high as hope
Manila, 11 July—Perhaps our most important watch for this year is Nanette by Australian writer and comedian Hannah Gadsby. Now showing on Netflix, the much-talked about show is a deconstruction of comedy and how it has failed queer comedians like Hannah. She starts off funnily enough, but somewhere along the way it begins feeling like not the usual comedy routine after all. You have to watch the first 45 minutes or so to appreciate how Hannah wraps it all up powerfully with, It's time to tell my story properly.
I think it's an apt way to cap off Pride month—for many, humor has been a crutch, a sort of refuge. Especially for Filipinos—we tend to laugh things off whenever they get too uncomfortable or even painful. We prize our ability to roll with the punches and label it resilience, even when sometimes we have to put our foot down or push back and say this is not OK.
I'm still grappling with a lot of points Hannah raised throughout her show. I remember a point she made about being called out for not coming out as a transgender man—she didn't because she isn't, and that gave me pause because it occurred to me that it must be a very common error to assume that all butch lesbians must be transgender men. I feel especially seen, because I mostly present as butch because it's damn comfortable (case in point, I attend formal work functions in suit and tie because heels and I are not friends) but I do not identify as a transgender man. Does that make me transphobic? I'm not quite sure. Over ten years out of the closet, and still there is so much to learn. How do I do better by my community?
So yeah, if those were the sort of questions that watching Nanette brought out of me, perhaps you can now have a fairer idea of just how difficult it may be. I assure you though that it's been the best hour or so I've spent in my life.
Anyway, this message comes midway into the following week, a record three days late, because we were a bit busy over the weekend, and Monday was a big day. Truth be told, last week was such a shitty week, and I wanted to come from a place of gratitude, so here we are with a couple of good things, for a change: We won merit trophies at the Philippine Quill Awards at the Marriott Grand Ballroom on Monday night, one for the Smart Millenniors/Tech for Seniors program, and one for the Level Up to LTE campaign we did with Marketing. It's particularly sweet to be back at the Quill awards; seven years ago, when we won the overall prize for the Read-Along's 25 simultaneous sessions from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi, I would never have thought I'd ever be back there with a different program, much less with a different company. Here we are though, still pushing, still hitting the ground running. These days, it's hard trying to pinpoint what exactly we're thankful for, but here it's quite crystal clear: I always have a good time when I'm with hardworking people.
There's quite a lot to unpack when it comes to Sen. Tito Sotto, Inquirer.net, and the whole she-bang re: the take-down of Pepsi Paloma articles from the online newspaper's archives upon the Senate President's request. A few things I just want to write down:
I wish more people knew that the broadsheet (PDI) and the online arm (Inq.net) are headed by completely different people. They're two different companies, with a different set of employees, with different bottom-lines. However, they do share some resources, and of course, the brand.
Since 2004, the broadsheet has been regularly publishing correction boxes to amend factual errors. Concerns similar to Sotto's are usually published in the Letters to the Editor section, which can be found in the Opinion section.
As long as the business model that sustains the entire enterprise is dependent on ad spend from private companies, it will always be prone to external pressure—political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental.
Objectivity in journalism is a myth, and that's not a bad thing. False balance/balance for the sake of balance is often a disservice.
The best journalists will make the best decisions to serve their audience: Their choice of context, storytelling elements, structure are honed by years of experience and expertise. Which is why it truly upsets me that what this administration did first was undermine the otherwise dependable press. Tito Sotto even leads with it: "The original Fake News was my involvement in the Pepsi Paloma scandal."
We need a better, more sustainable way of disseminating credible, valuable information. The news cycle is broken. It feels like we're just putting things in the wash and watching the water swirl around without really cleaning anything; we see everything turning, but there's hardly anything substantial. The clothes come away wet, but not clean.
If we want to support journalism, we must buy newspapers. Eyeballs and clicks do not support reportage, not as well as we had initially hoped. I remember having to go through PDI's SEC filings for an MBA paper, and shuddering at the cost of paper and just how much it *costs* to print news, and then seeing just how much of the revenues are from *sales* and not *ads* and it's just—it's a horrible picture. So horrible I dropped out of my MBA because I did not want to write that paper.
For your consideration: Solutions journalism.
Music rec: Florence and the Machine's "High as Hope"
Oh man, we've been waiting for this Florence album to drop since forever—here it is on Spotify.
Rudest track: The End of Love