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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Gray lady

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This is the affectionate nickname given to the New York Times, the second largest American newspaper (behind the Wall Street Journal), because of its implacably stolid format. Originally founded as a conservative mouthpiece, its politics began moving leftward in the twenties, and the paper has not supported a Republican for the US presidency since Eisenhower in 1956.

The Times’ liberal politics is understandable, and perhaps forgivable, in light of its cosmopolitan residence in New York City, where Manhattan residents tend to believe that the civilized world stops at the banks of the Hudson and East rivers. But even conservatives have long relied on the Times’ reputation as a stickler for the facts, although they might disagree on what the facts mean.

However, a highly visible opinion piece last Friday by “the Editorial Board” of the paper, no less, might upend that reputation. Not surprisingly, the piece was about the Philippines under Duterte, whose unyielding views are about as far from the politics of the Times as the oceans separating their two countries. Perhaps all those distances have managed to addle the minds of those editors in New York, which would be no mean feat.

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Here’s what the Times first said: “More than 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers, witnesses and bystanders—including children—have been killed by the police or vigilantes…since last July.”

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It’s the PNP that keeps getting cited as the original reference for this gross misstatement of facts. But even a cursory look at their statistics will tell you that 7,000+ is their total for ALL “deaths under investigation” over that period. In other words, most of that number is just “business as usual” in our un-pacific country.

The number of deaths described as possibly “drug-related” is actually 2,000+. And that includes internecine warfare, internal rubouts, opportunistic (look-alike) killings, legitimate casualties of police operations, as well as rogue cops and vigilantes­—not just alleged State-sanctioned executions, which ought to be the ONLY acceptable description of “EJK” for human rights purposes.

Perhaps the Times might have double-checked their facts, had not the Vice President no less of this country brandished the same fraudulent figure before a UN event in Vienna. She sent her video to the UN on Feb. 5, only less than a week after the DILG received her written inquiry on the matter on Jan. 30, according to the date-stamp. Was she just being impatient? Or were our policemen simply played for patsies, stage props in her little moro-moro?

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2. “Last month, Mr. Duterte’s Justice Department ordered Senator Leila de Lima…arrested on spurious charges that she took bribes from drug traffickers. [She]…should be released immediately, and all politically motivated charges against her dropped.”

At least with the Times editors around, we could save a lot of money on courtroom costs. All by their supercilious selves, they’ve dismissed this country’s entire judicial system—the NBI, NBP, Solicitor General, DOJ, you name it—as spurious. From half the world away, without seeing the evidence or hearing the witnesses, they’ve proclaimed the disgraced senator’s innocence ex cathedra.

A tabloid like the New York Post would have done better by Leila’s case. They would have combed through the evidence and trotted out the mugs of all those drug lord witnesses under blaring headlines. Most of all, they would have probed even deeper and followed the money, asking the most important question of all: How high up did all those drug payoffs go?

In journalism school, the old trope students learn is that reporters should stick to the facts, but editorial writers can be forgiven a bit because, after all, they’re just stating their own opinions. But this begs a more important question: Is journalistic integrity divisible? Can an editor who’s careless about what goes into his opinion pieces be relied upon to be careful about what his reporters put into their news stories?

3. “Outraged by Mr. Duterte’s behavior,…the European Union has proposed hitting his government where it may hurt the most—by imposing tariffs on Philippine goods. Other democratic trading partners should do the same.”

Upon this creaky scaffolding of thoroughly impeachable facts peddled by impatient vice-presidents and impudent mutineers, the gray dowager of American journalism has erected a bully pulpit from which she now harangues the entire democratic world to punish the livelihoods of a hundred million Filipinos.

This is a breathtaking display of liberal arrogance at its worst. It is not government that gets hurt by punitive sanctions, it is ordinary citizens on the street. Clearly the Times editors will be deterred neither by the mendacity nor by the human cost of the falsehoods they’ve put into print.

Then again, perhaps they got wind of the latest Pulse Asia survey showing that 82 percent of Metro Manila residents actually feel safer since the anti-drug war began. How dare these people feel that way, after all? They should be cowering in fear in their homes! And if they won’t do that because of Duterte, then maybe a little dose of extra economic hardship will persuade them to properly behave.

Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.

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