In the discussion of media corruption, there are two words necessitating an etymological and contextual scrutinies-first, the term media, and the second, corruption. Such looking up of the origins of these two apellations may give us a deconstructed and definitive clarity of what the fusion of the two, media and corruption, or media corruption, is all about.
Etymologically, the term media, has never lost the original Latin form of the word, the plural form of medium. This word puts an entity embodying it in between two worlds, while media itself is an independent world with her own systems and procedures. In the context of our subject today, and considering the most obsolete and most basic of all models of mass communication, the media is synonymous to the channel through which information are transmitted from an entity to another-which in the communication parlance, more often, we refer to as either sender or receiver.
In the world of mass communication, the media are classified into the print, broadcast, audio-visual, the internet, and other mode of channeling information-the term multimedia, despite it acquiring some age, never ceases to amaze me, much like how younger students are perpetually amazed by 3D graphics created on computers.
In the context of this lecture, and to streamline our focus, I contain my scope within the broadcast practices in Naga City, within which I was recently deeply involved due to my involvement in an advocacy against the Libmanan-Cabusao Dam Project which is feared to inundate my hometown Lupi in case the insistent proponents push through with it despite calls for local folks to stop its construction. Because of this project, I became a regular radio interviewee. There were days when it became routinely, eating my early mornings or late evenings, answering to attacks and even succumbing to attacking my so-called enemies-in-principles, either out of compulsion or utter anger and disgust. In this sense, large portion of my tale is confined within this extracting of an insight out of recollection of memories and experiences.
On the other hand, the other term, corruption, was taken from the Latin corrumpere, meaning to 'mar, bribe, or destroy.' The etymological attributes are blatant; they are too revealing if I may say, of the intervening and altering faculties that I wish to convey as the bastardizing agent in communication systems like the mass media. Simply, corruption is anything intentionally applied to the transfer of information such that the transfer could never be a perfect process, never a high-fidelity ferrying of data from one entity to another-from the sender to the receiver.
Contextually, again, corruption happens when information broadcasted over the radio never reaches the audience with optimum fidelity and clarity. This involves curbing of data, misinterpretations, dagdag-bawas, information black out, one entity favored over another entity, I'm sure you know them all. Corruption happens when the supposed fluidity in the process of mass communication-that is the process of communication from a source to a large audience via a channel, is marred by merchandizing, information buying or selling, loss of neutrality, et cetera, et cetera. Alarmingly, this is very much present and evident among radio stations airing news and public affairs programs. I am not accusing anyone; I am speaking of a fact.
We all should remember that in the world of communication, mass media, the press, is considered as the fourth estate participating in the check and balance in our state affairs. Again, it is something that is nothing new to all of us. And this is exactly the reason why we are supposed to protect mass media from corruption; the very same reason too why in the first place it is very vulnerable to corruption-because mass media is power. That small device called the microphone through which the voices of radio commentators are heard by thousands of listeners is a device that in the mornings becomes a channel of our social and political thinking. The misinformed will eventually say, iyo ano, no matter how shallow the views aired over popular stations. This problem could have been solved with proper education. There's the rub.
Vic Nierva blogs at http://aponihandiong.blogspot.com and supports the advocacy of http://lupikontradam.tk.