The lack of sufficient and timely coverage of events in the Philippines has been a major omission on the part of the U.S. news media. This omission is irritating but not surprising, given the even greater omission of the Philippines in U.S. history books. Of late, however, there has been an up-tick in coverage by the news media. I should qualify "news media" with the full disclosure that I have not watched television news for about fifteen years and listen to public radio only when in the car. My news media is the New York Times (NYT, daily, both hard copy and on line), the Washington Post (daily headlines on line), and my local paper, the Green Bay Press Gazette (daily hard copy). For an initial example, see my previous entry on this blog, "Filipinos Outraged by Government Corruption" (Sept. 8, 2013). Floyd Whaley (NYT) was on the scene in Manila and published two pieces about this issue, including in the second one a large picture of the chief current corrupter of officials, businesswoman Janet Napoles Lim. This coverage appeared in late August of this year.
Barely two weeks later (an unusually short gap for news about the Philippines), Reuters, the widely syndicated print news agency, announced the outbreak of armed violence in Zamboanga in the Muslim Autonomous Region (MAR) in the southern island of Mindanao (Sept. 12). Apparently a small but lethal group of Muslims broke away from the main group (the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF). The MNLF had signed a treaty with the national government and established peace in the region about a year ago. Floyd Whaley of the NYT picked up on the news of the new outbreak of fighting by the rogue group and wrote a couple of articles, which appeared on Sept. 13 and Sept. 16. The latter article focused on the fact that President Aquino flew to the region for an inspection and to help restore peace. I had never read of a president visiting the MAR at any time, much less while bullets were flying, some even at the president's escort helicopter. The same day that Whaley's second piece appeared, there was a notice in the "Nation and World Watch" section of my local paper with the headline, "Philippines: 100 guerrillas die, captured." I could count on one hand the number of notices in the local Green Bay paper in my 45 years here, and I wrote two them as guest features.
News snippets about the Philippines have also appeared with increasing frequency in the business sections of newspapers and magazines in the last year, ever since the Philippines has emerged as the new "Asian Tiger" with its economy expanding, just as other Asian nations are experiencing a bit of a downturn. More surprising to me are a couple of complimentary film reviews in the NYT, including one this past Friday, Sept. 27. The movie, On the Job (in Filipino with English subtitles), gets high marks for fine acting and "wondrously alive" filming. The film shows the seedier side of Manila and the deep-rooted police corruption there.
It remains to be seen, of course, if the current attention being paid to the Philippines in the U.S. press is just an anomaly or a trend. Hopefully a trend, so we get more news than just Philippine-U.S. combined military maneuvers or the occasional (monthly perhaps) notice of the friction between China and the Philippines over disputed possession of islands in the South China Sea.
No comments:
Post a Comment