This is becoming an all-out war versus Willie Revillame. The College of Mass Communication of the University of the Philippines have expressed its outrage on Revillame’s show on TV5 due to the incident involving an innocent six-year old made to dance a la “macho dancer” even as the boy was apparently in tears, perhaps in shame of what Revillame and his father asked him to do, all because of a monetary reward.We just hope that other communication schools around the country would come out with their stand on this issue.
The alumni have come up with a strongly worded statement and I am reprinting it in toto:
We, the alumni of UP College of Mass Communication, faculty, staff and students, CONDEMN the continued exploitation and abuse of children on television, the continued apathy of sponsors and media owners, and the outright insensitivity of television in the guise of entertainment, their hosts, writers, producers.
We are not here to teach our children that it is perfectly fine to take advantage of, exploit, use and abuse them just to be able to earn, without sweat, money from someone who disgustingly brandishes cold cash and material things, to entice audience and viewers, to taunt and laugh at those willing to be taunted and laughed at. We are not here to ALLOW advertisers, sponsors, media owners, to use US, the public and citizens, to enrich themselves by coming out with TRASH television.
Media should be accountable to the public and its citizens, not to the owners and their stakeholders. Success is measured not by the profits it has earned but by serving the public interest—which is to promote active citizenship through information, education and social integration.
Television audiences are continually being shown a “vast wasteland” of programming, and commercial broadcasting is in effect squandering the public’s airwaves, and we want to put a stop to that. We are aware that the Market Model in Media is what prevails in broadcast television, where advertisers provide most revenues for the networks, where the bottom line is always profits and where they look at the audience as mere consumers who should buy the products of the advertisers, instead of citizens who should be given quality television. We want to put a stop to that.
We therefore urge TV5 management to re-think their position on entertainment television, to take the high road and choose quality content over crass commercialism, all at the expense of the public.
We call on the advertisers of this show to pull out their ads immediately.
We call on the public to BOYCOTT the products of the sponsors who refuse to pull out of this show. The temerity of the host to say that those advertisers who pull out will “suffer” is proof that his supposed apology was not genuine and was made only as PR damage control.
We call on the public to be more vigilant both as an audience and as a consumer.
We call on appropriate agencies concerned (KBP, MTRCB, PANA, ADBOARD, DSWD, CHR) to not only slap the guilty parties on their wrists, but to make sure that media ethics and rules are strictly implemented, especially towards the protection of our children.
We adhere to the College’s vision of a society that is egalitarian, participative, and progressive through the development of media that is: Social responsible, critical, and vigilant; liberative and transformative; and Free and independent.
We will make noise and continue to make noise. ENOUGH is ENOUGH.
Source: Isah Red, Manila Standard Today
