It could be anybody

The increase in the number of HIV-positive Filipinos is exponential.

Gil has been commissioned by the Department of Health to make a documentary on the rising cases of HIV and AIDS in the Philippines. But his lead, Heidi, is reluctant to talk about the facts and circumstances surrounding her condition. In front of the camera, the widowed, AIDS-stricken Heidi only cries and curses at her predicament. As the deadline draws near, the pressure on Gil builds.

The former) Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral comes to Gil’s rescue. She gives him two more potential subjects. Ivy is a call center agent – beautiful, educated, promising. Vanessa is a gay stand-up comedian. Gil tries to pry the stories out of these subjects.

Ivy insists that she never engages in risky sexual behavior – except for one night during her graduation party when she blacked out and did not know what could have happened.

Vanessa, on the other hand, continues to go out with any man who is willing. His parents know about his condition and gives him their full support and unconditional love. Vanessa lives his life as he would if he were not sick, infecting all others who become intimate with him.

Soon, Ivy learns what actually happened on that fateful night. A classmate seasoned their drinks with drugs. She went upstairs to sleep, but her classmate’s friend Rudy, a known drug user and dealer, followed her to the room. She remembers now. She looks for Rudy and learns he has died. Ivy despairs, realizing her inevitable ending, and backs out of the documentary deal.

Vanessa is tracked by the men who have had sex with him; they have realized that he had given them the virus. They beat him up and leave him for dead. His parents tell Gil that he cannot anymore continue with the documentary.

Heidi dies and leaves behind her son, who has been born with the virus.

Gil is desperate. The three subjects who have earlier agreed to talk to him and tell their stories to the public are now all gone. In the meantime, the deadline looms...and he, himself – a carefree, handsome young director who occasionally engages in risky sexual behavior – is HIV positive.

In the end, Heidi’s son agrees to go through with the interviews for the documentary. Ivy wants to continue telling her story. And while Vanessa has shied away, one more reluctant subject – Virgilio, or Gil himself – decides to participate in the documentary to tell his story.

Such is the plot of the movie HIV featuring actor and model Jake Cuenca, Maria Isabel Lopez, Iza Calzado and IC Mendoza. The advocacy film was put together by Exogain Productions and was directed by Neal Tan. Screenplay was by Wanggo Gallaga – a writer/ editor who had come out several years ago as HIV-positive himself. Gallaga is now an advocate of HIV/AIDS prevention through education.

**

It would not be fair to evaluate the movie purely for its technical aspects. The message is far stronger and more urgent, especially in the light of present developments in the fight against HIV and AIDS. While the rest of the world has started containing the disease, here in the Philippines, the numbers are getting more alarming.

(This is also highlighted by the number of HIV-infected blood donated to the Health Department as communities deal with dengue.)

According to Philippine National AIDS Council (www.pnac.org.ph), there are now 7,235 cases of HIV infections in the country since the first case was recorded in 1984.
The rate of increase has been described as "exponential" by an official of the UNAIDS. Country coordinator Teresita Marie Bagasao said, in a report by Channel News Asia published in the PNAC site, that in 2007, the Philippines reported one new infection every other day. By end-2009 and towards 2010, the country reported one to two infections per day.

Right now, the country is seeing six new infections per day.

For the month of July 2011, 204 new HIV cases were recorded in the country, representing a 56 percent increase from the 131 recorded in July 2010. Ninety percent of these new cases were males, and 63 percent belonged to the 20-29-year-old age group. Ninety-five percent contracted the virus through unprotected sexual contact. Twenty percent were overseas Filipino workers. These numbers tell a compelling story about which segments of the population are at great risk, whether by choice or circumstance.

There is no known cure for the disease but anti-retroviral drugs – which must be taken every day without fail – enable people living with AIDS to continue leading normal lives. The problem is that the medicine costs anywhere between P1,500 to P2,000 a day (says PNAC executive director Ferchito Avelino in April last year, when I interviewed him for "Dealing with HIV and AIDS," published April 5, 2010 in this space). More than 800 Filipinos living with AIDS get the medicine for free from international donors like The Global Fund. But the subsidy is not limitless. It's a real long-term problem.

And while the government is hard pressed to find new sources of funding to support those already found positive for the virus, parallel efforts are also made to stem the rise of new infections.

Surprisingly, in this day and age, there remain many misconceptions about HIV and AIDS. Most dangerous perhaps is the thinking that "it cannot happen to me" or that it is a misfortune that only befalls the promiscuous. Like Gil or even Ivy in the story, many people believe that they are beyond its reach.

And even if they somehow mustered the courage to get themselves tested, they cannot bear the thought of coming out to a harsh, judgmental world.

HIV the movie is a work of fiction and played out by actors. HIV the virus is all too real. The threat is not going to go away if we pretend it is not there. In fact, the more we don't talk about it, the bigger the menace it poses to all of us.

adellechua@gmail.com

Challenges to accountability, intellectual honesty and governance

Following is my final paper for my media ethics class (MA Journ, Ateneo) under Chay Hofilena. We were asked to identify the three biggest ethical challenges to the practice of journalism in the future.

There are many ethical challenges to journalism but the list becomes more defined when one narrows it down to ethical challenges in the future.

We are now talking about things we cannot fully grasp just yet, or trends we are only seeing the beginning of.

This paper is an aggregation of the inputs obtained from the readings and discussions, both on-campus and online, from Media Ethics class as well as practical instances from the personalities interviewed, the author’s observations and supplemental research.

Challenge 1: Accountability amid a culture of anonymity

Lawyer and opinion columnist Emil Jurado, 84, strolls into the coffee shop at the ground floor of his condominium unit in Makati. He waves as he sees me writing something on my laptop. As I turn my unit off and put it away to begin our interview, he admits he knows nothing about computers. (“I attended three courses and they all gave up on me! I don’t even know how to text!”) Indeed, he sends his typewritten columns to the Manila Standard Today by having his driver deliver the hard copy. An encoder transcribes it in MS Word format so it can be edited.

