Many lifetime members, including the legitimate media practitioners of the National Press Club of the Philippines are sad these days.
You know the reason why? It’s because the ticket of officers comprising of the Good Guys have lost to those who were accused of allegedly stealing the multi-million mural made by Philippines’ national artist Vicente Manansala.
All the legit and honest mediamen from the well-respected publications in Metro Manila have expressed frustrations over the defeat. Despite the droves of pro-reform lifetime and regular members who came in to vote against the opposition group, it wasn’t too much to hurdle the burden of winning the election contest.
Again, I’ll say this. In any election, money always change hands. At this stage when most of the media practitioners are not just getting reasonable salaries from their employers, with others just relying on a freelance piecemeal basis, you cannot be certain about their vulnerability to the sinister offers from the other group. And who wouldn’t be tempted to do just that, knowing that most of them are in need of money for transportation and meal allowances. These benefits are not accorded in some publications.
From the media organization where I came from, my colleagues were always hankering that someday those at the top would realize that reporters need allowances when they go to their beats. And it’s not surprising when I hear that some mediamen just take bribes, and forget about the Journalism Code of Ethics.
I wouldn’t be surprised, too, why the regular members from the bad guys who run the three fly-by-night tabloids at the Bureau of Customs, have won the NPC election. What the publishers and editors of these tabloids did was to accredit all their regular staff, correspondents and stringers so that they could become regular members of the National Press Club. All one has to do is to produce three published articles and with the endorsement of the publisher and a regular member from the NPC, the membership committee doesn’t have a choice but to register the new members, provided they pay their membership dues.
Now, Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Mr. Neal Cruz was perhaps uninformed about this. And there is now way you can clean up the NPC list of undesirable members considering that they are paying their membership dues to the Club. The membership dues are what the NPC needs for its survival.
All the regular members could expect from the new set of officers is that reforms must be instituted at the NPC. From what it looks as if the NPC’s former image and glory are being tarnished because of these shenanigans and lousy management from those who are after to protect their interests at the customs bureau rather than the media industry in general.