PR (for promotional purposes)

“Media Retrospective III” by Glenn Bautista donated byf Prof. Raul Ingless 1977

Now that the resolution on the Hello Garci tapes has been taken out of the Senate Committee on Rules just this noon, it’s useful to discuss Senate vs. Ermita, et al (the EO 464 case), for a review or glimpse again of the procedure on the summoning of public officials, which might be useful when Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, et al, are summoned (he testified last year at the House; he just said he found the discs one day in his home/ office and he didn’t know where they came from, but that day made a factual conclusion and went to Malacañang and played them publicly. The House then let him go. Why shouldn’t he appear in the Senate, i’m sure he would breeze through it, with any luck, he could try his boring best and lull the nation to sleep, so why should he not want to go. Because his principal doesn’t want him to go. )

Anyway. But this post had been waylaid. Maybe we’ll save it for tomorrow.

A couple of morning cable news “anchors” said that ousted president Estrada was the only president ever imprisoned (i’m paraphrasing) and that according to these commentators, it was an irony because according to them, he was also the most popular based on the Pulse Asia and SWS surveys.

No context.

Even their own news directors in other discussions, keep repeating: context, context, context. Without context, a reporter even if he/she is being “factual”, misrepresents the facts.

Without context, that statement makes it appear that the indictment had been irregular, unfair, or unjust to the accused. And without context, those statements are really PR (for promotional purposes).

Lost in that “presentation of facts” (or PR, for their promotional purposes) is the fact that the plunder law is a relatively new law, and that Estrada is the second government official charged with it (if memory serves me right; one other government official was charged before him: a medium-level BIR official who was detained at the Quezon City jail); but he is not the last public official to be charged with it. (And i’m not even going into the amount of evidence that constituted a prima facie case in this post because of the warning of the Sandiganbayan in the last hearing; but the records, exhibits, checks, and bank accounts are there). The plunder law was passed on July 12, 1991, the only presidents after that date were: Cory Aquino (for any acts after July 12, 1991), Ramos, Estrada, Gloria.

That’s the legal context.

As to being the most popular president “like Ramon Magsaysay” according to the cable news anchor, the records on the number of votes and margin of votes that presidential candidates got throughout history is posted in Manolo’s blog (MLQ3) archives.

Without context, those statements sound like PR (for promotion).

There’s a video interview in gmanews.tv (“sana balang araw, lahat ng pangulo na nagnakaw ay maisakdal natin” , “we hope someday we could indict all presidents who robbed this country.”) but I don’t want to download the video here because it’s a violation of gmanews.tv copyright.

The four billion pesos stashed in the Velarde account was never recovered, the account was closed even before the impeachment complaint was filed.

Estrada is the only detainee who has remained so wealthy and powerful he is able to dictate the national agenda in the mass media, or at least on cable news.