terminated my services in June 2019 for telling her to stop passing rumors about women friends she falsely labeled as my girlfriends.
When I chided her for doing that, which actually puts me and my work at risk, she fired me. She just couldn't zip her mouth. (Full story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-inevitable-conflict-between-editors.html).
Her current effort is undeniably a blackmail. No ifs and buts, it is clearly blackmail.
The reason I had attracted a small army of irascible community leaders in San Diego was my steadfast refusal to succumb to their pressure. Now, that same thing is happening here in Toronto. Sorry grandma, it's not within your power to rein me in.
Knowing her limited knowledge and inexperience leads me to ask: who is Teresita Cusipag to tell me what not to write when she herself does not know what to do with her paper? I feel clog up to tell her she's incompetent as an editor, but she is.
It is true I had created enemies in San Diego because of my journalism. I never deny that. It's also true in Toronto where I upset the balance between those who want to know and those who refuse to know.
Balita serves those in the second category, they who refuse to know and let themselves be used to concealing the truth because it would damage her associates.
I've been bashed countless times. In San Diego, a woman friend, in cooperation with a fortnightly newspaper where I was an associate editor, and a mainstream television station, had instigated a trap to humiliate me while I worked as a cashier in a drugstore to support my newspaper.
I am sure film footage of that ambush coverage would be rolled out again. In fact, it has been on and off circulated whenever I publish articles offensive to some people in leadership positions in the community. I don't really care, to be candid about it.
The life I lead in Toronto may be wanting in material comfort compared to the one by the self-declared millionaire Teresita Cusipag. Well, I don't have any pretension of being taller than the fly on the back of the carabao.
I'm happy with my books. I'm happy spending hours reading and writing. I'm happy associating with real friends. I'm happy that I could eat food I like within my meager means. I'm happy that I can relate to people on the ground. I'm happy witnessing the passing of days. I'm happy that I am free to say whatever is in my heart.
Some people are jealous that I'm happy without them, to paraphrase the British singer Labrinth. That's exactly what this is about.
People could not believe that having very little or none at all could still make one content. My parents always told us: "Matuto kang mamaluktot kapag maigsi ang kumot" which translates to "learn to curl up when the blanket is short".
The lesson behind that proverb has not left us to this day. It has actually become our guiding principle in our lives. While it is nice to have some wealth, it is not the be-all and end-all for me and my siblings. We can live without it. (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).
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