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IT’S old news. There’s been too much attention on
the DJ Montano/Gucci Gang/Brian Gorrell controversy sparked by the
website http://delfindjmontano.blogspot.com and not enough on the
real issue.
This is all but certain the first
of many incidents as more people take to the web and publish their
own reportage, opinions and expose. In the age of blogsites, YouTube
videos and phone cameras, everyone has the means to be a citizen
journalist, as well as a gossipmonger, a slanderer, an extortionist
or a self-promoting gadfly.
Let me make my point clear:
Conducting a trial by publicity
with a blog is a grave misuse of Internet. The uncritical acceptance
of this practice by the wired public is truly worrying.
Regardless of our perceptions and
opinions of the people concerned, the venue for any allegations of
criminal activity—be it embezzlement, drug abuse, false charges,
intimidation or harassment—are the legal courts.
As cruel and detestable as
infidelity, elitism and hypocrisy may be, perpetrating character
assassination is not any better.
As futile as it may seem to
pursue a legal case against opponents who are influential, corrupt,
conniving and deceitful, publishing possibly libelous assertions
against them simply hands them the legal ammunition to use against
you. Popular sympathy alone cannot protect anyone.
Public scorn and the damage it
does to an opponent’s business interests and reputation, however
effective initially, does not equal justice.
In the age of Paris Hilton,
popular culture focuses on drug-addled celebrities and continues to
reward them with endorsements, merchandise, movie and album
contracts. Any kind of attention, even notoriety, is still fame. And
this is what sustains talentless self-promoters. All is forgiven.
In the post-People Power era, the
Philippines is a country where officials convicted of corruption are
pardoned by the President and still loved by the very masses they
stole from. All is forgotten.
So-called high society, by its
very nature, has always has been decadent and always will be. The
need to garner esteem makes them shameless self-promoters. The need
to uphold esteem makes them duplicitous and superficial. The need to
keep their lifestyles at par with their peers makes them corrupt and
amoral. The struggle for social equity is the fight against high
society and the system that sustains it.
What we need is truth and
justice, not hearsay and slander.
The last thing we want is for the
Internet to devolve into a venue for insult and intrigue. Blogs make
possible the citizen journalist and the virtual vigilante. But in an
age when everyone has the tools to pretend to be a reporter, a
pundit, a victim or a role model, only a critical audience can
discern who really is telling the truth.
Trust content only when
authorship and sources are verifiable. Look for balanced viewpoints.
Questions assertions and be alarmed by biased language.
Without ethics, accountability
and craft, the new media becomes as filthy and as useless as high
society.
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