These past few days, the Philippine Daily Inquirer ran articles questioning Chief Justice Corona's doctor of laws degree from the four hundred-year-old University of Santo Tomas. Marites Danguilan-Vitug, author of Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, has an article in the January 1, 2012 issue of the said newspaper questioning UST's conferment of said degree to the Chief Justice. (As of now, the online article in the PDI website has been taken down. However, other blogs have recorded the text, which though might seem less credible than the PDI, must do for now.) On January 2, the PDI ran another story, this time not a headline under a banner held by two fat cherubs hailing the new year, that contained UST's side of the coin.
As much as I dislike Corona and think there really are things that should not be where they are, I am of the opinion that the Philippine Daily Inquirer committed a culpable negligence of sorts when it published Vitug's article without getting the side of the University of Santo Tomas. Would it have been too much to wait for the school's answer, seeing as that story isn't really too perishable? And what would it say of the PDI's credibility in running a second story telling the other side of the coin, a day after the seemingly-biased first article was printed?
This whole thing reminds me of a much less serious topic, albeit should be of the same journalistic touch. Almost a month ago, ABS-CBN Interactive launched a story about how Japanese AV idol Maria Ozawa allegedly was inviting Filipino males for an audition for her next film. A couple of my hot-blooded male friends posted this link on their FBs, but several hours later GMA News launched a story of thinking-before-clicking: apparently, "Maria Ozawa" was the creation of a couple of men who had nothing better to do. The real porn star released no such statement, much less ask anybody of any nationality about a bukkake audition. ABS-CBN of course edited their story, and boys all around were groaning, "Oh, man!"
Going back to Corona, UST, and Vitug. I want to make it clear that I am not a Corona apologist, nor a graduate of UST defending her alma mater. (I actually finished my undergrad at UP, if you're interested, and I'm currently hanging on by a thread at San Beda Law.) But as someone who wants to enter the practice of law and hopefully work in the SC one day, and as a writer in general, I just want to say that publishing Vitug's story on the first day of 2012, under a banner of cherubs holding up a Happy New Year banner, reeks of bias and even righteous glee against Corona. Is that some sort of poetic/journalistic justice against Corona, who has long been accused of being biased in favor of Arroyo?
Read Vitug's article here in this Tumblr post (I can assure you, it's the real thing), or in the Rapper page (if you're not taking my word for the Tumblr post, but I bet they'll pull this down soon). You decide if I'm just rambling like a lunatic here, or if I do have a valid point.
No comments:
Post a Comment