Essay on the Manila Bus Tragedy: The Safety in the Cliche

By now Filipinos home and abroad have a stock of visuals and voices that would mark their experiences of yesterday’s tragic events in the Quirino Grandstand. A tall, proud tourist bus, its sides emblazoned with equally bold Chinese characters, became a battleground featuring a desperate ex-cop and his hostages, two tv networks in perpetual one-upmanship, and really, a nation and whatever is left of its pride and reputation. Some may remember the image of the Hong Kong national tearfully exiting the bus, raising hope that the lives of all remaining hostages were safe. Others might recall the thickly accented English of Manila Vice Mayor Isko Moreno in his CNN interview and his boastful and cringeworthy description about how the hostage taker had been ‘neutralized’ by Philippine police. As a sociologist of the media, I have personal recollections that also extend from the sights and sounds of television and radio to the polyphonic chatter on Facebook and Twitter. For here, in these increasingly robust online public spheres, it is perhaps easier to trace how indeed we all tried to make sense of the shock and threat of what had happened. In the beginning of the crisis, it was curious how we all remarked on the surreality of it all: “OMG. Akala ko sa pelukila lang ito nangyayari". “It’s like a bad reality show." “Hindi ba naglalaro [ang mga pulis] ng Counterstrike?" “Should we start casting who plays who in the Carlo Caparas movie version?" Indeed, in tragedy, it is normal to say that it is simply like the movies, like Hollywood. There is the natural desire to push the threatening to the realm of pop culture, to the world of fantasy and make-believe. But as the late media scholar Roger Silverstone says, it is still mainstream media--television--that is most central in times of crisis. In the midst of fear and uncertainty, live news and its rolling narration and speculation could offer comfort to its audiences that the shocking could still be made into sense. He says, despite the unpredictability that terror and tragedy pose, news media always have a “stock of images, frames and narratives available in their archive which will hold as well as explain." He further argues that “the familiar" is used “to soften the blow" as there is “safety in the cliche" and “comfort in the tale". In the events of August 23, what indeed were “the familiar" and “the cliche" in news reportage? And what kinds of comfort, if any, did they provide? The first cliche that I took note of was the spectacle that the media made of the tragedy. This they achieved as a result of the discomforting proximity that they enjoyed in relation to the different sites of drama and action. By now we are familiar with the angle that hostage taker Rolando Mendoza had acted calmly and respectfully towards his hostages right until he saw and heard, through the aid of television from within the hijacked bus, the arrest of his brother and the wailing hysterics of his relatives--all under the bright lights of news cameras. Here the media were literally too close: reporters’ microphones hovered like vultures around the prone shirtless body of Mendoza’s brother, as they refused to get up from the ground and surrender to the police. Later, ABS-CBN’s Tintin Babao would also tweet how their GMA colleague Susan Enriquez supposedly ignored police cordons in order to get ‘exclusive’ updates. And, astutely, CSI fans pointed out on Twitter how tv cameras contaminated the crime scene in the aftermath of the tragedy. Surely, the philosophical norm of “proper distance" that Roger Silverstone requires for the operation of a moral media was unmet in how television became too close to the action and showed too much of the event. As ABS-CBN’s Tony Velasquez defensively replied to some Twitter critics, “Mabuti na yung sobra kesa kulang". But again, surely they could have tried for moderation, for the middleground, for “proper distance?" The second cliche that ran through the media story of what they called “the Manila Bus Tragedy" was the supreme autonomy and authority that journalists enjoyed throughout the day. The media in our country lack any significant regulation that impinges on media operations. The KBP, which intends to be a self-regulating mechanism for television networks, has no actual legal teeth, as any tv network could in fact choose to withdraw its membership from the body to avoid all sanction. With the exception of moralistic censorship of “sex and violence" coming from the hallowed halls of MTRCB, the media do not answer to government, even though they demand the government to repeatedly answer to them. During the crisis for example, there was Mel Tiangco’s knowing SWAT expertise: “Dapat kadena hindi lubid" when she saw how the rope intended to break into the bus spectacularly failed. And there was Tintin Babao again all passionate on Twitter: “Ganito ba ang training ng SWAT natin?" “SWAT: Sulong Wait Atras Tago". There is nothing wrong with a critical media of course. But what happens if the media can only criticize others with little ability to criticize themselves? This brings me to the third cliche. In responding to how their broadcasting of the arrest of Mendoza’s brother and their play-by-play coverage at the height of the shootout contributed if not caused the failure of rescue, journalists resorted to a company line: “We were just doing our job". The police, they said, should have made the decision to call for a news blackout rather than they themselves making that assessment on their own. It was curious to see again on Twitter how this company line provided for journalists (otherwise unfamiliar and uncomfortable with fielding questions on media ethics) a true and unquestioned “safety in the cliche". Journalists would tweet and retweet: “We were just informing the public." “I hope the police do not blame the media." “In the past people complained that the media were suppressed. Now people complain we give blow-by-blow coverage". Indeed, what we should hope for in the coming days is not defensiveness but openness from our media, less adherence to company rules and more awareness of the ambiguous power of visibility that they wield and most tragically take for granted. And perhaps most significantly, we hope that the media remind themselves not simply of their rights—their constitutional rights to speak and to show—but also of their obligations—their fundamental human obligations to respect vulnerable others over and above duties to profit and profession. In recent statements from ABS-CBN News and GMA News, I find it encouraging that there is a concerted move to “draft guidelines" and “review procedures". We can only hope that such “guidelines" are less about professional rights and obligations to their so-called loyal viewers than about their humanistic concern for vulnerable others, others whose status as human beings depend completely upon how the media portray them to the rest of the world. Indeed, the most tragic cliche yesterday was that the media did their job when they should have chosen not to. To have paused and questioned their own norms and standards would really have been the braver and more dangerous choice. Jonathan Corpus Ong is a Doctoral Researcher in Sociology, University of Cambridge and Lecturer, Ateneo de Manila.