Yan ang Pinoy

Embattled Arroyo refuses to quit (read my unofficial say in this page)

I blogged in about my choice of the 2012 Olympic host. London won the bidding war but shortly after that pandemonium and jubilation in Trafalgar Square, agony swept the country and fear was sowed across the world when the morning bombing ripped several locations of central London.

But my blog will not be regarding the vulnerability of Britain as admitted by its stunned officials, let alone the Philippines whose regard for terrorism is a more serious threat than what is going on right now. I am referring to that BBC News in thick bold letters above.

We have a stubborn President.

I admit it was January 2001 when I was with Zurich in Paseo de Roxas and with the invitation of my officemates which included my crush, I joined the rally in EDSA at 11pm with all the traffic Sir Joel has to endure in her Suzuki Samurai.

The rally was aimed to pressure then-President Joseph Ejercito Estrada to step down amid the scandal he was battling. It was then the Vice President Gloria Arroyo who wasn't a big fan of Estrada, and her allies try to pry Estrada away from his Presidential chair in Malacanang. I was proud then, joining the thousands of rally goers and "usyoseros" in this history in the making.

Fast forward 2005 and the ghost of People Power returned. While Edsa Tres went pffft, it has been the appetite of Filipinos to resort to rule of mob when expressing discontent. And who wouldn't resort to it if Congressmen and Senators argue endlessly on the technicality of whether to show the film, hear the tape or not. Worse, they're late comers and overseas traveling circusmen.

There were clamors for separating Mindanao if Arroyo is removed. It becomes an interesting proposition especially that I am from Davao City. I will try another blog about that.

The Philippine press is sometimes stubborn too, eagerly focusing on the sensational issue rather than on the substance. Of course "real news" is there. If the bombing that took place in London happened in Manila or Makati or Quezon City, one staffwriter can easily create sidebar news instead of the more meaty, informative stuff.

Sample headlines would be like:
"Family of fifteen loses one sole breadwinner" story about a balut vendor who endured the second world war only to perish in a worthless death,

"Class valedictorian dreams of making it big" story about a bar topnotcher whose untiring efforts to save the tarsiers of Bohol killed while walking to buy daily necessities,

"'I want to be a nurse' -bomb victim" story about a promising college freshman with hopes to earning big bucks in UK whose quote was extracted from her diary last year.

The masses read it because it's interesting. So why concentrate on the mechanical "who-what-where-why" newswriting? They might say, "can you write something?". OK, I give up.

I wonder which servers INQ7.net or Philstar.com are hosted that with a surge in online traffic, they simply could not stand it and would resort to those plain text news generation. It was good they still provide it free for the cybervisitors to read news unlike the paying ones who buy the broadsheet from their 'suki' newsstand every morning. (Remember, Filipinos spend the third highest number of hours in reading, after the Indians and Chinese).

But they do earn from clicks, admit it. Woe to the advertisers whose fashionable, eye catching animated gifs and Flash presentations are obliterated just because they are hosted in a rickety infrastructure whose site can now only produce straight text and ads are no longer attractive. I can't remember BBC or CNN or FOX site brought down by heavy traffic. As for someone claiming to be leading in providing news online, this is a wake up call.