Small wonder, then, that the self-described “Jurassic, computer-illiterate journalist”… “who has been there and done that” cites the advent of technology as the main ethical challenge to journalism today and in the future. He talks about social networking sites Facebook and Twitter as well as blog sites -- even as one wonders whether he has even seen such home pages, much less knows how to get there.

Over the years, Mr. Jurado has gone full circle in media. He has “walked the corridors of power,” having covered one administration after another beginning the time of President Elpidio Quirino. Jurado started out as an editor of the Mindanao Cross in Cotabato City in the 1950s. He was a reporter and later business editor of the Philippines Herald. He founded the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas in the 1970s. On the day Martial Law was declared, he and some other journalists founded the 365 Club, a loose gathering of mediamen at the coffee shop of the Hotel Intercon where they meet every day, rain or shine. They still do. He served as the editorial board chairman of the Manila Standard upon its inception in 1987. He has been writing columns, since then.

His column is still published, Tuesdays to Fridays, on page A5 of the Standard.
Jurado recalls how straightforward everything was in his time. “We took our journalists’ oath seriously. We gave emphasis to the five Ws, the basics. Our editors were very strict in this. When you get one side of the story, you have to be fair and balanced and try also to get the other side. That, of course, is not always possible as we had deadlines. But that’s how it went.”

Now it’s a different jungle. The globalization of media has started bringing down borders. This has rendered the MTRCB useless, for instance, because cable channels are out of its jurisdiction anyway. Local news networks get input from CNN, BBC and other big networks because local audiences also demand that they be informed of what goes on in other countries, not only in their own. If you lack this content, the public can just as easily shift to your competitor in the click of a button.

This is why Jurado believes local media networks should open up to foreign investors. To do that, the Constitution, at least its economic provisions, should be amended. “We need to adjust to the changing times, or else we get left behind. Twenty years from now, when I am no longer around – you, Adelle, will still be – you will remember me as you say ‘Atty. Jurado was right, after all!’”

Not that anybody would dare say the contrary.

Jurado carries with him the notoriety – or distinction, if you wish – of having been sued 24 times in the course of his journalistic life. “Four times I apologized because I really had my facts wrong. Two cases managed to reach the courts, but they were eventually dismissed. The rest did not make it to court.”

But perhaps what Jurado is most known for is the landmark In Re Emil Jurado1 where he was cited in contempt of the Supreme Court (“I was the only newspaperman who dared take on the gods of Mount Olympus [how he describes the associate justices of the Supreme Court in his columns]) for writing in his column that several justices of the Supreme Court accepted bribes from PLDT officials in return for a favorable ruling in a pending case. The justices fined Jurado P1,000, saying:

“Jurado's actuations, in the context in which they were done, demonstrate gross irresponsibility, and indifference to factual accuracy and the injury that he might cause to the name and reputation of those of whom he wrote. They constitute contempt of court, directly tending as they do to degrade or abase the administration of justice and the judges engaged in that function. By doing them, he has placed himself beyond the circle of reputable, decent and responsible journalists who live by their Code or the ‘Golden Rule’ and who strive, at all times, to maintain the prestige and nobility of their calling.”

Jurado has by no means mellowed. He claims then-candidate Benigno Aquino III refused to attend a journalist group’s forum “because Emil Jurado is there.” He maintains that libel should not be de-criminalized. “If you can dish it out, you should be able to take it” is his mantra.

Of course everybody knows where to look and how to seek redress if he or she is offended. Writers like Jurado belong to traditional media. We know exactly where he is and how he could be reached, how he can be pursued. That’s not always the case in cyberspace.

Terrell Ward Bynum of Southern Connecticut State University, in his paper called “Anonymity on the Internet and Ethical Accountability,” says it is tempting “to argue that anonymity on the Internet should be banned – that the identity of anyone on the Net should always be immediately available wherever he or she goes in cyberspace.”

But there is a problem: this view goes against our right to privacy. Bynum thus proposes that there be “trusted third parties – agents to whom one entrusts private information on condition that it be held in confidence.”2

The assumption however is that trusted third parties have the best interests of the information-consuming public in mind. We know this is not the case, as there are people whose sole objective is to misinform, mislead and tarnish others’ reputations.
And since the Internet provides the platform for their anonymity, they flourish. After all, it is so easy to create bogus Web sites, phony blogs and assume fake identities.

Then again, maybe Jurado is being too generous, according the title “journalist” to anybody who dares publish content on the Internet, whatever the quality. Still, that he feels threatened is valid. Not everybody knows you should not believe everything you see on the Web. And in a world where everybody has an agenda, the threat of them getting away with anything is all too real.

Challenge 2: “Something borrowed”

The public assumes that members of the media, in delivering the news, are thorough in gathering their information, skillful in processing and integrating them into something meaningful, and creative in presenting them to the people. What is demanded of us, after all, is to make the important interesting, and to make the interesting relevant. It goes without saying that the work we claim as ours is really ours, and the things we said happened really did occur.

The assumption is that there is no dearth of important things happening all around us every day, and journalists must feel privileged to even write about these things. In reality, there are days when news is slow, when a source utters unremarkable words – but the story has to be filed at five o’clock, anyway. What to do?

The movie Shattered Glass talks about the twentysomething New Republic reporter Stephen Glass who was found to have fabricated his stories in varying degrees. He was shown as a charismatic, enterprising young journalist who has a knack for stumbling into the most interesting events, or aspects of events. He reported on a conference for hackers, for instance, or a gathering of young Republicans that was supposedly marked by un-Republican conduct (drugs, booze, prostitutes). He manufactured quotes, sources, events, even buildings, laws and corporations and kept on doing so as he was being investigated, to cover up previous lies.

It soon emerged that Glass’ affliction was not, per se, journalistic, but behavioral.

