Money Scandal Prods Ethnic Press to Tighten Up

Volume 5, Issue No. 22

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of Romar Media Canada, 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 Wednesday, January 17, 2024 

~ Five years prior to the scandal that surfaced in June 2023, the editor of the left-leaning The Philippine Reporter commented on the word subterfuge, the noun the dictionary defines as "deception by artifice or stratagem in order to conceal, escape or evade". Little did we know that that definition would find relevance, translated into action by the editor himself, and applied on two unsuspecting writers of the tabloid who were victimized and stood to suffer more had not top officials of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada intervened. 

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OFFSHOOT OF COMPLAINT v. FILIPINO TABLOID?

NEPMCC Moves to Tighten Purse Strings 

Officials Mitigate Scandal Involving Taxpayers' Money

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter". - Martin Luther King Jr.

TORONTO - The so-called "other voices" in the media landscape, i.e. the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada (NEPMCC), has quietly instituted a major change in the handling of its finances.

For months the organization has been the uncharacteristic exemplar of silence. Its officials and supporters from the academe, the government, and private organizations have stood still, frozen and muted in the wake of a scandal implicating a member in the Filipino community.

In June when artist Michelle Chermaine Ramos disclosed that The Philippine Reporter (TPR) had been withholding her and an intern's salaries for months, the paper's editor, Hermie Garcia, told her the delay was because of an unexplained problem with the federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

1. Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/02/valentines-day-feature-love-takes-flight.html

2. Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8FT2kEZfls

The Department funds the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI), a government project to reach out to the underserved communities. Its implementation is undertaken by NEPMCC whose members nationwide consist of 650 small print organizations and 150 broadcasters. 

TPR is one of 48 ethnic media outlets that have taken part in the outreach. And to fulfill the requirements, TPR enlisted Ms. Ramos, a staff reporter; and an intern working remotely in Edmonton, Alberta, to cover and report on relevant stories.

"Around March/April 2022, Tita Mila (Garcia, Hermie's wife) kept urging me to apply for the LJI grant because my colleague who held that position wasn't renewing her LJI contract . . . and because we needed the grant x x x I knew the paper suffered losses during the pandemic so we needed to recover," Ms. Ramos remembered. 

Once accepted she and the intern kept on writing but never got paid on time. Uncertain of when she would receive her salary, Ms. Ramos inquired with NEPMCC about the months-long delay. That's when Hermie Garcia's lies and deception surfaced. (Full story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/06/lies-deceptions-by-philippine-reporter.html).

The supposed "grant guy" Hermie Garcia blamed for her ordeal did not exist; it was his fabrication. "There never was a grant guy in charge of the disbursements," Ms. Ramos recalled Maria Voutsinas, NEPMCC managing director, telling her. She explained it's her who's in charge of the grant.

Ms. Voutsinas also clarified that monies intended for LJI salaries had been paid in one lump sum to TPR one year in advance, so there was no money problem on the part of the Department.

In other words, Hermie Garcia was devious, dishonest, duplicitous, right? I believe he's familiar with synonyms of deceptive. Now I remember, he was talking about subterfuge in his column in TPR's October 2018 issue. 

He wrote: "x x x The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines subterfuge as 'deception by artifice or stratagem in order to conceal, escape or evade'." He continued: "Oxford Dictionaries define the term as 'deceit used in order to achieve one's goal'."

Five years prior to LJI, Hermie Garcia knew what deception was. It found relevance in what he did to the two journalists. And why not? He in fact willfully and consciously translated it into action on, of all people, his writers working for his newspaper!

The logical question is why did he mislead Ms. Ramos and the intern about their salaries? Why did he conceal his scheme from NEPMCC? Why did he lie about the Department of Canadian Heritage? Was pocketing the monies his goal?

Only when Thomas Saras, NEPMCC president, learned of the problem and quickly intervened did Hermie Garcia pay up. Attempts by this reporter to have some clarity on the issues raised by Ms. Ramos have been for naught; Saras, Hermie Garcia, and the Department refused to engage.

At its monthly meeting on December 11, 2023, the NEPMCC "voted and accepted unanimously" a motion to open two additional accounts with Toronto Dominion Bank, one for LJI and the other for its internship program.

The stated reason, according to the minutes published in its website, is "for the administration to have better control over the expenses of these two programs". (Full minutes: https://nationalethnicpresscouncil.com/2023/12/24/minutes-of-the-dec-11-2023-monthly-meeting/).

Ms. Ramos' unanswered complaint in April 2023 may have been the trigger for the significant change in how NEPMCC dispenses taxpayers' money thrown in by the Department to apprise the 120 ethnic groups in Canada about developments in their communities.

Did Hermie Garcia and his tabloid try to commit wage theft? Did he attempt to fleece his writers at TPR knowing Filipinos are generally passive complainers? 

The principals in LJI may choose to keep quiet about the lies and deception by Hermie Garcia but the "circumstantial evidence" (which the law defines as proof of a fact from which one could infer the fact in question) gives us reason to believe Ms. Ramos set off NEPMCC's move.

It's ironic that the group that boasts of being "the other voices" is effectively voiceless on this issue. The Filipino community in general will never tolerate wrongdoing such as those committed by Garcia and his tabloid. Never. (Copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved).