By Butch Galicia
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not intend to sound off a call for action or anything, for whatever purpose it may serve. Put simply, I am just practicing a typical typing drill to exercise my ten aging fingers.
It’s like “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” repeatedly pressed to perfection, until the erstwhile strong and sturdy hard-metal typewriter breaks down or until I got hungry, whichever comes first.
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Similarly, I remember that time when the teacher sent me to the blackboard to write “I will not copy my seatmate’s wrong test answers anymore” fifty times. At the 21st time, I gave up, and got red marks again.
Looking back, that grade school moment may have spurred me on to enter the field of media, for reasons that include having my belly filled.
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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Except for the fact that the sentence has all the letters of the English alphabet, it does not say much and is too vague so as to discern any other meaning from.
I bet the smart alecks are kind of still trying to dig into why a quick brown fox has to jump over a lazy dog.
Neither fox nor dog has time to do deeper thinking, to be creative and to imagine. So, why bother them?
I tried to. I also had nothing. It was worth the while, though. I got hungry.
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Trump vows to deport 3 million illegal immigrants. Strong temblor hits New Zealand. Apple demands widow get court order to access dead husband’s password. Duterte may suspend writ of habeas corpus. Hunger hits ME.
Oh, those? Except for the last one, the first four are totally unrelated headlines of news items published days or hours apart from each other.
Want to know what is going on? Ask either fox or dog.
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Excuse me! That is exactly what media – mainstream or social — dish out as news to people nowadays: a headline cloaked in sensational words, vague facts and incomplete stories, slanted tales that appeal to the emotions rather than to the intellect, propaganda and utterly biased narratives, and information that rarely makes sense and may be prime causes of indigestion and constipation.
Really? Have the days when media renders the day’s intelligence, the basis for readers and listeners to ably decide what action to take and make, gone to the dogs and foxes?
Seriously? Have the days when news media gives accurate, complete, detailed, fair, objective and highly interesting coverage and reportage, written or presented with conviction, honesty and sincerity, also gone to the dogs and foxes?
News content today seems to be oft-repeated but differently-worded, sometimes stale. If it is food, I’d rather go hungry.
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Big media network owners, who seek to establish wide political and economic clout internationally, have tried all these years to redefine the press and veer news away from its traditional distinction as a platform for people from which to shape smart and highly beneficial and productive choices.
They may have succeeded, when news media, in the 1980’s, suddenly gave rise to what was dubbed as “interpretative reporting” and “investigative journalism.”
While, in a sense, “interpretative reporting” and “investigative journalism” may have toppled dictatorships and cruel regimes, restored democratic rights and freedoms to people in erstwhile suppressed regions, brought back bankrupt governments to its feet, this kind of information sleuthing may have become passé today. Following the era of Mad’s ‘Spy vs Spy’, I haven’t read or heard of those terms since the turn of the millennium.
A Filipino media colleague once told me: These redefined forms of newsgathering and news-making have long passed its shelf life. In the Philippine setting, it was just like setting up a temporary Bureau of Plant Industry and a Bureau of Fisheries, to be disbanded after the planting and the fishing.
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Then there are the news media outlets that claim to be the people’s voice.
The captive audiences, in most cases, are people with no poise and people who do a lot of noise.
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Business, Anyone? Every time I send money to the Philippines, I check for the latest foreign exchange news. Then off I go to a bank or a remittance centre.
Notably, financial institutions add a few cents more than the media-published exchange rate when they sell currency and, inversely, deduct a few cents less when they exchange currency. Either way, I lose a quite sizable amount of either Canadian cents or Philippine pesos.
Not even those that advertise a higher currency exchange can guarantee a win for me.
One day, I told a teller: Sabi sa diyaryo, ito ang exchange rate ngayong araw.
She smiled and replied: Eh, ‘di magpapalit ka sa diyaryo.
End of story. There goes my pop and burger.
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So, history and destiny have lately sided with the Philippines’ Pambansang Kamao (National Fist) Manny Pacquiao and American business mogul Donald Trump.
What!!!! Change topic, please?
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The evening of November 12 was something to remember for Toronto sports fans.
The day before, Canada remembered its heroes who made the supreme sacrifice to keep their fellowmen free and safe in times of war and peace.
November 12 takes note of the 70th Anniversary of the Huskies, a Toronto-based hoops pro team that played in the 1946-1947 season of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), forerunner of the National Basketball Association.
According to Wikipedia, the team had a 22-38 win-loss record in its only season, and was disbanded in the summer of 1947.
On November 1, 1946, the Toronto Huskies hosted the first game in BAA league history, losing 68-66 to the New York Knickerbockers before an opening night crowd of 7,090.
Fast forward. Donning the retro blue and white uniform of the Huskies, the Toronto Raptors outplayed the spirited New York Knicks in the last quarter to notch a convincing 118-107 victory.
Even the Air Canada Centre’s hardcourt was redone to display the logo of the Toronto Huskies.
What a fitting, exciting and entertaining tribute.
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OMG! Are Blue Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista really going, going, ….?
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Let us practice some more. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. #####