A February 2009 article written by Rebecca Leung for 60 minutes, based on an
interview with Glass himself years after the controversy, shows he has since moved on. “With that, the journalistic career of Stephen Glass ended. He dropped out of sight and spent much of the past five years in therapy, trying to start over. He has earned a law degree from Georgetown University and written a book for a six-figure advance. This time, it's clearly labeled fiction: A novel called ‘The Fabulist’ about a young Washington reporter who is a pathological liar.”3

Then again, Glass was creating fiction, inventing something from his head. In the age of Internet, and with the sheer number of material online, it is so much more common to lift passages from different sources. This is allowed, of course, so long as there is attribution. But what if there is no attribution?

Malcolm Gladwell is a reporter for the New Yorker and has published four bestsellers of nonfiction. In 1994, he wrote an article called “Something borrowed” for the magazine where he talked about plagiarism and copyright.4 He made use of several examples, such as the feeling of violation felt by one Dorothy Lewis whose personality and circumstances were used by playwright Bryony Lavery as material for a play that was eventually staged in Broadway. The depiction was so close that people who saw the play and knew the woman recognized her right away. Upon further investigation, Gladwell discovered the he himself had been “plagiarized” – that is, words and phrases he used in a published news story about the killings were also used in the play.

But while Lewis felt angry, Gladwell did not. “On some level, I considered Lavery’s borrowing to be a compliment.” And in response to Lavery’s profuse apologies for her carelessness (she thought it was okay to use his words), Gladwell makes a distinction: “Old words in the service of a new idea aren’t the problem. What inhibits creativity is new words in the service of an old idea.” After all, Lavery used his work to create an entirely new idea, only building upon his. “Intellectual-property doctrine isn’t a straightforward application of the ethical principle ‘Thou shalt not steal. At its core is the notion that there are certain situations where you can steal.’”

I do not begrudge Gladwell for feeling okay with this. But that is his prerogative, and perhaps the distinction that he offers makes all the difference. This I think is the challenge, that some people may take upon themselves the liberty to determine which may or may not be “lifted” from another’s work.

Sometimes it arises out of plain carelessness, as what Lavery claims. Sometimes, however, the taking is deliberate – a refusal to do the work, the failure to provide some value added, and worse, the deception in taking credit for someone else’s output.

There now exist technology tools to help us determine whether a work had been taken from somebody else. But that happens only when we doubt and question. If the receiver of information takes a “stolen” work and passes it off as his own, and everybody assumes he has been intellectually honest, then the deception has been consummated, whether or somebody makes the effort to research and prove that the author has not been completely honest.

True, humankind has built ideas from existing ideas since time immemorial. This is why there is progress. But nobody has the right to pass off one’s idea as his own. All we have to do is to attribute. What is so grossly difficult with that?

Challenge 3: Governance and the Wall

Media organizations in most free societies, while not controlled by government, are run by businesses. Indeed it is said that business is the new government. Journalism is a noble profession, a constant pursuit for truth giving priority to the public above all. But the reality is that journalists are employees, as well, and media companies are run as any corporation is: the bottom line (ultimate point) is the bottom line (profit). To deny this fact is to be naïve, and the harder it will be to exercise judgment on real life dilemmas between the newsroom (editors and reporters) and the boardroom (directors and executives).

Corporate governance is an area deemed equally important as public governance. According to Knowledge Solutions, a publication of the Asian Development Bank, it meant little to most people until the mid-1990s. But today it is “broadly understood as the process by which the policies, strategies and operations of organizations are regulated, operated, and controlled by the board of directors to give them overall direction and control, and satisfy reasonable expectations of accountability and performance including to those outside them.”5

Big words, but it all boils down to how a company is run, and done so responsibly. After all, while profit is a potent driving force in business activity, it is not, and should not be, the only force.

Here in the Philippines, there is the Institute of Corporate Directors, “a professional organization of, for, and by corporate directors and other reputational agents for corporate governance. It is a non-stock, not-for-profit organization working in close partnership with other business, government, and civil society organizations to promote and uphold the practice of good corporate governance. The ICD’s aim is to attend to the professional needs of corporate directors directly related to their serving in the board.” 6 The ICD accredits directors after making them undergo a five-day seminar on the principles and practices of corporate governance.

Rex Drilon, president of the ICD, says the aim is to achieve the “triple bottom line” – meaning doing good for people, planet and pesos. Companies should both be SBEs and SSEs. He quotes Andrew Savitz, a governance scholar, who says that a sustainable business enterprise (SBE) is one that creates profits for its shareholders while protecting the environment and improving the lives of those with whom it interacts.

He sums this up as

SBE = Pesos+People+Planet

On the other hand, Drilon says that a sustainable social enterprise (SSE) is one that improves the lives of people while protecting the environment and fulfilling the economic needs of the owners.

SSE = People+Planet+Pesos

The triple bottom line ideal is true for every corporation, whatever the industry. There are 11 corporate governance principles that apply: Independence, rights and duties, original powers to decide, loyalty, long-term viability, fairness, accountability, transparency, ethics, social responsibility and sustainability. 7

But Drilon acknowledges that this is especially true for media, which is unique in that it is both a business AND a social enterprise. “It is a partnership that requires respect for each other’s needs,” he says. The business has to be profitable to be sustainable. On the other hand, the editors have to be independent (within pre-agreed ground rules) for the paper to be credible and therefore saleable. [Indeed] it is a delicate balance which needs the support of the two groups to work.”

It’s all good on paper. A newspaper, for instance, employs idealistic, conscientious, thorough journalists who observe the best ethical practices to deliver quality and intelligent information to its readers. In turn, and because of this, the newspaper is widely read by the public and is the medium of choice of advertisers. It thus turns a neat profit every year, which makes its owners happy, and which enables the enlightened, socially-oriented board of directors to grant respectable salaries to its employees, which in turn boosts their morale, which then makes them even more enthusiastic to do their jobs well.

