A CERES of Unfortunate Events

I saw what you did there, Ceres Doyo, and you complete me.

Ceres Doyo, I am starting to enjoy reading the Philippine Daily Inquirer now because of you. You caught my attention with your French headline. I have long been a fan of Charlie Hebdo. While I cannot with all honesty call such esteemed and heroic journalists my friends, I have had the honor of meeting a number of them over a weekend symposium years back in Paris. I was among the many heartbroken and outraged with the terrorist attack on them last January. The men and women of Charlie Hebdo are very kind and gracious human beings and true, blue cutting edge and courageous journalists. When I saw your column “Je Suis Ebanghelista,” I must say that my interest was piqued.

You may be wondering what my admiration for the Charlie Hebdo journalists has to do with the enjoyment I have reading your columns and articles. You help me exercise my “journalistic ethics” muscles. I get to see everything I love about Charlie Hebdo by seeing how much their sterling ethics shine by your very lack of the same. While the men and women of Charlie Hebdo check their sources and give a forum for all sides, even the sides they find distasteful, you do not. You love rumors. You swim in them. You don’t even pretend to be impartial. A quick search with your name, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Iglesia ni Cristo turned up a number of columns and articles all saying the same thing. You just don’t like the INC. And you only interview people, like yourself, who also do not like the INC.

Perhaps, it is your training to be a nun. You did make mention of how distasteful you find what you claim are their attacks on the Catholic Church, but if their “attacks” are on their television station then they are all just words. Discussions about theology and god or gods, or whatever, do not a threat make. You cannot make yourself out to be the hero that the Charlie Hebdo journalists are. They risk life and soul. You just sell yours. This religion you dislike so much may have its own peculiarities that I as well may not agree with. But for you to dwell on all these dark and insidious plots and then interview only their ex-members (like Florida and Samson) or their dissatisfied members who claim to be the “thinking ones” but never giving this religion even a single interview, now this sounds suspicious.

You work for the same PDI that has its own boy in the presidential political race. This same racehorse supported by the PDI, this—how do you call it in the Philippines—“trapo” candidate also apparently has something against the same religion that you obviously despise, this Iglesia ni Cristo. So you are hitting two birds with one stone. If I remember my Bible correctly, Jesus once said that a person cannot serve two masters. Obviously, he didn’t know you when he said that. Or is it the other way around? Perhaps you don’t know him. On one side, you get to prostitute yourself serving your bosses’ political favors. On the other, you get to serve your own basest instincts and release your anger on a competing religion that you feel threatens your own. Your lack of ethical media standards lures me to keep reading the PDI perhaps the same way others may be lured by cheap soft porn tabloids. You complete me. I get to see in you everything that I, as an ethical journalist, do not want to become.