Poor reporting on CPVDC

Letter to the Editor, SunStar Cebu, 7 November 2008:


The Editor-in-Chief
SunStar Daily
Cebu City

Dear Editor:

It is inconceivable, considering the comprehensive (and I should say better) reporting SunStar did in the 1990s on the Cebu Property Ventures and Development Corporation (CPVDC) deal, that your present crop of reporters would get it totally wrong on the simple matter of when the CPVDC was founded.

In your report today, you failed to state that CPVDC was founded in 1990. Googling “CPVDC” would have gotten you that information. The Philippine Stock Exchange website, as well as a dozen other investment websites, would have yielded it.

Worse, your reporter mentioned that the CPVDC started commercial operations in 1995, which -- insofar as when the joint venture with between the Province of Cebu and the Ayala group was concerned -- is totally irrelevant. Commercial operations may have begun in 1995, but this was because it took 5 years to build the infrastructure. And extremely misleading, for there is a crucial difference here: In 1990, the governor was Lito Osmena; in 1995, it was Pablo Garcia.

The omission (whether inadvertent or deliberate) sweeps under the rug the interesting, and highly controversial, history of the CPVDC, which SunStar with its better crop of editors and reporters covered with journalistic zeal, and a lot of color:

1. The exciting bidding process which led to the historic (in terms of magnitude of price) deal with the Ayala group. This also belies the claim, in the report, that the deal did not undergo public bidding.
2. The investigations on the deal instigated by then Governor Tingting de la Serna when he assumed office in 1992. Your past issues would have shown how Gov. de la Serna had already raised the same issues Mayor Tomas Osmena is now raising.
3. The controversy that arose when Governor Pabling Garcia, sometime in 1996, sold-- at a premium --- a substantial chunk of the Province’s CPVDC shares to Cebu Holdings Inc. (CHI). He turned out to be right, as this was right before the Asian financial crisis, and the markets crashed, and the price of CPVC shares plummeted.

We realize that journalism is literature in a hurry. But this should not be an excuse for laziness. We should also realize that journalism is also history, written on a daily basis. Thus, we should take care that what we write serves history by providing its crucial and indispensable elements: accuracy, perspective, continuity.

We hope you will publish this letter, in the interest of perspective.

Yours sincerely,


Pablo John Garcia

P.S. (and you don’t have to publish this part) - It is beyond me why Linette could have missed this. Last night, she texted my wife, asking for precisely this information, and Karen told her about the CPVDC’s founding in 1990, and pointed her to past reporting by SunStar.

Another plug for this blog

From Sunstar Cebu.

The elephant's wife

In his column "Sleeping with the elephant" Cheking Seares gets all worked up about journalists getting too cozy with news sources.

No quarrel there. Though not always clear and distinct, the line must always remain there.

But towards the end of his column, Seares goes way out of line:

"A journalist sleeping with the news source confirms it when he later marries the news source or joins the news source's rah-rah band."

Since the only Cebu journalist in living memory to ever get married to a news source is my wife, who used to be his reporter, our little family felt particularly alluded to. And I barely stopped myself from demonstrating -- literally -- that Cheking Seares' house is just a "stone's throw away" from ours when we read the concluding paragraph:

"Guess what kind of stories he wrote about the elephant when he was still covering the circus."

Cheking, I know for a fact that your outfit conducted an audit of my wife's stories after we got married and found nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to suggest she was biased while she was covering her beat.

And at least my wife had the decency to quit her job, unlike some SunStar editors and reporters who remain on the payroll with their petty little agenda, and their favorite elephants they don't have the decency (or capacity) to marry. For almost 10 years she was one of your best reporters: she was intelligent, she wrote well, she was never on the take, and she had integrity. Which is more than one can say about some of those who still haven't quit.

Finally: You can pick on my sister, or on me, but don't pick on my wife. We can take your punches, but don't make this marriage a punchline in your otherwise boring column. It's ungentlemanly and tasteless.

Leo Lastimosa squatting on cyberspace?