Sadly, this is not always the case. What we have are media outfits owned by corporations or families that were somehow acquired to advance the interests of the owners or protect their other existing enterprises. Or, we have owners that are beholden to government officials or other commercial interests that somehow impose on the content of the material published or aired.

“The problem with such structures as interdepartmental marketing committees is that the newspeople are invariably outnumbered by business-side people, and they are also rhetorically outgunned because the business people are dealing in dollars and cents and the newspeople are dealing in a philosophical concept that, too often, business people either do not understand or do not support,” says Davis “Buzz” Merritt in an essay called “Breaching the Wall,”8, an excerpt from the book Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy At Risk

How, then, to balance profitability/commercial viability against truth seeking nature of journalism?

Drilon says: “The operative word is ‘with’ not ‘against’”. He talks about the “sustainability sweet spot” where margin meets mission, where profit meets the common good and where business interests meet stakeholders’ interest. Among the eleven principles, Drilon says the most pertinent to media companies’ boards are fairness, accountability and transparency.

Merritt, who has worked as a reporter, Washington correspondent, and editor for Knight and Knight Ridder newspapers for 42 years, talks about the “wall” between newspaper owners and the journalists that they employ. “If a newspaper was thought of, by its owners, as just another way to make money, the wall was an impediment; the enterprise's financial success could be maximized only if the wall did not exist.”

But the newspaper’s credibility is its most precious asset, Merritt says. Fortunately, more managers are realizing this so that “editors and other newsroom employees now regularly sit on marketing committees with advertising and circulation managers. They share financial goals through their overlapping MBOs (management by objectives) and other compensation mechanisms.”

This method hews closely with discourse ethics9 – without adhering to any single, pre-determined principle, the stakeholders in a corporation: board of directors, executives, advertising managers, employees, reporters, editors.

Thus far, corporations who have graduated fellows from the ICD and who choose to arm themselves with the guidance provided by the institute belong to Big Business, as shown in the ICD Web site. There may have been some interest in media among these groups, but all in the context of media being part of a conglomerate, a unit in the bigger whole, instead of a corporate entity on its own. The ICD has not yet conducted seminar specifically for directors of media companies.

That would be a good aim. The problem is whether most of the current crop of board members of media companies would even be willing to recognize that their positions are a little more different than their peers in other industries given the unique nature of the business of journalism.

On this, they have to be educated. The Wall need not be dismantled, because it cannot be, but those from either side should at least recognize the needs of the other, harmonize objectives and agree to work closely to resolve ethical issues. Then the organization will be a viable, socially responsible and sustainable and media corporation.

Conclusion

Journalism as a profession will crumble without credibility. But there would be no credibility if players in the industry did not practice ethical standards -- even as such standards are a function of culture, economic level, and technological sophistication.

Nonetheless, some basic things must be universal. The three challenges discussed above are true for all societies. Everyone can relate to them, some more strongly than others. What they present are real-life questions that journalists today and in the future may find themselves faced with.

There are no easy, ready-made answers, but there are methods to arrive at sensible responses to these questions. It is up to us to agree -- not on answers, but -- to use these methods to ensure that our brand of journalism remains close to its primary purpose: to give citizens the information they need to be free and self-governing.

"She had it coming"

Nafissatou Diallo, who accuses a former IMF chief of rape, is deemed not credible. (photo c/o The Huffington Post)


Embracing "sluthood" -- these women insist they should be able to dress as they please and not worry about safety. (photo c/o The Guardian)

Should a woman's shattered credibility or provocative clothing negate her claims of rape?

As the world awaits what happens in Libya and seeks diversion from gloomy predictions about the global economy, it preoccupies itself with the most recent development in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn saga. This week, prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's office moved to drop rape charges against the former chief of the International Monetary Fund.

Strauss-Kahn was arrested from his first-class seat at the JFK airport in New York in May, barely hours after he alllegedly raped a Sofitel New York employee inside his suite. He did not deny the sexual encounter but insisted that what had happened was consensual.

The accuser, Guinean Nafissatou Diallo, certainly gives the term “Maid in Manhattan” a new twist. Years ago, there was a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes. She is a hotel housekeeper; he a senatorial candidate. They fall in love amid initial confusion. It turns out well in the end – Fiennes gets the girl and wins the elections besides while Lopez rises from her working-class, immigrant roots to become a hotel manager.

But that's Hollywood. There seems to be no happy ending in sight for Diallo, 33, whose credibility the prosecutors doubt themselves. They say she has lied about being gang-raped by soldiers in her native country. She has also lied about not wanting to make money out of the incident.

“If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt,” state lawyers tell The New York Times, “we cannot ask a jury to do so.” In the meantime, Diallo's impassioned lawyer insists justice has been denied to his client.

This reminds us of another Hollywood movie from years back, "The Accused," starring Jodie Foster. Foster's character was a happy-go-lucky girl who gets gang raped in a bar. But because of her "easy" reputation, her actuations before the actual assault, even the way she talks and dresses, it is she, the accuser, who finds herself on trial. Who's to believe that what happened was against her will?

On one hand, and owing to the intimate nature of the crime, the strength of a rape case does hinge on the credibility of the accuser. This is especially difficult for Diallo, who finds herself against a very powerful man. Strauss Kahn is perceived as an able chief of the IMF, a former future president of France. She is a housekeeper -- what is the weight of her word against his?  On what should prosecuters base their decision to take her word except her previous conduct? And if that previous conduct does not look good, should she be allowed then to ruin a man's reputation (not that it was Strauss-Kahn's first time to be accused of anything)?

On the other hand, should not rape stand on its own? Regardless of how a woman dresses, talks or walks, whether she smokes or drinks acohol, and whether or not she has lied in the past, it could be that she really was raped, i.e., forced to engage in sex against her will at that particular instant. In such case, there must be justice.

