Volume 2, Issue No. 56
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, February 5, 2021
~ Everyone lives by a different yardstick. Some adhere to a gold standard, which means having millions in purchasing power, others believe in simple things. Some people stand by their principle, others by what's convenient for them at the risk of dehumanizing themselves. Losses are grieved over, that's human, but to put the blame on others for their misery is something else. In every fight, there's a winner and a loser. And the latter suffers.
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GOLD AS A YARDSTICK
Postscript to a Financial Inadequacy
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"He who guards his mouth protects his life, but the one who opens his lips invites his own ruin".
- Proverbs 13:3
That yardstick is fraught with innuendoes and when articulated in the light of mounting losses, it casts aspersions on the morality of the persons involved.
The rancor is evident in the caustic message hurled at me at this stage of my professional life, a good fifty-two years since choosing a career in journalism over soldiery in the officers' corps of the now-defunct Philippine Constabulary. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrIFXOV-7mU).
"An old man," says the deprecating email from Teresita Cusipag, Balita publisher, "who has not accomplished anything at that age was a total jinx". She was counting tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of nickels and dimes I am not endowed with and probably strung them together like a necklace dangling from her bull neck.
I hadn't had experienced that kind of vilification in the decades I've been in the active practice of journalism in the Philippines, in the United States, and here in Canada. (Related story at: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2001/jun/14/cover-sinister-hero/?page=1&).
I thought I had hardened since my bloody baptism of fire covering the bombing of the Liberal Party rally in Manila's Plaza Miranda in August 1971. Nothing would jar me anymore after that, I said then, until this invective.
I had to mention this historic episode not to highlight my chronological age but rather to call attention to my journalistic experience. Benigno Aquino's assassination, the declaration of martial law, the People Power revolt, Cory Aquino's ascension to the presidency, the series of coups d'état, and the rise of Fidel Ramos - I covered them all as a foreign correspondent. (Related video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0AXXyPXaE).
I may not have accomplished many things money-wise, but I am the richer for the accumulated knowledge and foreign exploits as a journalist. I am now tempted to say that despite Ms. Cusipag's highfalutin titles, she's still, at her advanced age, a spring chicken in newspaper publishing, not journalism. Having worked for Balita for seven years, I can say that in all candor.
The contents of her recent email keep ringing in my ear, the vibration so pervasive as to drive me to write this article, mainly to vent and recall how I ended up in the company of bumbling illiterates.
Her message was a total putdown, a judgment rendered by an incompetent who also seemed incapable of appreciating worth beyond material wealth. It's a desperate attempt to destroy while trying to repair an image soiled by a jail sentence and hefty fines. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NGQX-SucJ4).
The unprovoked attack by Ms. Cusipag, the self-proclaimed editor at the demise in 2013 of her husband, Balita founder Ruben Cusipag, is unique to me and to three other persons, one of whom is already deceased. (Related story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2021/01/balita-tabloid-settles-costs-of.html).
In her bigoted world order, we apparently belong to that category of social blight - patay gutom, in her words, the Tagalog word that translates to dead-hungry or dirt-poor. Well, we - my siblings and I, and my parents - were not moneyed but we never pass a meal.
Since losing two of four libel cases filed against us - her, Balita, and this reporter - she has become a sulker, understandably so because she got penalized a total of nearly a million dollars in damages, and, for good measure, incarcerated for criminal contempt.
While we both lost the cases, Balita as a media entity, and Ms. Cuipag as its publisher, shouldered litigation costs and damages. In that sense, I, though the main writer of the disputed articles, was spared from paying, perhaps because of my insufficient financial standing.
In the case of Ms. Cusipag, the judge found her guilty of criminal contempt and slapped her with a further sentence of 21 days in a women's facility. She was released after serving 13 days. (Video and full story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NGQX-SucJ4).
Her bitterness is probably an offshoot of the financial loss and the subsequent prison time. In both instances, she was not entirely without fault.
In the first case, to quote from the document (Enverga v Balita Newspaper, 2017 ONSC 1635): "In fact, Cusipag admitted on discovery that it is not true that Senator Enverga committed a fraud in relation to fund raising activities and that the PCCF allegations are false".
(Full text at: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2017/2017onsc1635/2017onsc1635.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQAHY3VzaXBhZwAAAAAB&resultIndex=2).
That admission was as catastrophic as its ramifications. At the very least, it contradicted my articles, the sources of the allegations, and the people who had some knowledge about the activities in question. Her statement also negated everything Balita had published.
That she was ordered to pay damages was justice. That she went to jail was also justice. To borrow from her oft-repeated expression, it is karma. Her actions had caused the effects.
In another case, Ms. Cusipag was so indignant as to suggest, without factual basis, a conspiracy and the judge's alleged partiality towards a lawyer because, in her own words posted on Facebook, "both are Jews".
That statement has worsened an already bad situation. In fact, it was one of those that violated a judge's injunction prohibiting further comments about the case.
Says Judge Frederick L. Myers of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, and I quote: "Ms. Cusipag was clear and express in her desire to spread her world globally and to enlist the aid of others in the media, and public figures, such as members of the Senate of Canada, to do so despite the court’s injunction.
"Her statements indicated that the initial defamatory article and Facebook posting were true but were not accepted by the court due to the death of witnesses and an unseen conspiratorial hand that undermined the legitimacy of the judge’s ruling.
"This is not conduct akin to failing to attend an examination for discovery or breach of a patent injunction that is limited in its intention and effect to the private rights of the immediate parties x x x
"I therefore find Tess Cusipag, Balita Newspaper, and Balita Media Inc. guilty of criminal contempt of court," Mr. Justice Myers concluded. (Copyright 2021. All Rights Reserved).
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