I received an a-mail from a Mr. Vincent Isles of Daanbantayan. He says:

"I'm just an ordinary citizen from the fourth district.

"My problem with Mr. Lastimosa (or to the online poser who is acting as
Mr. Lastimosa) stemmed from my inability to register the names of Cebu
towns which he (or the poser) had registered at blogspot.com, forcing
me to buy my own domain for some promotional activities I wanted to do
for some of these towns (esp. Daanbantayan, from where I came).

"Two months ago I spent time tracking all the domains spammed in the
name of Mr. Lastimosa. The results are presented here:
http://leodontspam.pbwiki.com

"Please note esp. the blogs owned by user "Sugbu" at blogspot.com.


"Respectfully yours
Vincent S. Isles"

If you click the link http://leodontspam.pbwiki.com you will find that practically every name or word that is associated with Cebu has been registered as a domain by a Mr. Leo Lastimosa.

The object, apparently, is to "bump" Mr. Lastimosa's name up search engine results whenever somebody searches "Cebu" or anything related to Cebu.

Try googling "pinamungajan cebu", for instance, and you'll find "Leo Lastimosa Pinamungajan" among the top five search results.

When you click "Leo Lastimosa Pinamungajan", however, you're redirected to a page which is not about Pinamungajan, or anything even remotely related to Pinamungajan, but to a blog (presumably belonging to Mr. Lastimosa) containing Mr. Lastimosa's columns in The Freeman and his commentaries over dyAB.

I have to admit that if I were in the shoes of someone desperately seeking information about Pinamungajan, I'd feel I'd been taken for a ride. No wonder Mr. Isles calls it "spamming". It's no different from getting unwanted e-mail selling "penis enlargers" or "sex enhancement pills". It's shameless promotion (or, if this is Mr. Lastimosa's handiwork, self-promotion) to an unsuspecting public.

Yes, it's spamming, but it's also squatting. I believe no one should register a domain name unless he has a reasonable claim to the name. So let's call it "squamming".

Quote and unquote

Here's my letter to the editors of SunStar Cebu, which was published on its 25 February 2008 issue:

IN TWO separate stories in today’s Sun.Star Cebu (Feb. 23), “No loyalty check among GMA allies: PJ”, and “Capitol admits Galing Pook loss”, both written by a certain GMD, quotations attributed to me were mangled, perhaps somewhere in transit from Parklane International Hotel to the Sun.Star printing press.

There must be something about, or along, that route that encourages the mutation of passable, fairly intelligent statements into ungrammatical and downright unintelligible quotes.

Because somehow, CDN and the Freeman managed to preserve my statements with more than a fair degree of accuracy. After all, while I have been known to spew nonsense to reporters from time to time, I always take care to be nonsensical grammatically.

I had to keep my naturally suspicious mind in check as it screamed on and on about sabotage, pointing to the fact that the stories were, themselves, fairly grammatical; only the quotes were skewed (and, I guess, skewered). Plus, of course, there was that other, delicious circumstance that on page 2 of the same issue, I was pontificating about the need to train our teachers in the third district on, among other things, English.

But, no, the sabotage angle is a bit much, if tempting for its comedic value. I guess we just need to ensure that statements are properly recorded and transcribed. Or if we fashion ourselves Old World journalists who carry only a notebook and a pen, then we have to make sure that we separate verbatim quotes from attempted reconstructions of shorthand notes.

And, of course, there’s always good old editing, which never goes out of style.

Thank you. And for the sake of the students and pupils of the underperforming third district schools, it might be helpful to give this some space.

Cheking loves Cris

It seems the only one paying attention to Cris Saavedra these days is Cheking Seares. Check out this BANNER STORY in today's SunStar Cebu.

Reading the banner, you'd think the story was as earthshaking as, say, Eddie Barrita disagreeing with anything Cheking Seares tells him over bottles of San Miguel Super Dry. But then you realize it's just Cris Saavedra writing a letter to Manny Villar, asking for a Senate investigation into the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC). This, after the Commission on Audit (COA) had cleared the Capitol of any irregularities relating to the CICC.