Rape is not so much about sex but assertion of power. One is decidedly physically stronger, more influential, and richer than the other. He has the audacity to impose his will on her – and then think he can actually get away with it.

**

In January this year, a police officer in Toronto named Michael Sanguinetti said at a forum that in order for women to remain safe, they should “avoid dressing like sluts.”

This thoughtless remark has sparked protests in Canada and in other countries. The first Slutwalk took place in April. Thousands of women, dressed provocatively, protested the fact that they had to dress in a certain way in order to be respected or to stay safe. They said that the way a woman dresses should not determine people’s response to them. Much less should their appearance explain or even excuse rape.

Sonya Barnett, founder of the Slutwalk movement, tells The Toronto Observer that they want to re-define “slut” as someone who is in control of [her] own sexuality.
“We really want to push the idea that nobody is worthy of any kind of violence," she says. The group claims that Slutwalks have been the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years.

On one hand, it’s a feminist thing. Of course women should be able to wear what they want without being treated like sex objects. Why should we worry about how our outfits influence the thoughts and actions of the opposite sex and their response to us? That is their problem, not ours. Nothing excuses violence, and victims should never be blamed for what befell them.

On the other hand, there is one reality we must live with -- and it is that men can get irrational when they are visually stimulated. They cannot help it; that’s just the way they are.  It also does not mean that they should not try to rise above this tendency, or that they are not struggling to.

In May 2009, in a column called "Incentives to being a victim," I cited the study of California psychologist Ofer Zur who published an article called "The psychology of victimhood: Rethinking 'Don't blame the victim'". We respond to such acts of violence in either two ways: blaming the victim or totally absolving her. Zur says both extremes perpetrate and exacerbate the abusive environment. Neither really helps the victim at all.

Zur adds: “alleviating all women and any victim from any and all responsibility to predict, prevent or even unconsciously invite abuse is to reduce them to helpless incapable creatures and in fact re-victimizes them.” I agree.

I do not demand that the exact same options available to men (like dressing however way they want) be made to women as well. That would be simplistic and impractical. The two sexes are fundamentally differently wired, and coexisting means taking into account the strengths – and the vulnerabilities - of each, so that no one ends up taking advantage of the other.

adellechua@gmail.com

Hammy again, gone again

Elmo holds Hammy 2 up against a backdrop of faux daisies.


All he's got are these guys -- for now.


For his ninth birthday last month, all Elmo asked for was a pair of hamsters from the nearby pet store -- with a blue cage, a wheel for them to play on, some hamster food and a bag of kusot to serve as base for the floor of the cage.

We did not even have to go out to lunch or dinner at some fancy restaurant, he said. I did not even have to get him a new shirt. He would be very happy with the hamsters.

Elmo believed he was ready to assume responsibility for pets again. In May 2010, I got him a lone hamster, Hammy, we put it in a basket, and one day it was gone.

He'd be better, he vowed. So came Hammy 2 and Tammy. But both died last week, he shed a few tears, and Elmo is wondering what would become of the empty cage. The wheel won't be turning. There will be nobody to feed.

I think he's too scarred and scared to take on new pets anytime soon. Perhaps he'll have to stick with his Transformer robots in the meantime.

Arthur's Rose

Rose and I at CBTL in December 2009. This November, we will have been friends for ten years.

I had a spur-of-the-moment, post-dinner date last night with my friend Rose, whom I had not seen since January. I have a handful of best friends, from different stages in my life, and Rose belongs to that inner circle, the select few.

The last time I saw her was certainly not the happiest of times. It was during the wake of her husband Arthur, who, in his early 40s, suffered a heart attack.

Over cake and coffee at Glorietta on our way home last night -- she coming from a meeting and I from work -- Rose and I tried to update each other on the highlights of the seven months that we had not seen each other.

Careers, colleagues, children. Her own kids are 15, 13 and 11, quite close to the ages of mine. Most times, especially in days when we shared extremely long lunches, we ruminated on best parenting principles and wondered whether we were raising our children right.

And now, a widow at age 39, she's doing it on her own.

Rose says her kids are coping with the loss of their Papa. They have become more diligent in their studies, and sometimes they are the ones who wake her up in the morning. Her oldest son, a high school senior who is almost six feet tall, acts more responsibly now, perhaps realizing that he needs to step up to the challenge and help fill the void left by his father.

My friend is as vivacious and confident and beautiful as ever, yet she confesses that she alternates between being okay and being not okay. We can laugh aloud, of course,but sometimes, as she has posted as a status update, all she could think of are the words of a John Mayer song: "When you're dreaming with a broken heart/ And waking up is the hardest part..."

I know firsthand that her marriage was not easy. But I also know that she was determined to stick it out with Arthur no matter what happened. For the sake of the children, yes, but for love's sake, most importantly.

But Death happened -- and it was difficult to compete with mortality.

Rose says sometimes she wakes up feeling a light, affectionate touch on her cheek, or dreams of him as he looked in their younger years -- leaner, better shaven, happier. She believes in the afterlife, and is convinced he occasionally reaches out to her to tell her that he is all right.

And so will she be.

Why "single" rocks

Bea and I at the Purple Ribbon for reproductive health gathering in May.


Josh and I during a family lunch the other weekend


Sophie and I one rainy Saturday evening when we suddenly decided to go out for kebab


Elmo and I during my birthday dinner two and a half years ago

Sometimes I look at the kids seated on either side of our narrow dining table, and I ask myself: where would we all be in ten years?

By then, Bea would be 27, Josh 25, Sophie 21 and Elmo 19. I would be 45.

I've been single for four years. I elected to be so, after being married for thirteen years. My lawyer tells me my marriage could be nullified by the end of the year. The first thing that comes to mind: now I can finally put a relationship status on my Facebook profile. I don't like saying "It's complicated." There is nothing complicated with my status. I was married. It didn't work. I bolted. I'm ok.

