Volume 2, Issue No. 26
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 Friday, October 9, 2020
~ They're essentially two peas in a pod, these Filipino tabloids currently engaged in their little word wars. One is just as guilty as the other in marketing their insults to the community. The more offensive their expletives are, the more it pleases their supporters in the sidelines. Nobody benefits in this trifling exchanges but the lawyers who will be enlisted to defend them in court. Their dirty linen is out!
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BALITA AND PERIODICO: TWO PEAS IN A POD
The Strange Mix of Bad Blood and Lies
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
TORONTO - Towards the tail end of a newspaper article that wouldn't pass the most elementary editorial scrutiny, the unknown author wrote: "So what can be done to re- store (sic) our faith in facts and ethics of journalism? Periodico cannot sit mute about it".
Periodico is the latest tabloid to join the Filipino community's entertainment-driven mediascape. Its newest print edition talks of faith it wantonly brushes off, of facts it refuses to recognize, and ethics it doesn't observe.
Those elements are present in its second issue which came out this month. The very first was in March. It was the beginning and the end of my short-lived term there as its editor-in-chief. (Related story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-truth-must-be-told-i-was-deceived.html).
I had conceived of Periodico as a watchdog to look into mischiefs and expose rogues prevalent in community organizations. One issue later, the paper had been turned by its secretive owner and supporters into a witch-hunting instrument against their personal enemies.
I should have known better. I reported extensively on a group purporting itself as a campaigner against fraud yet within itself exists the very embodiment of what it sets out to eliminate. Worse, this group is abetted by the publisher of Balita, a competing tabloid, who happens to be a close friend of the alleged culprit.
Periodico and Balita are supposed to be fighting for the truth, standing for it, and living it. With that in mind, I'm completely lost as to how to detect a lie and a liar. Them owning all the truth leaves people with all the lies. What are we to believe? Who are we to believe?
The Periodico article claims, and I quote verbatim, that "Balita intentionally generated reports that are patently false, and there does seem to be an explosion of fake stories to get everybody excited and interested for (sic) the latest gossip and whoever was telling it, was very popular for the moment".
That was a mouthful. It alludes to a series of unvetted and inaccurate articles Balita had published about businesswoman Lily Hammer and a certain Naomi Ong who, again, had emerged as personal archenemies of Teresita Cusipag, Balita publisher.
For no justifiable reason other than to shame her, Balita had obsessed with portraying Ms. Hammer in the worse light despite a Superior Court's decision dismissing accusations of wrongdoing leveled against her by disgruntled workers who had been stripped of status by Canadian immigration authorities.
(Full story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2019/12/defending-truth-has-its-downside.html. Videos at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QprwiFQiLjs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JSfIOTN0uk).
Periodico accuses Balita of "spinning stories of fake news," which I personally believe is true, yet on its own, it not only distorts the news, it steals and makes it appear it owns the news. That's what I discovered a few days ago. Periodico had lifted my articles and photos I took and published them all online and in print.
It's a perfect illustration of the idiom "the pot calling the kettle black" which means, for the sake of the ignoramuses pretending to be editors, "a situation in which a person accuses someone of or criticizes someone for something that they themselves are guilty of".
The mudslinging between Periodico and Balita borders on the highly personal to the point of defiling established norms. In the case of Naomi Ong, the unstated owner of Periodico, she curses Ms. Cusipag with the worst expletives in the Philippine vernacular.
Then Ms. Cusipag asks this reporter: "are you in this as well?" It's a nonsensical question better left unanswered.
Ms. Ong's beef was that Ms. Cusipag continues to publish court cases she had been involved in years ago. Moreover, she said, she tries to gather debtors and former enemies from as far back as a decade ago to make her look bad. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7JWqL2AUDc).
Ms. Ong has claimed to be a "restaurateur" in the small city of London, Ontario, (two hours west of Toronto) among her self-declared careers in Canada. She clammed up when asked to comment on an informant's tip that some workers in an unidentified Filipino restaurant there did not pay them, even pocketed their tips, and used their credit cards to buy supplies but never paid back.
Where the bad blood between Balita and Periodico would lead is anybody's guess. Both parties are apparently lodging lawsuits against each other. (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).
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