So now you realize why Cris Saavedra fancies himself a "whistleblower". SunStar is always there to give him the whistle.

And guess who wrote the article. The same reporter I wrote about earlier, the fraud who's being protected by a female editor who's so jealous of the Governor and her family that she doesn't mind appearing unprofessional in the newsroom, badmouthing them.

Yes, the same reporter who fancies himself a gun expert, although people who know him say that as a shooter, he's Saavedraesque: he shoots from the hip, and shoots from the lip, and always misses the target.

And why does Cris Saavedra seem to have a direct line to this reporter? Does Cris provide him with ammunition, both as a reporter and as a gun aficionado?

And why is this female editor protecting this reporter? Is the reporter the only one who compliments the female editor on her interesting fashion sense? ("Baby, if I could only shoot the way you dressed, nobody would mess with me.")

Stick to mediocrity

The libel charge filed this week by the city prosecutor's office against Leo Lastimosa warns us of what happens when a mediocre broadcaster tries his hand at being an incompetent writer.

Today's SunStar story about the libel charge reminds us of another mediocre SunStar writer whom one might call "self-contained". (Translation: "full of himself")

onion-skinned remembers that the Governor filed an administrative complaint against this same reporter, who engaged in fraud and misrepresentation in order to get documents from the Capitol.

Cheking Seares is still sitting on the case.

Probably because this reporter is being protected by a female editor who fills the newsroom with jealous rants against the Governor and her family. (More about her in subsequent blind items.)

Or another female editor who resents the Governor because her decisions regarding the 93-1 lots directly affect the editor's family. (More about her in subsequent blind items.)

I hear that even some reporters are biting their tongues. A reporter who gets away with fraud, and who is given a column (unusual for a reporter), reads too much like "sacred cow", and the editors' actions, smelling too much like its bodily waste.

The witness against Japex

The shoe, it seems, is on the other foot. Now, it's the opposition to the Tañon Strait exploration that's scraping the bottom of the, um, ocean.

It was a risky move, to begin with, parading dubious characters claiming to be "marginal fishermen", mouthing even more dubious claims before the media, in an effort to prove the "detrimental effects" of Japex' activities. (One claimed having lost his average daily catch of 20 kilos. 20 kilos. No wonder he preferred to stay in the margins of the whole fishing industry)

Apparently, they proved to be unreliable witnesses. They talked too much. So, in the 28 November issue of Cebu Daily News, the oppositors presented new witnesses that had the distinct advantage of not being able to talk, at least not in a way humans could understand. Dolphins.

In the CDN article, a certain Dr. Lemuel Aragones claims that the dolphin population in Tañon Strait "declined" since the start of the exploration activities, and those that remained no longer "leap out of the water to the delight of tourists" and "showed disturbed patterns of behavior".

Dr. Aragones, of course, doesn't tell us how he divined the dolphin's behavior to be a mass boycott in protest of oil exploration. When asked to provide the link, he obfuscates:

“The area showed immediate negative effects on the surface behaviors and delayed (1 year after) negative response on the relative abundance of spinner dolphins implicating short and intermediate changes in their behavior possibly brought about by the seismic survey.”

The operative word being: "possibly".

Oh, well, if the dolphins likewise prove to be unreliable witnesses (maybe leaping out of the water has become, in dolphin pop culture, "uncool"), Dr. Aragones could always try other sea creatures. Crustaceans, for instance, are a good choice, being inherently anti-progress. Japex, of course, could hit back and charge "crab mentality".

Wanted: Editorial writer for CDN

If you're one of the 600 or so people who read Cebu Daily News, you might have, at some point before you totally lost interest, wondered: Why is there hardly, if ever, any editorial?

In place of an editorial, CDN instead rehashes editorials from other papers, websites or blogs, or worse, letters and statements from cause-oriented groups, NGO's and other interest groups.

An editorial defines what a paper is, where it stands, and where it is going. No self-respecting paper will miss the opportunity to do so, every day. How can a paper abdicate its soul?