In fact, I am more than ok. I am happy. I guess this is because I am essentially a loner. I like my own company. I am pretty selective as to whom I let into my inner circle/s. I generally have good judgment; I thrive in using it, without taking into consideration another person's input.

These four years, I have been doing things as I see fit. Fixing up the house. Getting furniture. Shopping at the supermarket. Planning meals. Saving money. Spending time with the children. Making them study hard. Dealing with growing pains. Determining where I would go for the weekend, if I wanted to go anywhere at all. Reading. Studying. Working my ass off and rewarding myself with a Thai massage or a slice of sans rival. Meeting my friends for lunch and dinner.

I am in charge and I love it. In fact, I love it so much that I cannot imagine ever giving it up again.

When we say we fall in love, we really stumble, trip over ourselves and grovel. We let our guard down and open ourselves to anything. You get disappointed neglected jealous frustrated angry needy. You spend precious time and energy second guessing what the other fellow wants or feels. Your happiness is colored by his mood, his temperament, his availability. In the meantime, what about you -- your aspirations, expectations, little joys? Do you really have to dim your star so his could burn more brightly?

It's not a nice place, believe me. We think men are idiots and are clueless but still they have the power to ruin our lives and sap our spirit if we allow them.

So if anybody asks whether I am in a relationship with anyone, I say no. (People you see very occasionally, and who do not even have the balls to fight for that very occasional time with you, do not count). No it is not as if they are all lining up outside my door and I am haughtily, whimsically, egoistically saying no. The thing is, I am not ready. AND I AM DOWNRIGHT SCARED to lose myself again.

I'm in a good place now. I feel invincible. Indeed, the world is out there for me to conquer. There are so many things to write about, lessons to learn and places to explore. There is so much difference one could make. The children need me more than ever. I have goals, and programs by which I could achieve them. I work well with myself. I am not sure I work that well with another person. See how I tried -- and failed.

And so, without bitterness or ill will, I say now that being single rocks. At least for me it does. I concede it is not for everybody. Many people need a partner to bring out the best in them. You build your life with a partner. You warm up a home and nurture your family. But I have built my life. My home is warm and the kids are growing and are well-nurtured, thank you very much. If I had somebody with me, he would just cramp my style.

Ten years hence, and I think I would still be of the same disposition, with the kids having grown and all.

That, or -- to borrow the words of Anthony Hopkins' character in Meet Joe Black -- "lightning could strike."

Space-starved

My home office downstairs. This is where I normally stay to get away from it all -- except on nights when there are cockroaches.


Bea and Elmo doing their thing in the cozy, cluttered room we all share.

When I was 12 years old, I wrote in my diary that I wanted a room of my own. I was then sharing with my grandmother. I wanted to fix the room my way but I guess elderly women have this thing for knick-knacks, plastic bags, figurines and other items. Our house had only two bedrooms and my uncle was using the other one.

My grandmother read my diary and confronted me about the fact that I wanted to be on my own. Grudgingly she offered to transfer to the other room with my uncle so I could have the room to myself. Of course, she was just saying that to show how hurt she was.

In those days, children's privacy was no big thing. I could not even ask why she went ahead and read my diary in the first place. Suffice it to say that I apologized profusely, we made up, and went back to peacefully cohabiting the same room until I was 18 and left her house to get hitched.

For the next thirteen years, I shared a room with another roommate. He also had many personal things but little desire to put them where they belonged. Sometimes I worked up an inspiration to clean the clutter and organize it all, but after a few days everything went back to the way it was. I still could not fix the room my way.

In 2007, I moved into my own house, a modest two-bedroom apartment unit. We had a big room and a small room (or a small room, and a smaller room). The smaller room was occupied by an aunt who was boarding with us so she could commute to her workplace more easily. My kids, or a permutation of them when some stayed the night at their father's, and I occupied the bigger room. We had a few things; it was not difficult fitting everyone and everything together.

Four years hence and I am restless again.

The kids are fast growing up. Bea is 17 and in college. Josh is a high school senior. Sophie is turning into a young lady faster than I can spell "adolescence". And Elmo has grown taller and rounder in the past few months.

Needless to say, their space requirements have also grown. Our room is roughly 14 feet by 14 feet (yeah, we live in a cube, and i measured it using a plastic school ruler). In that space we have crammed four study tables with built-in shelves, a double-sized bed, a single-sized bed, and a computer table for our desktop. We have one 0.5-HP air conditioner. We sleep all bundled up together, and coexisting with the kids' books, papers, bags, and gadgets. I have no personal possession in that room save for the single bed which I share with my son anyway. It's not my room anymore: I just sleep there.

In the meantime, the smaller room continues to be occupied by my aunt and our helper. The room also contains all our closets. One cannot dance in there, either.

This is why I always don't get enough sleep. I wait until everybody is upstairs and then spend time in the living room which is adjacent to my home office. (I keep my fingers crossed that there are no roaches around, or else I resort to hanging on to my tall can of insecticide.) My things are there -- and so is my essence. I watch television or movies, write or plan or read or use my laptop. I tire myself out so that when I go upstairs, there is no longer any opportunity to bemoan the clutter or the lack of space. I go straight to sleep.

I haven't lost my childhood dream, though. I still want a room of my own where I could keep things neat and orderly and enjoy some peace and quiet after a hard day's work. I have a new dream, as well: to give the kids ample spaces of their own (boys' room, girls' room at least)so that they could practice independence and responsibility in little things, right at the home. And enjoy some quiet time as well.

I am not giving up on these dreams. I am working hard so I could reach them -- I hope sometime soon.

Punch, anyone?

(screen shot of a sample random editorial)

Last Sunday, I was called to the conference room by our publisher. Already in the room were two other members of our newspaper's editorial-writing pool: associate editors Chin, who writes for Wednesday and Friday, and Ray, who writes for Monday. I take care of Tuesday and Thursday. (The guy who takes care of Saturday is new and was not called).Smith, who has been our editorial cartoonist for two years now, was also there.

