Yellowing journalism

By Fr. ROY CIMAGALA, roycimagala@gmail.com
October 10, 2010

EVERYONE is familiar with what is called “yellow journalism,” that kind that is screaming and sensationalistic, not averse to exaggerating things and even inventing and staging events to grab people’s attention.

Yellowing journalism is the process involved in making it. It’s a dynamic mix of many elements and factors, conditions and circumstances, multi-layered and multi-threaded, whose course is uncharted, like an adventure that gives suspense and excitement, except that it can end in a big destructive mess.

The media coverage of the current RH bill controversy reminds me of this yellowing journalism. All the ingredients seem to be present and made to stew. There’s passion and emotion, slogans and buzz words, myths and speculations. Biases and questionable ideologies are the driving forces.

If reason is ever used, it is made to serve the passions. Faith, that is supposed to guide reason, is considered Public Enemy Number One in what is supposed to be an objective pursuit for what is good for us. In fact, there’s a shrill cry for liberation from Church, faith, religion and the like.

This yellowing journalism is not associated with the tabloids. It affects more the broadsheets, the more standard and mainstream brand of journalism. They have become vulnerable because of certain journalistic requirements that have been neglected.

Most of the media practitioners, from publishers down to the reporters, do not know the relation between faith and reason, between religion and their work, the spiritual and material aspects of man, Church and state, etc.

These things are considered abstract and academic and are kept that way, with no effort to convert them into something concrete and practical. If ever they have to acknowledge these values, it’s mainly just lip service, for photo-ops, and not much more.

Those who still care about their faith are ashamed to show it, let alone, to shape and define the character of their work and their life. So they become easy target to atheistic and agnostic sophistries that are often stuffed with immediate practical benefits.

In fact, they usually frame issues like the RH Bill within a strictly economic or social point of view, as if problems are solved only in these levels. Purely human means are flaunted as our authentic savior. This is the tyranny of this kind of attitude. It shuts out the inputs of faith.

Besides, they cite the scandals in the Church as reason to discredit the faith, a clear example of throwing the baby out with the bath water. As if there are no scandals in other places, forgetting we are all humans, with our own share of shortcomings irrespective of where we are placed.

Remember that there was a Judas among the apostles. And Judases can spring up anywhere anytime. That’s always a possibility, given our weakened human condition.

Our attitude should rather be to help one another, and be objective in distinguishing between the truths involved in an issue, derived from faith and our human sciences, and the personalities involved, between the office and the occupant, between the doctrine and the way it is lived.

Faith-based morality is placed at the margins, since nowadays it seems to be the fad to deem morality to be nothing other than a result of economic, social, political and other human and earthly considerations. Sorry, but with this attitude, we are in deepening trouble. We won’t be getting nowhere.

Since faith requires grace, then effort, often torturous, and even sacrifice, it’s no surprise it many times loses to the practicality of reason unburdened by faith.

What aggravates this situation is the phenomenon of strange creatures who call themselves Catholics only to go against the Catholic faith. Their Catholicism is self-produced, self-arrogated and self-inflicted. They go around proudly proclaiming they are Catholics for Choice.

These, I think, are the deadly elements present in yellowing journalism. They thrive in an environment stirred by emotions and passions, with reason playing second fiddle. Faith is ridiculed and ostracized. The crisis is at bottom a question of faith in relation to our earthly affairs.

Worsening things is the emerging reality that much of what we see in the press today regarding the RH Bill seems to be orchestrated by a tremendous machinery of public relation outfits, clearly funded by moneyed international groups and helped by their local lackeys, the NGOs, etc. The fingerprints are all over.