The Yellow Ministry of DIS-Information

Richard James Mendoza
July 12, 2010



A “Ministry of Information” is a ministry in a parliamentarian government which is tasked to control the flow of information being shown to the public. The same can be said to ABS-CBN, GMA7, Inquirer and other similar entities that are owned by the oligarchy. These are also the same entities that were shut down during the Marcos administration but were practically given away from free when Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency.

During the first Aquino regime, most of these publications reported nothing but praises for the incumbent. Opposing views were almost unheard of. It can be remembered that during this period, an opposition broadsheet was shut down and a book entitled “Sainthood Postponed” was deshelved from bookstores. It is also on record that that a certain journalist was sued by Corazon Aquino for libel when he accused her of “hiding under the bed” during the coup.

I cannot claim to remember the coverage of the yellows during the Ramos administration but I cannot forget the coverage that they did during the Estrada administration. They were demonizing him up until his last minute of his short-lived term. Instead of reporting about his achievement of an economic turnaround during the Asian Financial Crisis and other items of national interest, they focused on his personal issues that did not really matter. An example is his reported mansions, the so-called “Boracay Mansion’ being the most famous. Another example is the so-called “Jose Velarde account” which is purportedly owned by President Estrada when it is in fact owned by businessman Jaime Dichaves.

Like vultures feasting on a rotting corpse, the yellow media kept on demonizing Estrada even after the Sandiganbayan show trials. I can say with certainty that the Sandiganbayan trials were nothing but show trials because it is well known that Estrada was already convicted even before the verdict was formally handed. And they continue to defame him by mentioning his verdict in the show trials in almost every item about President Estrada. When Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was illegally sworn in as president, the yellow media perfumed the illegitimate president with nothing but praises but started backtracking when various scandals and scams started to show up, most notably the “Hello Garci” scandal. Although they backtracked, so to speak, they still treated her with a kid’s glove.

The yellow’s stench started to spread when they presented a music video of BSA III in an obvious attempt at pre-election campaigning. It can be considered as worse than Manny Villar’s ads shown sometime before. They were also covering up the faults of COMELEC and SMARTMATIC (or as they call it, SMARTMAGIC) when the evidences started to appear. There is a saying that goes around like this: “None are blind as those who do not want to see”. And they were just like that when it came to electoral fraud; either deliberately ignoring it or twisting the facts.

Now that BSA III is President (supposedly), the yellow media will go back to the same tactics that they used during the first Aquino regime. They are going to spray cheap perfume to a drag queen or in this case, an unhatched egg. Then the fragrance will eventually be worn off by the filth that has come with his illegal presidency.

The real war is not the exchange of gunfire but the battle between mainstream information and alternate viewpoints.