Confirmation

When it comes to prostitution, drug use, abuse of authority, and fiscal mismanagement, these are issues that have existed in the Philippines long before CNN and other networks made the decision to cover it, and airing that mess in order to change it for the better is what media is made to do. In this case, however, the media is part of the mess.

I won't question that such a killing is wrong. People are dead, and those responsible are protecting themselves from the consequences in any way they can. But an article from CNN Philippines recently covered the media massacre in Mindanao in a way that solidifies my stance against it. Having text in Tagalog from speakers more likely to use a dialect closer to Bisaya is similar to using Mandarin for speakers of Cantonese - there's enough of a difference there that one has to learn the other dialect to make oneself understood, or use English.

What I see is a global network that's counting on an unfamiliarity with the languages to present hearsay from witnesses, at least one of whom is himself in doubt, against a suspect who died in custody.

CNN has made its own self-congratulatory pieces and claims to virtue meaningless in the same way it has made its reporting incredible, and I am not interested in accepting the reality it wants to show.

(Now watch them try to disavow it by saying this is just a branch thing, and doesn't represent the network at large. *Edited to remove text that doesn't fit with* an issue too serious for levity.)