Possible reasons:

1. CDN has editorialized its news pages (heck, even its photos) enough it doesn't feel the need to have an editorial.
   
2. Editors are too busy mangling stories of reporters.
   
3. Editors are too busy travelling with news sources to Taiwan.
   
4. Editors who can't write aren't allowed to (thank god; may be the same as no. 3), and editors who can, don't.
   
5. Surveys show CDN loses its readership somewhere in the middle of page 2, so what's the use?
   

A pity, really, but, hey, maybe CDN is just sparing us the agony.

SunStar cuts Capitol budget by P198 million

Exercising the Fourth Estate's power to line/item veto the provincial government's budget, SunStar today cut the Capitol's budget increase by some P198 million pesos. In the story submitted by the reporter, it was reported:

"The P2.2-billion for next year is just a little higher than this year’s budget of P2.001 billion."

The P199 million increase, however, was apparently unacceptable to the headline writer, who wrote:

Capitol hikes 2008 budget by P200T

thereby decreasing the appropriation for FY 2008 by around P198 million pesos, money that could have gone to basic services.

The Governor would not say whether she would exercise her power to veto the budget cut.

Boy Radaza and Our Lady of the Rule

This photo by photographer Alan Cuizon, which appeared on the front page of the 13 November 2007 issue of SunStar Cebu, had onion-skinned and friends searching for a title. Some suggestions:



(1) Burdened by an image

(2) Boy, you gotta carry that weight

(3) Go figurine!

(4) Mayor walks; virgin suspended

(5) Radaza does something for free!

Your suggestions are welcome.

SunStar's disclaimer

Did Gerry Hilado hit a sensitive spot?

In a previous post, I reproduced his letter to the editor to SunStar Cebu in which he complained of the inordinate space and prominence given a certain political personality in an anniversary special titled "Cebu's 25 Most Influential People".

In today's issue of SunStar Cebu is another anniversary special, "25 of Cebu's Women Achievers". Perhaps in reaction to Gerry's letter, the feature contained the following disclaimer:

"Listing is in alphabetical order. Sizing and location of photos are dictated by basics of good design, not to favor some people over others."

And, as if aimed directly at Gerry, it goes on further, if ungrammatically:

"There's uniform length of write-ups but give or take a few lines for any discrepancy you may find."

Tsk, tsk, Gerry. You've hurt some people's feelings.

Or not: SunStar may have found your complaint valid, and thought it wise to issue the disclaimer.

Which is not surprising, given SunStar's history of disclaimers. I mean, in which paper in what part of what world would you find the following disclaimer on the horoscope page:

"Horoscope is just for fun. You don't have to believe it."

In response, no doubt, to another letter from another Gerry Hilado, who complained about not getting a call from someone from his past, as the SunStar horoscope had promised.

Don't tase me, bro

SunStar Cebu headline today: "RTC disables Ronda Mayor".

In my hangover, I saw Judge Leopoldo Cañete zap Mayor Esteban Sia with a Taser gun.

This weird headline should warrant another classic Cheking Seares column on the unfortunates' unfortunate choice of words. Since he'll probably be too embarrassed to write it, I'll venture to write it, if I have enough monosyllabic words (as is his preference):

"Disable means to make unable or unfit. But court can't do that. It can only declare mayor to be unable or unfit.

"Good thing I am not a court. So I shall now proceed to disable the headline writer."

SunStar and Del Mar: They rhyme

I was cc'd a letter to the editor addressed to SunStar Cebu, from a Gerry Hilado. It's so rich I just have to reprint it here. Enjoy:

The Editor
Sun Star
Cebu City

Dear Sir:

I think only the legally blind failed to notice the unusual prominence you
gave Rep. Raul Del Mar’s picture in your Friday special “Cebu’s 25 Most
Influential People”. Page 3 status. Wow. And more than half
the page was his mug.

