This prison called 'Freedom'
The Dictator is dead and gone, many "wannabe" dictators have come and gone, disguising their true intentions of what to do with the country and the people and no matter how they label, project, show or want the Filipino people to believe, all of them have the same intention in mind, and that is to enrich themselves senseless, helping themselves to huge overdoses of power and influence. All through those years of oppression, in an atmosphere of "freedom" had rendered the Filipino people tame, docile, enduring , tired and resigned to what the future may bring. Indeed some would even try to reconcile themselves to the fact that there is no more future.
Many times have the people been subjected to something similar to having sex with an especially ugly bedmate, achieve a forced orgasm and wake up with the same hideous, stinking monster of a sex partner beside you in the same bed… Freedom in the Philippines has become synonymous with controlled anarchy and everybody in this country has found the best ways (no matter how twisted) by which to survive in this situation. We may perhaps be happy with the thought that we are considered the most democratically free in this part of the world, but what freedom? And how democratic? Look no further, as the best way to be able to determine how and what kind of freedom we possess may be found in the kind of media that we have.
I daresay this is one country that has journalists that are shackled by the very freedom they are supposed to enjoy. It is because the kind of "freedom" that governs this country would readily favor those who have the capacity to do many things, those who have the power and the means to push other people around, and since being a journalist in this country does not readily place you among these kind of people, then logically you would be considered as included among those that are labeled as barely surviving, marginalized and poor Perhaps it is illustrative of one of the many flaws of the Libertarian theory where it states that only people who have the material means to do so, are the only ones that can contribute, perhaps, even control the " market place of ideas ". It is therefore not so surprising that the majority of media ownership in a democratic society belong to the business sectors, or in the Philippine setting, the rich, famous, and the influential.
We find the Journalist, the voice of democracy, the vox populi, a mere employee, a slave, a gofer etc. of the system.
Thus, being so, we find the hapless journalist to be reflecting exactly the kind of habits and attitude of the majority of the very society he belongs to. Perhaps even reaching the point of having to trade any thought of social responsibility, our journalist resorts to do the only things he would know how, to be able to survive, and that would include bending the rules, just like the people who own him and those he is supposed to save. So, what Freedom? What Democracy? These are the kind that oppresses the poor and needy and enriches the rich even more. And so our journalist resorts to the very things he is supposed to protect the people against, but again, of what good are values such as these when one is hungry? When a family member is in dire need of money for hospitalization, when you have two children to send to college? Or when one has two families?
Our journalist doesn't have that many choices and even when he is sincere enough to serve the society in the right way, he is limited by personal needs that are more pressing than the needs of the whole society. Our present media operates in the same manner, more or less, but it is so evident at the individual journalist's level and so as long as the current economic situation exist, our journalist, our media, our society will always be prisoners of this so called "freedom" that has been dominating the whole country since the time we became one…
(Mr. Dave Arthur M. Quimpo is a Master in Mass Communication student of West Visayas State University Graduate School Communications.)