Freedom and responsibility
have no place under tyranny
Hey, award-winning writer and company:
This corner has criticized Rappler when it does less than stellar reporting. Certainly, it is not perfect, just as all other media outlets are not perfect.
But even counting the misses of the digital news outlet, there is only one response to your query – whose interests does it serve?
For the most part, the People’s interest.
Try reviewing Patricia Evangelista’s award-winning investigative reports and gripping narrative journalism on everything from Palparan’s bloody trail, to the survivors and the dead of Supertyphoon Yolanda, and her courageous coverage of your hero’s murderous rampage in the guise of saving the nation from the scourge of drugs.
Also, if you are really honest with yourselves, the journalists now working with Rappler have authored a long list of exposes on anomalies and abuses by Joseph Estrada, Fidel Ramos, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Noynoy Aquino.
They have also done a good job providing digital tools for Filipinos to mitigate the effects of devastating natural disasters.
There is absolutely no proof that the foreign entities that invested in Rappler influenced their day to day editorial operations.
Even if, granted, there were deficiencies in their corporate set-up, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has in the past offered corrective remedies to companies facing more serious legal challenges – even consumer firms facing complaints from many people who lost hard-earned savings in pre-need scandals.
But those determined to play blind will always be stumbling in the dark.
Dragging the New York Times and foreign media into the picture only betrays the true roots of your rage: the unveiling of the dirty truths under the Duterte regime.
You portray murders and rights violations as the path to freedom and responsibility.
You ignore the impending charter change that would sweep away most basic rights enshrined in the Constitution.
You ignore how the President’s legal adviser thinks only a few hundred (mostly corrupt) politicians should decide the fate of the nation, because the rest of us – you, included – are largely uneducated and not fit to decide on national issues.
You ignore other attacks against the media by Rodrigo Duterte.
You ignore the thuggish acts of Duterte and his minions, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives who threatens to starve local governments of budgets if they do not act like slaves to the regimes dictates.
You also ignore the fact that the PDP-Laban has embraced with open arms politicians on the President’s narcolist, their rehabilitation simply a matter of surrendering to the powers-that-be.
You ignore how officials linked to the P6.2-billion shabu scandal have been rewarded by the supppsed drug-hating President with new, cushy jobs. You ignore how the President’s son has been exposed as a party buddy of suspected drug lords. You ignore how a President who claims to hate corrupt police has reinstated killer cops with previous cases of corruption.
It’s not about losing focus. It’s about your refusal to face truths about attacks on rights and freedoms.
You have the right to embrace tyranny and bask on the perks granted the slavish. We will fight for our rights. And we will overcome.
