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PROPAGANDA
is in bad repute, it has been so for a long time. Thanks
to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Lenin, principally,
it has also taken on a sinister ring.
Adolf
Hitler: “In the skillful and sustained use of propaganda
one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an
extremely wretched life as paradise.” This justified
Winston Churchill in saying that “a modern dictator with
the resources of science at his disposal can easily lead
the public on from day to day, destroying all persistency
of thought and aim, so that memory is blurred by the
multiplicity of daily news and judgment baffled by its
perversion.”
Joseph
Goebbels: “Propaganda has only one object: To conquer the
masses. Every means that furthers this aim is good, every
means that hinders it is bad.”
Lenin:
“The propagandist operates chiefly by the means of the
printed word, the agitator operates with the living
[spoken word].”
No modern
writer had a good word for propaganda, although Edward S.
Herman defined propaganda “their” lies and public
information “our lies.”
Management
guru Peter F. Drucker warns that the real danger of total
propaganda is not that it will be believed but that
nothing will be believed, breeding not fanatics but
cynics.
But our
history as a free people began with the Propaganda
Movement. Through its organ, La Solidaridad,
founded and first edited by the “wild and bohemian,”
according to Austrian Craig, until Marcelo Hilario del
Pilar took over as editor, the aim was to enlighten rather
than deceive the oppressed Indios. In this sense, the
Propaganda had an exalted origin in the Catholic Church’s
Propaganda Fide.
From the
Soli’s roster of writers, which included Jose Rizal,
Antonio Luna and Mariano Ponce, Marcelo del Pilar, who
used Plaridel as his pen-name, stood out as the icon of
Filipino journalists. The UP communication department
instituted the Plaridel prize for outstanding journalism.
Plaridel, the newest organization of journalists, has put
up a Plaridel corner through the auspices of former Manila
Mayor Lito Atienza—now supported by Mayor Alfredo Lim—and
is commemorating today the 159th birthday of Marcelo del
Pilar in proper ceremonies.
His
editorship of Soli must be the reason Plaridel has
become the icon of Filipino journalists, who take pride
and at the same time good-naturedly lament their
precarious lives. That he was reduced to scrounging for
cigarette butts in Barcelona is probably apocryphal, but
that he died of tuberculosis in
Madrid
and buried in a pauper’s grave is true. A good number of
journalists still smooch cigarettes, drinks and meals, but
this is more in keeping with a “tradition” rather than a
mark of abject penury. It’s just not in character for a
journalist to admit leading a comfortable life—their main
crime, as the joke goes, is “unexplained poverty”—as it’s
characteristic for some businessmen to complain of hard
times even when business is good. That’s probably a
defense against favor-seekers and a certain type of media
people, as they’re now called.
Whatever.
What’s
relevant today is that among the far-reaching reforms
advocated by La Solidaridad was freedom of the
press. It came out in economical size of 12 pages so it
could be smuggled to courageous subscribers in
Manila.
The Soli lasted for six years, considered by Rizal
as veering too much on assimilation with Spain as it
argued for representation in the Spanish Cortez. By this
time, revolution was “in the air.” This doesn’t
necessarily mean that Soli failed in its mission:
It proved beyond doubt that reasoned discourse for reforms
in the colonial society was impossible.
The thrust
of the Soli was given as the reason between the
“rift” between Rizal and Plaridel, but subsequent events
revealed the misunderstanding. Del Pilar’s relatives were
involved in the Katipunan: He could be protecting them by
his stance. Misunderstandings are not unusual among
comrades in a common cause, but in the case of Rizal and
Plaridel, these were muted, as evidenced by the letter
Rizal sent to the premier propagandist: “I considered that
in the party it was very necessary that there be unity,
and inasmuch as you are on top and I also have my ideas,
it was better to leave you alone to direct the policy as
you understand it, and for me not to meddle in it. This
has two advantages; it leaves both of us at liberty, and
increases your prestige, which is very necessary, for men
of prestige are needed in our country.”
There may
be an ironic element in the letter, but there is no doubt
about the mutual respect that the two heroes had for each
other.
‘Why
haven’t we a hundred Plaridels?’
Those were
Rizal’s words when he first read Plaridel who quickly
became the moving force among the Filipinos in exile. He
wrote in Spanish for Soli was in Spanish, but he
had gone to Spain to escape the fate in store for Dolores
Manapat, the penname he used for the inflammatory and
blasphemous pamphlet Dasalan at Toksohan (“Praying
and Bantering!). Where Francisco Balagtas used allegory,
del Pilar used savage satire—and therefore more
subversively because it was in the native language. Del
Pilar was one ilustrado who was accessible to his
countrymen. Indeed, as has been observed before,
Revolution speaks in the native language.
Dasalan at
Toksohan
is a litany of the abuses of the frailocracy, identified
by many Indios as the real power in the country—and by
extension in Spain, despite its liberal interludes. In
Noli Me Tangere, Rizal dramatized the reality in the
chapter entitled, “Who Rules in San Diego?” In Dasalan,
Dolores Mapanta got to the point: The sign of the cross
was the sign of heads or tails, praying for deliverance
from the friar who stood on the corpses of the people in
the name of Silver of the white legs and blue spirit.
