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THE media kept the news about Ces Drilon’s kidnapping for a day
and then muffled it. This was mainly because we care. Ces is a
co-worker and an outstanding one at that. Like her colleagues at
ABS-CBN and at rival GMA, Ces has become a part of our lives. The
day doesn’t feel right for most of us media people, if we don’t
hear and see Ces (and our other friendly TV faces and sources of
news).
We care also because by and large newspaper
people are among the 2.7 million Filipinos who still read
newspapers. And most of us who do, do because we care what happens
to mankind, in particular, our fellow Filipinos. But we do also care
for whatever happens to any fellow human beings.
Remembering Martin and Gracia
A generous estimate of the number of Filipino
newspaper readers who do care for Ces and her companions is half of
the 2.7 million. These are the Filipinos who are now praying for Ces
and company, and who also felt the pain of and prayed for Martin and
Gracia Burnham and their fellow victims in 2001.
These Filipinos also share the pain of Jonas
Burgos and his mother. And feel the heartache of the Dalai Lama and
the Tibetans, the families of those who have died in the earthquake
tragedy in Sichuan, the millions in Myanmar who are still suffering
from the depredation wrought by Cyclone Nargas, the victims of
anti-Israeli suicide bombings, the victims of Israeli raids and
bombings in Palestine, the Iraqi, American and other victims in
Iraq, and so on.
How about the other half of the 2.7 million?
Some of them read newspapers and watch the TV
news because they must have the latest information to get ahead in
whatever game they may be playing. To this kind of people belong
those who made obligatory noises to show their concern for Ces and
companions but in the same breath could not help themselves. They
virtually said it was Ces’ fault she was kidnapped. She should not
have gone to Sulu. She should not have behaved the way a devoted
journalist heroically risks life and limb to do her job.
How about the rest of our population, those who
do not read newspapers because they never developed the reading
habit in the first place?
Some undoubtedly care what happens to Ces.
Consumed by survival problems
But a great many don’t because they can’t
care for anything else but their survival, or at least where they
can get cheap rice that doesn’t taste awful, where they can get
the cash to meet the suddenly more expensive household necessities
other than food, the more expensive jeep fare, notebooks, pencils
and ball pens for the children, etcetera.
The greatest tragedy that has befallen our
beloved land that marked its 110th Independence Day yesterday is
that until now the vast majority of our people are of the dirt poor
and better-off than dirt poor strata.
And nowadays with inflation going double digit,
the small middle class is thinning even more. The cheaper junk food
restos have lost their better-off poor clientele but their owners
and managers aren’t panicking. Why? Because many in the upper
middle-class who didn’t use to patronize these hoi-polloi
establishments are now eating there, having been demoted to the
stratum of the better-off poor.
Some among our poor millions may still have that
feeling of empathy for Ces and companions. But most can’t be too
consumed with worry about them. They are obsessed with how to
survive.
Like people in Malacañang
That makes them like the people in Malacañang.
They in the Palace by the Pasig don’t have that kind of survival
problem that comes from lack of money for the next meal and for the
next rent payment. Their survival problem is how to keep lucky and
not be thrown out of the Palace.
We in the media who care for Ces—and are
disturbed by the thought that the next journalist victim of
kidnapping or worse extrajudicial killing could be ourselves—must
take our job of exposing wrong-headed government officials and
police and military officers more zealously.
And we should also make an effort to restore
compassion and empathy among our countrymen whose problems of
survival have emptied them of the capacity to care for others.
John Donne’s No man is an island
Let’s help them find again that necessary
virtue of solidarity that poverty and suffering often steal from
men’s hearts.
Here’s an apt reminder, the last lines of John
Donne’s meditation about solidarity:
No man is an island, entire of itself . . . any
man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee.
rq_bas@yahoo.com
rqb@manilatimes.net
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