Given the remarkably less prominence you gave the photos of the Cardinal
(entrusted with the care of souls) and the Mayor (who, after all, makes the real
decisions in this city), one would have to wonder if Del Mar ranked up there
with the Pope in Sun Star’s esteem.

When, in a past issue, you published an overly large photo on your news
pages of Del Mar – drumroll here -- baking bread, I sort of let that go, even if
that did seem sacrilegious. I mean, Jesus Christ multiplied loaves of
bread, and not merely baked them. Perhaps it was a slow news day, the kind
that made you somehow wish for miracles.

But when you published a bad photo of his daughter in a firing squad pose
taking her oath as a factotum in some minor government agency, I had the sinking
feeling, wondering whether my favorite paper had been reduced into a bad
newsletter of some egotistical politician eager to show the world his progeny
had it in her genes to be, well, a factotum in some minor government
agency.

And who can ignore this old “file photo” of Del Mar walking on a flyover as
if he had just parted the Red Sea? It’s ridiculous how, when [there's] a
story – any story – about flyovers (it doesn’t matter which flyover, or that the
story doesn’t even remotely involve Del Mar) [it] should be accompanied by that
“file photo”.

When I heard my friends in media tell amusing anecdotes about how Del Mar
refuses to start a press conference, or an event, even if it’s already late,
unless Sun Star’s chief of photographers has arrived, I had to wonder, as those
who saw your Saturday special must have: Is something weird going on
between Del Mar and SunStar?

Is this simply a high school crush on Del Mar’s admittedly good looks, or
is there something deeper going on, something that has to do with Del Mar’s
well-known “endowments” to the press? Either way, I suggest Sun Star snap
out of it. Soon.

Yours, Gerry Hilado

Haha. Thanks, Gerry, for the good laugh. And in case this was the reason you cc'd me: Another branch of the family owns that paper. Cheers!

Editor in Taiwan

An airport official confirmed a city hall insider's tip to onion-skinned that this female editor of a Cebu daily was with city hall officials and department heads on a hush-hush trip to Taiwan in August.

Nothing wrong there, especially if you're especially chummy with a male department head (I guess when you're tied to one, it's Taiwan, take one). Except that certain quarters (onion-skinned among them) are regurgitating their food, remembering how this female editor had, in the past, subjected her staff to extended lectures, and unwarranted hassles, on the ethics of traveling with news sources, even on legitimate coverages.

This is the same female editor who ordered her reporters to return customary Christmas gifts(even if allowed by the code of ethics) given by the Capitol (and only by the Capitol; no mention about gifts from other sources) in Christmas 2006. Typically hypocritically, she was dancing and prancing on her way home from a Christmas party thrown by another news source, a brand-new appliance heavy on her shoulders.

So what's this? What's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander? Is this why this Cebu daily's coverage of city hall and its officials is extremely, sometimes disgustingly, friendly?

Maybe the publisher should conduct an audit of this Cebu daily's coverage of city hall and its officials and determine whether journalistic ethics haven't been Shanghaied by one surreptitious trip to Taiwan.

Bald-faced liar

Cris Saavedra says the Governor maligned him by calling him a "bald-headed creature".

In libel, there is such a thing as "proof of the truth", and provides a defense where the statement complained of is in itself true.

I hope it is not Saavedra's position that the Governor was lying when she said that because it might invite the Governor's lawyers to mark his head in evidence.

And that would make him a "marked" man in the literal sense of the word, and not just in the figurative sense, as he imagined himself to be when he sought the protection of Mayor Tomas Osmeña.

Editor on the way out? -- Onion-Skinned Blind Item # 3

This rumor, if true, can only be good for this poor daily, and Cebu journalism, as a whole.

This editor, it is said, is on the way out. "Won't last a week," well-placed sources say. The owners, apparently, have had enough of this editor's work habits, which have caused pages to close later and later in the evening, and the paper coming out later and later the next day.

Apparently, too, the owners have had enough of this editor's petty biases and deep-seated prejudices against specific personalities, which spill onto the news pages, when they shouldn't.

