a theory of broken things
Manila, 23 September—I was gathering links to old stuff we did for Martial Law remembrances past when I stumbled upon a 1987 longread written by veteran journalist James Fallows for The Atlantic, where he describes Philippine political culture as "broken". If you follow me on Twitter, I already made a thread of passages worth pondering, but I'd also like to highlight this passage in full, because it's a timely read, considering we are marking 46 years since martial law's imposition in 1972 today:
Still, for all the damage Marcos did, it’s not clear that he caused the country’s economic problems, as opposed to intensifying them. Most of the things that now seem wrong with the economy—grotesque extremes of wealth and poverty, land-ownership disputes, monopolistic industries in cozy, corrupt cahoots with the government—have been wrong for decades. When reading Philippine novels or history books, I would come across a passage that resembled what I’d seen in the Manila slums or on a farm. Then I would read on and discover that the description was by an American soldier in the 1890s, or a Filipino nationalist in the 1930s, or a foreign economist in the 1950s, or a young politician like Ferdinand Marcos or Benigno Aquino in the 1960s. “Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor. . . . Here is a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy. Here, too, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted to the self-perpetuating elite.” The precise phrasing belongs to Benigno Aquino, in his early days in politics, but the thought has been expressed by hundreds of others. Koreans and Japanese love to taunt Americans by hauling out old, pompous predictions that obviously have not come true. “Made in Japan” would always mean “shoddy.” Korea would “always” be poor. Hah hah hah! You smug Yankees were so wrong! Leafing back through Filipinology has the opposite effect: it is surprising, and depressing, to see how little has changed.
To me, this is at the center of our failures since 1986: 31 years after this piece's publication, I cannot even say that it is not true, because it is. We're just going around in circles, and now that I am older, I can no longer even claim that I am not part of the problem, because I am. Having worked in media for more than a decade, I perhaps have also been complicit at some point to perpetuating some powers in hopes of quelling other powers. There are some regrets.
Speaking of regrets
As one of the main survey writers in the Inquirer, I admit I have been part of this culture of 'electoral surveys as headlines'. We took on the job because it was being done poorly anyway—would rather Research do it than some politically skewed press release from some Senator wannabe making its way into the pages, containing just the detail that they wanted to highlight and nothing else.
At least with Research, there's a sort of system, and in addition to making sure that the published figures are accurate, we also made sure that all the valuable metadata are there for scrutiny. We made sure people at least talked about technical aspects of surveys, like the margin of error, the dates covered by the survey, and the number of respondents interviewed.
But that was in the past, when survey results came to us in fax paper, after Senator this or Congressman that issued a press release reacting to their glowing placement in the surveys. It was a necessary gatekeeper function at a time when fake surveys could be released as politician PR and people just take their word for it.
We put in place a system that verified with the indicated survey firm, whether Social Weather Stations or Pulse Asia, that the survey came from them and that it was authorized for release, because in some cases, some parties just 'leaked' survey results without paying for the labor it took to conduct them; that was intellectual property theft, and we also wanted to guard against that.
We also took the time to verify surveys coming from firms that are not SWS or Pulse Asia, and made sure they were reputable enough to publish, and not just some political hacks who claimed to do a "survey" without using methods that would merit such technical label.
And because we've done our jobs well, the editors have always been confident about using surveys as written by Research. Today's banner, which is timely as we head toward the end of voter registration period and into the filing of certificates of candidacy, is an example of that. Do I agree that it is newsworthy? Yes. Do I believe it has to be the banner? Not really. Do I believe those names have to be written out in the banner? Most definitely not.
Stop doing these guys a favor and let them pay for their campaigns by way of advertorials. Also, if we want surveys to be truly informative, we must stop treating them as breaking news, and start treating them as context material and allot enough time for explanatory material. Mahirap gawin yung today-for-tomorrow na survey story na hindi puro numero, akala niyo ba.
Jake Zyrus's new book chronicling his transition is out!
Read a moving excerpt from Jake Zyrus's new book, "I am Jake", in today's Super. I am happy to read a happy story from a trans brother. Yung masaya naman, maiba lang. It's by Anvil's Pride Press, and I'm excited to get a copy :)