We three writers did not have any idea what was going on. Since I came to the Standard, as editor of the opinion page and as a thrice-weekly (later became twice-weekly) editorial writer, I pretty much settled into a routine immediately. I have no idea how it goes in other newspapers, but my newspaper places complete trust in the judgment of the editorial writer -- who takes on the great task of speaking on behalf of everybody.

There is no order, not even a suggestion, on what topic to write about. The assumption is that you are so attuned with what goes on that you just know.

There is no advice as to which side to take or position to advance. You are expected to know pretty much how the paper thinks and feels.

There is no imposition on how to get your message across. It is a given that you know how to write not just well, but logically and persuasively.

Of course the autonomy is not absolute. Every editorial goes through one or two higher-ups who say whether the piece is acceptable or not. Given the assumptions I mentioned above, the editorials are almost always acceptable. Any corrections are just minor notes in form.

So what was the meeting all about? See, our boss said, other papers are catching up in the "filibuster" game. Ours is not a widely-circulated paper, but it gets through to most people of influence. We are known for being critical of the administration. Decision makers in government, we are told, want to know what the Standard's opinion pages are saying.

Now, one bigger paper has realized it does not pay to be constantly, predictably friendly to the administration that it is starting to eat up on our niche.

Our publisher was clear that the meeting was in no way a dressing down of our daily input or an attempt to be Big Brother. He just wanted us to be aware of what's going on, even as he wondered whether a little more punch would help us keep our niche. It was, after all, the editorial we are talking about -- the paper's stand.

But make no mistakes. We are not critical for the mere sake of being critical. The points we raise are sound and valid and in no way dreamed up. If something is worthy of praise or support, we do so. As for the writing -- well, we pride ourselves in having a good product, more coherent, less convoluted than the others.

As far as we writers are concerned, we are already dishing out punches as necessary, and optimally. We know, too, that delivering our point hysterically would not be quite characteristic of the MST editorials that we were all proud of.

I learned this in class: Journalism is raising hell intelligently. I say amen. A punch may be an act of the fist, the tongue, or the mind. Take your pick.

Septic tank humor

published 13 Aug 2011, MST

Wondering what the big deal was all about, I went to see “Ang Babae sa Septic Tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank)” last week. It was, after all, the big winner in this year’s Cinemalaya Film Festival.
I was expecting heavy material, deliberate, painstakingly beautiful cinematography, profound dialogue.

There was none of that.

Instead, what you have is an indictment—in the everyday language of Manila’s educated, tech-speaking youth—of the all the pretense surrounding the making of “The Great Filipino Indie Film”. You know, the one that makes it to festivals around the world—the trophies, the red carpet, inflated egos and the delusions of grandeur.

The two lead actors, for instance, playing the producer and the director, were so obsessed with winning an Oscar with a film that would show the travails of a desperate, slum-dwelling widowed mother of seven resorting to selling her child to a pedophile. They fight over details in a coffee shop, lugging their laptops and iPads and their complicated coffee drinks along.

They are envious of another director —whose English is flawed—who has recently reaped awards in Venice. You can’t take the Novaliches out of the fat, arrogant guy, they say, even if he has been received well in Italy. And then the multi-awarded Poongbato walks into the same coffee shop and gets their goat with more tales of his greatness despite his coarseness (Italian coffee = EXpresso).

The would-be hot filmmakers are so mad that they curse Poongbato, not in front of him, of course, but they wait until they get to their cars.

They are tickled pink at finding the right location at the heartland of slums. Oblivious to the very real hardships all around them, the filmmakers jump with glee at how realistic their film was going to be. They jump up and down in mounds of trash—until they see their car being taken apart by the squatters. Realistic enough?

Before this, they go visit the actress Eugene Domingo at her beautiful, modern, expensive home. Domingo’s portraits are all over the place. This is one woman who thinks highly of herself. She is nice, and she knows what she is doing. She offers them all kinds of salad—she eats salad and nothing else these days, and doesn’t it show in her figure? She agrees to shoot film, but not before she gives a lecture on the kinds of acting, and meddles with the script, and dismisses the production assistant as a furniture in the room.

The filmmakers are just too awed by her to protest.

Miss Eugene has one condition, though. She does not like the scene where her character is supposed to be immersed in the septic tank. Of course she’s too good to be swimming in excrement. She will use a double. She then demands an air-conditioned tent, good food, and vaccines, of course. After all, they will be shooting in the slums.

On shooting day, Miss Eugene stands perilously near the septic tank. She meets her double and thinks she is too chubby. She then flatters the young producer and director with her opinion on the first few shots they have taken. She continues to talk, gesturing wildly with her hands—and falls into the tank. Eugene herself, not her double, now swims in all that waste. The filmmakers ask if they can shoot anyway.

Eugene meekly nods. She does not really have much of a choice.

Does the film tell us it’s execrable to capitalize on the misery of others and obsess about recognition to convince ourselves that we matter? Perhaps. The irony is that the film did reap recognition.

adellechua@gmail.com

Outgrowing my bag of secrets

My bagful of steno notebooks. Journal entries here were written in the span of about a decade.


Keeping up with the times. When computers came along, I wrote e-journals, printed out and bound.


As the cover says, this Hello Kitty diary is volume 2 of my collection (which runs until volume 20 something). I was about 14 or 15 years old, and my juvenile secrets were then kept locked, literally.

The other night it dawned on me that I was not writing on my journals anymore. I have not been for at least two, three years.

As the pictures suggest, my need for journals in the past was prodigious. I started when I was in grade school -- although the first journal that I have kept was the one I had freshman year in high school (1989-1990). I kept on, mostly scribbling at my stenography notebook wherever I was, recording observations, documenting reflections, simply making sense of it all. They are all in the bag.

Later, or beginning 1998 when I had started working and had access to my own computer terminal, I wrote electronic journals and printed them periodically, although I still carried a spare notebook everywhere for the time I was not in front of the computer. The result were thick pages of printed out musings, seen compiled here in a dusty green folder. My last printouts were dated 2005.