Amen.
Addressed
as “amain”—a pun on father and friar—the “prayer” to the
friar follows, “we curse your name, let us be far from
your avarice, and your neck be slashed on earth as it is
in heaven…” Then follows the Ten Commandments of the
Fraile:
1.
Worship
the fraile above all.
2.
Pay your
debts to him.
3.
Worship
the fraile on Sundays and fiestas.
4.
Hock
yourself in order to bury your father and mother.
5.
Do not die
if you have no money for burial.
6.
Do not
covet the friar’s wife.
7.
Do not
share in stealing.
8.
Do not
accuse the friar even if you have to lie.
9.
Do not
deny the friar your wife.
10.
Do not
keep what is yours.
The long
and short of the commandments is that the Fraile is above
all and you must surrender to him your pride and wealth.
Addendum:
Respect, fear and despise the Fraile.
(I once
wrote Sermon on the Amount for a Gridiron skit, but it was
directed against politicians—justifiably a favorite target
of journalists—not at any religious group or organization,
for these days an invocation of “faith” in political
matters is sacrosanct, beyond criticism. In Plaridel’s
time cant was cant, whatever its disguises.)
Can’t we
have a hundred Plaridels?
IT’S just
my suspicion, of course, but I think that when Rizal asked
why the country, or at least, the Filipino colony in
Spain, couldn’t have a hundred Plaridels, he did not
expect an answer. But for all the carousing and tiffs
among the Indios Bravos, they nevertheless contributed
significantly to the awakening of a people in bondage. For
that matter, to the question of “Can’t we?” the answer is
that there are easily a hundred Plaridels, except that not
a few of them have either died (been killed) or
disappeared.
The
propagandists wrote from the safety of Barcelona and
Madrid, but not without risk to their relatives, friends
and sympathizers. When they came back to the home country,
some of them were executed like Rizal or tortured like
Antonio Luna. There is always a price for advocacy, as
much as now as then.
Our
nameless, unsung Plaridels plied their trade in this
country under more dangerous circumstances. “Plied their
trade” is an arresting phrase, for now, in keeping with
modern progress, journalists get a salary or an emolument
for their reportage and commentary. They do not have to
crusade, like the Propagandists, for freedom of the press
so long as they don’t mind the risk of exercising it too
freely.
In a way,
Plaridel and the rest had an easier time, for the enemy
was clear: The frailocracy with its obscurantism,
stranglehold on government, its avarice and abuses. The
irony is if any journalist today wrote about such things,
he will soon find himself in the streets. For obscurantism
today has an army and a police force.
The
demands of commerce also challenges a free press, for
while commerce depends on communication like any other
endeavor, image has an impact on the profit margin. The
mission of the media, as the press is now called, is to
keep its head above the water, unless it’s undertaken on a
temporary or contingent basis.
Walter
Lippmann, the epitome of the American pundit, wrote that
the highest law of journalism was to tell the truth and
shame the devil, but he also said that journalism is the
last refuge of the vaguely talented. This is not a
contradiction so long as talent is recognized, even if it
is vague.
But after
Lippmann, Richard J, Barnet observed in his book, Roots
of War: “A correspondent indiscreet enough to use
honest, intemperate language,will lose ‘access’ to
officials, which is much like a surgeon losing a knife.”
It is also
true that what someone doesn’t want published is
journalism, all else is publicity.
What is
‘publicity’?
PUBLICITY
is not propaganda in the usual sense but something that is
a part of modern life. It’s said that any publicity is
good publicity and the only bad publicity is no publicity.
In The
Penalty of Leadership, Theodore MacManus wrote, “In
every field of human endeavor, he that is first must
perpetually live in the white light of publicity.”
Corporations, celebrities, and just about everybody who
could afford it, crave for publicity. In the 18th century,
Samuel Johnson, so wrote Boswell, would rather be attacked
than unnoticed. “For the worst thing you can do to an
author,” said Johnson, “is to be silent as to his works.
An assault upon a town is a bad thing, but starving it is
still worse.”
Journalists will always try to discriminate between
journalism (“hard news”) and publicity, but success will,
like beauty, be “in the eyes of the beholder.” The vast
amount of newspaper space (though editors will still tell
you about “space limitations”), air and TV time creates an
urgent need for a “journalism-related,
communication-related” cousin: The publicist. The
competition for space-time has made him a crucial
participant in the “making” of “news” and “commentary.”
While it
remains true that the journalist’s duty is to discriminate
between news and publicity, truth and falsehood, his is
not the sole responsibility but also the audience which is
confronted daily with an overload of information, whether
it’s news, entertainment or plain trash.
Plaridel
and his fellow propagandists enlightened the oppressed.
The Plaridels of today are often challenged “educators”
because they depend on an already educated audience that
on its own can discriminate between journalism and
publicity or propaganda.
“You can’t
fool people, at least not for long. You can create
excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all
kinds of press, and you can throw a little hyperbole. But
if you can’t deliver the goods, people will eventually
catch on.”
Those
words by Donald Trump, the arch self-publicist, offer some
hope that in the end Plaridel in our time will prevail.
Amen. |