We hear this editor is being "kicked up". Will this move on the part of the owners stem the seemingly irreversible tide of increasingly neglible circulation numbers and the exodus of personnel?

I've always believed this editor was overrated. I guess the ratings have finally caught up with this editor.

Goodbye, Editor. And to the news outfit: good decision. The best piece of news ever to come out of your paper.

Onion-skinned Blind Item # 2

We got very interesting news today that editors (and reporters) of this daily are planning a mass resignation, disgusted by this editor and the latter's penchant for mangling stories to settle personal scores with selected news sources. As a result, reporters have been at the receiving end from their news sources, and all they can do is to scratch their heads and curse this editor.

That's not all. This editor reportedly starts reviewing stories and pages so late at night, making reporters and editors stay up unnecessarily to wait for the pages to close. To make matters worse, this editor apparently is so indecisive that this editor can't make up her mind about how the stories should read, or how the pages should look. Not that every issue is exactly a magnum OPUS (no pun intended). As a result, this daily has been coming out very late recently. (Not that its few hundred readers noticed.)

When reporters of this daily complain to reporters from another daily where this editor used to work, the latter invariably shake their heads, and marvel at how little has changed with this editor, the editor's personal biases and the editor's working habits.

Tradcols

Columnists write about "tradpols" (traditional politicians) all the time, and they should.

But who's writing about the "tradcols" (traditional columnists)?

Who's checking their own brand of patronage politics -- dispensing or withholding favors, using their positions in, and the resources of the Fourth Estate, at the expense of the public trust?

In this election season, you're seeing them again, and the woodwork from which they came. They devote entire columns promoting, or shooting down, the candidacies of their clients and their adversaries, living on the generosity or fear of those who do not know better.

They are, plain and simple, "blocktimers in print".

And newspapers that rail and moralize against blocktimers on radio should perhaps first sweep their backyards of this "turd force".

Onion-skinned blind item

Or, maybe we should call this portion (which we hope to make a regular feature) "AN EYE FOR AN EYE".

We hope media can blindly take as good as it can blindly give:

This editor of a local daily came uninvited to a Capitol function on August 6, 2004. The editor got so drunk that the editor started to become a little loud, picked a fight with a former governor (a former news source), and generally became a nuisance. Perhaps seeing that the people were beginning to stare at her and speak in hushed tones, she made her dramatic exit. How dramatic? Very dramatic. She grabbed an unopened bottle of wine and ran away with it.

Surveillance camera tapes and several witnesses (both from the media and from other people on the Capitol guest list) attest to this public nuisance and "theft".

Blind items are not journalism

One of the more cowardly aspects of newspapering is the "blind item". Every day, Cebu dailies dish out rumors involving unnamed personalities allegedly caught in some unverifiable fiasco, written almost always with an unmistakable smirk.

The trouble is, in doing so, they're smirking at the very core of their professional ethics.

After all, what purpose does the "blind item" serve? If the item true, it is media's responsibility to report it, without equivocation, without resort to innuendo.

If the item is true but cannot find print in the news pages because it involves the private lives of public figures, or because no public interest is served by publishing it, then printing it -- whether in the form of news or a blind item -- breaches the ethics of journalism.

If it is written as a blind item because its truth cannot as yet be verified, then it is pure laziness to print the rumor and pass it off as a newspaper item, instead of getting one's hands dirty trying to get confirmation.

Newspapers demand the guarantees of press freedom. But every day, they are proving that they do not need those guarantees, because they skirt responsibility for their statements simply by resorting to the blind item, for which there is no need to discover the truth, to strive for accuracy, or to bear the responsibility for, and consequences of their actions.

That, you must admit, is cowardice. No wonder no one has ever won the Pulitzer Prize for writing blind items.

Maning fires back

I suspect that if Maning Guanzon weren't an architect, he would have been in a profession that involved the use of his mouth (and his legendary temper) instead. He has the talent for coming up with the most quotable quotes, especially in response to the most ridiculous claims.