I still have to take the time to remember the MS Word/ Officewriter password for my 2006, 2007, 2008 and early 2009 files, migrated from the other workhorses I had used before...and then print them.

And now I am not writing anymore. It was not a conscious choice. I simply stopped feeling like I needed to.

It is easy to worry myself sick because of this development. What had happened to me, the queen of introspection? Have I been doing too much "public" writing (i.e., journalism, blogging), denying the extremely private nature of how my love affair with words even started?

But maybe I should not be so worried. What were the recurring themes of my journals before? Ah, yes -- that I turned to writing because I could not open up my real feelings to anybody, that I felt I had so many concerns that nobody would understand, that while I had my vocal chords intact, I did not have a voice.

On paper, back then, I was lost and eternally searching, buffeted and constantly struggling.

Now I do feel like I am a different person. I can write about my own life as easily as I can about the social issues all of us rile against -- and publish in this blog (Okay, if something is really personal and I feel the need to write about it anyway, in prose or verse, I do so in my other, secret, blog hehe). I get along with people faster, I am more confident that I am at least as good as anybody else, and I see my friends more often than before. Every day I try to be a good example to the children. I am generally able to say what I think, do as I see fit.

Hurray for freedom of expression! I've found my voice!

So, really, what is there to keep under lock and key? Of course, my past has not been ideal. I may have stumbled several times. I am still coming to terms with some of the episodes, not to wallow in guilt, pity or self-loathing (how stupid can you be?!?!), but to learn. And hey I am still here -- perfectly imperfect, absolutely willing to get on with life, nonetheless.

I have seriously considered getting rid of these journals. I get these really crazy thoughts: what if I meet an accident on the road, and in clearing out my things my kids stumble upon those pages, yellowing, dusty, and dense with my secret thoughts? Can they bear to see Mom, who had all the answers, who could do no wrong, as somebody so human and so frail?

But if I destroyed them in my attempt at "tabula rasa" -- a clean slate -- would I not be denying that I really was this kind of person, who had this kind of emotions, who saw the world this way, and who made decisions in this manner? Aren't these things essential to who I am now, and who I will become? To deny them would be to deny me. And I cannot deny me.

For now the contents of the bag stay. And maybe on a rainy afternoon when I have nothing to do, I can at random pull out a notebook, or go to a page, and marvel at how much the writer sounds so different from, yet so much like, me.

Amnesia and closure

In the season of rains, floods and class suspensions, we hear, once again, suggestions that the school opening be moved to September from the current June.

“Do you think it’s a good idea, Mom?” my sixth-grader daughter asked me.

I told her that I had heard the same proposal since I MYSELF was in grade school.  Last I looked, classes still opened in June.  And I think it is going to stay that way.

That we Filipinos are prone to making hasty, short-lived proposals is not a new thing. We have done it so many times. It does not only happen during the rainy season.

It happens, for instance, every time the school year opens. We rile against the fact that the government has not done enough to build classrooms, provide adequate facilities and pay teachers well enough to get them to stay.

It happens during elections, when we complain of how people with the same family names occupy key positions in the national and local governments as if they had the monopoly of brilliant genes.

It happens every time a government official or any prominent person becomes the center of a controversy, often in the context of a congressional investigation. Everybody talks about him or her, jumping to conclusions as to that person’s guilt or innocence and speaking about the matter as though the information were not hearsay.

After a few days, however, the attention shifts to something else -- the next big thing, the next compromised celebrity, the next sleazy scandal.

Oh yes, Filipinos have short memories. We easily forget the sins of the past. We move on too easily.  Still, this is not the main problem.  Our problem is that we forget our setbacks without addressing them and learning from them.

This is why more often than not, they come back to haunt us –big time. Because we have not been thorough in addressing these issues before moving on to the next hot copy, closure becomes elusive. Look now, there are so many things we still do not have closure to.

For example, the nation is again preoccupied with allegations of fraud in the 2004 elections. Should we pursue the guilty? Yes, by all means, if we ever find ourselves so fortunate as to get to the bottom of all this.  But we could have done this long ago. Witnesses could have talked among themselves and come forward, unified, to talk about what they claim to know. And then their input could have been used in the investigations at that time -- when it mattered most.

Unfortunately, now that the issue is being revived, there are even more distractions, each one more inconsequential than the one before.  Senators Tito Sotto and Francis Pangilinan, for instance, are trading barbs over what happened at the Batasan during the national canvassing. It has become so ridiculous, so pointless that all the average Filipino can think about is how Sharon Cuneta must be feeling these days (Sotto is an uncle, Pangilinan is the husband).

Now, too, we still have not come to terms with what to do with the remains of former President Marcos. There have been intense debates on whether or not he should be laid to rest at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani. The Vice President has been tasked to study the matter. He has, and he has submitted a recommendation which seemed palatable to many. Still, there has been no action. Had this matter been acted upon in the past, then we would not be expending collective energy turning the matter over and over in our heads.

There are so many other things deserving of our immediate attention – progressive things. For example, we could find out why the President, who sounded so upbeat about public-private partnerships during his State-of-the-Nation Address last year, went silent on the program this year.  It’s a shame, because public-private collaboration is essential to creating long-term jobs.

We could also preoccupy ourselves with agitating our representatives to act on bills that have been debated endlessly but have not been acted upon in Congress.

We could study how the cash transfer program can discourage the poor’s culture of mendicancy and sense of entitlement to continuous government assistance. We are sure that it could deliver good results if it is done the right way. But what is that right way?

We could show how the national budget could be proposed and passed on the basis of project merit instead of political affiliation.

And many others.

Fortunately for us, this kind of amnesia is curable so long as we deal with our issues squarely and decisively before saying we have moved on.

We just need our leaders to set that good example for us.

adellechua@gmail.com