ON JOURNALISM, PR

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

JOURNALISTS have a phrase to describe exaggerated stories: "Sinalsal ang istorya (the story was masturbated)." It has a continuation: "Sobrang pinalibog." Non-journalist guys don't have to worry about this audacious way of speaking. Even lady journalists, the prim and proper, or prudish type among them, freely use that phrase without any moral hangup. It's an accepted expression.

The phrase is widely used to express the collective disgust, disdain, disappointment, contempt, or any other negative feeling among journalists whenever a story is exaggerated to suit some selfish agenda. Truth is the only basic commodity of every journalist. When a story is grossly exaggerated, it ceases to be a legitimate story. It becomes a non-story, or something of a propaganda.

Even people engaged in the business of information dissemination, or the discipline we call public relations, understand the value of truth as the sole commodity of journalists. PR practitioners as press agents and propaganda specialists understand that the moment they dish out falsehoods, lies, deceptions, or half truths, they are bound to suffer the consequences of their stubborn refusal to adhere to the fundamental commitment to truth.

In journalism or public relations, exaggerations or omissions happen; they are indeed daily stuff. A tabloid's treatment of a given story could be regarded as overblown or somewhat exaggerated when compared to the usually sedate prose in a broadsheet newspaper. The press release of a certain PR firm may sound patronizing to its client. But somewhere, somehow, and sometime, some basic facts are evident. They all converge to the basic facts.

Being an earlier discipline, journalism has deep traditions over the last 500 years. Public relations, as a separate discipline, fully acknowledges these traditions and, as always, adjusts to those traditions. The fundamental precepts of truth, balance, and objectivity (or fairness as what other pundits call it) are all products of five centuries of traditions. Failure to recognize and subscribe to those traditions could be fatal. The credibility of the media institutions and journalists suffer considerably if and when they fail to adhere to those traditions.

As an example, media outfits, during the last two world wars, sent their best correspondents, photojournalists, and film crews (particularly WW 2) to cover the war front, write stories, take photographs and footage, and document the entire war efforts. It would have been much easier for the media outfits to cover instead mock battles and present them to the public as real battles. But this was not truth. This was not journalism. This was bad propaganda.

What they did was to document the business of war even to the extent of encountering dangers to their media personnel in the course of their coverage. They documented the actual war proceedings and gave the public the actual blow by blow accounts on the basis of facts they collated in the front. They embraced truth as their commodity and committed themselves to facts - nothing else, but facts culled in the field.

When a grossly untrained blogger, who hardly has any basic understanding of journalism or public relations, attached photographs taken elsewhere to represent locally related blogs and materials, we could see the specter of total disrespect of the traditions of journalism and the business of information dissemination, which we call public relations. The picture of kneeling police officers in Honduras could not in any be described as Filipino police officers saying some prayers. There's no such thing as substitution, or symbolism, in journalism. This is plain folly.

The blogger's demonstration of total ignorance of the discipline of journalism before the eyes of the world could be a function of her exaggerated estimate of herself. Elevated to become the chief propagandist of the sickly administration of Rodrigo Duterte in social media, she could have thought that she has become the hotshot, who could do everything or anything she wants. But journalism is different. Now, she could have realized that she has become the hot shit instead.

The blogger did not undergo the usual processes to become a genuine journalist or PR practitioner. She is the dancer, singer, fawning accomplice of a murdering president, who has been suddenly catapulted to the limelight to become somewhat a celebrity. She hardly has the benefit of mentoring. She hardly has a coterie of professionals who could have guided and taught her the rudiments of journalism or truth telling. It is exactly this gross ignorance and outright stupidity that has become her debacle.