In response to the accusation of former Senator Sonny Osmena that the pieces of structural steel used at the CICC were leftovers from the South Reclamation Project, I remember he said: "Sus, Ginoo, intawn. Wa ma'y structural steel didto!"

Yesterday, to the claim of the Fire Marshall of Mandaue City that the fire sprinklers didn't work (without even asking for a demonstration of the sprinkler system), he fired back: "Dili man na mogana kung tan-awon lang. Dubduban na ug kayo, di kay siga-an sa mata."

Haha. So there you are. A fire sprinkler system wouldn't work if you just glare at it. Even, it would seem, if you had fire in your eyes like Maning Guanzon does.

Sprinklers at CDN

From SunStar today, a gracious editorial saluting the people and the moving spirit behind the success of the 12th Asean Summit, and an unexpected plug for this blog from Bong Wenceslao.

From CDN, an itch that needed to be scratched, nitpicking through a dubious story about the CICC's sprinkler system. Sorry, no link here. Maybe CDN was too ashamed to post the story online. Bottom line: Can a sprinkler system be tested just by looking at the spouts? Apparently, CDN thought so, considering the prominence they attached to the story in print.

Oh, well, old habits die hard. Especially, I heard, at CDN. But no, don't get me started on editors there. Because while I have enough stories to fill this blog for the rest of the year, we should keep this blog PG-13.

Suffice it to say that the new CDN offices at the North Reclamation Area have an extremely efficient sprinkler system. Sometime early this year, after they moved in, strong rains gushed through their roof, and damaged the computer of their former reporter, Kathy Navarro. I'm not making this up. The Inquirer admitted as much. See a previous blog entry.

So I guess CDN is the expert on sprinkler systems.

Post-summit accounting for journalists

Editorials and columns have called for a "post-summit" accounting of expenses incurred by the government during preparations for the 12th Asean Summit.

In today's editorial, SunStar said that "summit organizers and others that used public funds, from line agencies to the Capitol to the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu, will now have to make a public accounting, tedious and painful (though) the task maybe."

Without their having to say it, that is what the law requires, and what the public can expect.

The people, however, are entitled to more than an accounting of funds. Journalists, commentators and opinion makers, too, are accountable to the public for every word they say or write. The business of informing the public, after all, is imbued with the highest public interest.

Lest the media be accused of double standards, therefore, an accounting should be made of the following claims:

1. The CICC was finished ahead of the original dates of the summit. All opinion makers who said it wouldn't be should account for their statements.

2. The roof of the CICC did not fall on the heads of the Asean Summit delegates, contrary to the fears of the late great Max Soliven.

3. The airconditioning at the CICC did not pose any problems as it was installed, completed and running well ahead, even of the original summit dates. Mr. Leo Lastimosa, therefore, should account for his column on the matter. In fact, the common complaint during the summit was that the airconditioning was too cold.

4. Contrary to the claim of Mr. Lastimosa that not one of the Asean ministers would ever set foot ("di makataak") on the CICC, all of the heads of state of the Asean countries and dialogue partners, including their foreign ministers, came to the CICC, and made good use of its facilities.

5. On the whole, the Asean Summit hosting was a success, and even made us proud to be Cebuanos. The doomsayers should account for their dire predictions and their worst unanswered prayers.

"Cuentas claras preservan la amistad". To be entitled to the public trust, the media should also do some post-summit accounting.

Journalism is not for crybabies

Personally, we've been witness to so-called journalists who couldn't take as much as they could give. Columnists, commentators and opinion makers who cry "foul" when news sources react with equal force to their bludgeonings. So-called "journalists" who would fry us all but themselves can't take the heat that cooking basically entails.

Today, Jerry Tundag of The Freeman, in another searing column, calls the "class suit" filed by journalists against the First Gentleman (in reaction to a series of libel suits the latter filed against journalists), a "black eye" on journalism, one that is undoubtedly self-inflicted.

Jerry is essentially saying: If you can't stand the heat, consider doing the laundry instead.

Thank you, Jerry. You've expressed so eloquently the precise sentiment that moves this blog.