Exaggerations

Sa puro nin muro

Nagliwanag an altar

Asin sa samong atubang

Nagtindog an Pading Halangkaw

Binasa an Ebanghelio kan Aldaw:

“Sa ulo ng mga nagbabagang balita.

This Bikol poem titled “Ritwal” written by Bikol poet Frank Peñones, Jr. presents our disappointment from watching news TV nowadays.

At the tip of one’s fingertips, the screen lights up when he presses the machine’s button.  Then before the TV audience, the “high priest” stands and declares the reading of the “gospel of the day”: he starts reading the news.

Comparing news to the Daily Gospel spells the effectiveness of Peñones’s poem, perfectly mocking the reality how we the audience treat television with deference. But just as the audience considers news as gospel truth, Peñones’s reduces television to a ritualistic and routine endeavor, with both hosts and audience transformed into automatons.

And when the media high priest declares that what he has is “nagbabagang balita” (scorching hot news), the “ritual” is further reduced to exaggeration. It’s card-stacking and plain propaganda at its best.

It is tragic how television nowadays becomes the site of exaggerations of the real thing—and not as sensible avenue for critical thinking by the audience.

In particular, there is much pretense in how TV news anchors in this country convey information to the public.

Consider Mike Enriquez and Noli de Castro. These two—whom others now call institutions—tend to sensationalize every piece of information that their production team has prepared in the very manner they express it to the public.

First, Enriquez wins awards for his broadcasting style. I do not know why. But Mike Enriquez’s newscasting is pure exaggeration. He speaks so rapidly to the extent that it is only he who understands what he is saying. In a sense, you are rather only entertained—and not sensibly informed— by his presence.

In his every single appearance on news television, he seems to be eating his own words—but honestly, he sounds like a character in a comedy movie who rather mocks newscasting. More honestly now, he reminds me of Steve Carrell’s character in the Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty.

Enriquez should go back to his speech classes so he might as well observe slashes and double slashes when reading something. He needs to pause; and stop. So he can best be understood.

For his part, Noli de Castro has always sounded inflated all these years. In the poem stated earlier, Peñones is referring to Noli De Castro whose “Magandang Gabi, Bayan” augured well for the Filipino audience. And, well, as a consequence of his public identity, he became the country’s vice-president.

De Castro’s loud, imposing voice reading the country’s daily news gets our attention only because he reads the news with some kind of wild energy, making any serious item sound so utterly tragic and even a rather simple piece of information sounds very serious.

While it is good that he should project some verve, the right energy in reading out the information to the public, doing so in a pretentiously serious manner (as if it’s in critical condition) does not help the viewer much in sifting information for their own purpose.

The same thing is true in the case of other national newscasters including Ted Failon, Mel Tiangco and Korina Sanchez. What are they rushing for, anyway? Did the TV moguls ask them to read five or more news articles in 2 minutes or even less, so as to accommodate more advertisements in between their newscast? Okay.

When read by these newsmen, the daily news becomes so nerve-racking and tense. And upsetting. They may be tasked to heighten the public’s sense or awareness on social issues, but what they really do is to seem to always shock the audience even when the kind of information being relayed is otherwise lighthearted or even trivial.

Arnold Clavio, Vicky Morales, Paolo Bediones and others on primetime news TV can benefit from listening to how their forerunners really sound so ridiculous. They should not wait for the time that they themselves would be reading news at the rate of 1,000 words per minute only to rake ratings [when their time comes to be the leading news anchors]. But if they also do, by then they will have begun an era in which speed, not sensible information—is the mere yardstick of newscasting.

Can't they look to how news anchors over BBC, CNN or Australian TV appear poker-faced and sound composed even when reporting major news stories to the rest of the world? To these journalists, it is clear that their purpose is to simply convey information to the public without much sentiment so as to allow the audience to feel the thing—or sift the issue from the information—themselves. We can only admire how field reporters from across the world feeding news into big networks appear totally unruffled despite being situated in battlefields or calamity-stricken areas. 

Back in our country, with the way these news anchors race past each other—pataasan ng boses, making news and events appear that they matter even when they really don’t, it appears that TV networks only rally against each other to rake ratings for themselves.

The terms “News and Public Affairs” suck because all the networks care about is profit—each second on airtime is profit. It’s still the economics at the end of the day.