Mike Enriquez, GMA-7’s talking head and news reader, reports on illegal quarrying in Tuba, Benguet. This is the first part of the report. You can watch the second part here. It’s good of course that a television program is doing these kind of stories. The more illegal activities are brought to light, the lesser the probability that people will undertake them.
Having said that, I must say that its really frustrating to watch Imbestigador. Why? Because it only goes after the small fish. Puro naman pipitsugin ang iniimbistiga ng programang ito. Its reports are mostly about barangay captains who are corrupt, or army soldiers who did something wrong, or some principal out there who was misbehaving.
I don’t think Imbestigador has ever made an investigative report on corruption and illegal activities that are of national significance. I remember watching an Imbestigador episode during the time when Gloria admitted that she manipulated the elections in Mindanao. Mike Enriquez, with his booming voice, did a very short segment on the scandal but then he based his report on the investigative work of PCIJ.
I was like, “What a shame. GMA-7, the biggest network in the country with all the resources at its disposal, is depending its report on presidential cheating on the work of a small, underfunded, struggling but gallant media organization?”
Then and there, I stopped watching Imbestigador. And I lost respect for its talking head. Pipitsugin lang pala ang kaya nilang imbistigahan.
Remember Dana Batnag? We first blogged about her here and here. In our first post about her, we mentioned that Dana, then only 13 years old, won an international song writing contest sponsored by the UNICEF. You’re wondering about the song she wrote? It’s that very popular song, I Am But a Small Voice, which you sang every time you celebrated United Nations Day.
Anyways, Dana now works as a foreign correspondent with Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency. She’s in the news today because she is suspected of helping alleged coup plotter Capt. Nicanor Faeldon escape during the Manila Penn incident. Dana, whose dad comes from Besao, Mt. Province, denied the accusation and has received the support of her fellow journalists.
Here’s a news report from GMA News on this latest effort of the administration to scare members of the media:
So the RPN video footage in this report is supposed to be the evidence that points to our kailiyan as the suspected journalist who aided an alleged coup plotter? It looks to me like they are just talking. She is a reporter for Christ’s sake. She can interview any news source which Captain Faeldon definitely is. Besides if she is going to commit the crime of aiding an alleged coup plotter, would she do it in a room full of people and cameras?
I also don’t get the story that Faeldon was able to escape because he had a press identification card which Dana supposedly gave him? Really? You have probably the most wanted man in the country for the past five years and he was able to escape because of some silly identification card? So were police authorities too busy looking at ID cards such that they forgot to look at the faces of people they are inspecting? How dumb is that? No wonder Captain Faeldon has been eluding authorities for years. If an ID card is all it takes to escape from hundreds of police and military men who are purposely looking for you, I wonder what a simple wig will do?
Continue Reading…
Michael Fajatin is a TV reporter of GMA-7, here’s his report on a protest rally held in Mendiola:
Igan, pasado alas otso ng tahimik na magdisperse ang mga rallyisata sa San Sebastian.
Ngunit, matapos ang ilang negosasyon,
itoy matapos na ….
nag disperse sila,
Pagkatapos nito, ah….
Hindi na sila nagaway…
Nagaway na sila sa simula,
Pagkatpos nitoy, nagkaroon sila ng AHHHH….
Pagaaway na sa simula!
Is he drunk? Or is he speaking some kind of language we don’t understand?