There’s a way to be well-informed
THE race for the country’s top national posts is on!
Between choosing from the 10 names for president, 9 for vice president and 64 for senators, and at the receiving end of the barrage of PR and propaganda in mainstream media and the disinformation and fake news being dished out daily in social media, will voters in Pangasinan enter their polling precincts on May 9, 2022 be well-informed?
Chances are they will be or be simply completely confused by what they’ve read, heard and seen about the candidates. With trolls and bloggers/vloggers in the payroll of candidates haranguing them daily with fake news, not a few voters will likely turn away frustrated, wondering why things are more complicated and stressful with technology.
Political campaigns in the 50s, 60s till the 80s were still fun. Friends and relatives were civil when discussing merits of opposing candidates. Today, many are at aghast how electoral campaigns have turned people into bullies, making enemies of friends, or be at the receiving end of personal insults and cusses.
The only way to gain quiet insights into candidates’ qualifications, experience and vision is to avoid political bloggers and vloggers in social media. They would be your most biased sources, adept at attack-collect, defend-collect system. In fact, voters can be more well-informed and enlightened by reading thoughts of credible, independent pundits in mainstream media, compare their notes and validate these with one’s own information gathered in the past.
A voter can still choose to be enlightened amid all the ruckus in social media. It’s a choice.
Gonzaga gone
IT was a bitter pill to swallow, so to speak. That was the lesson learned by Toni Gonzaga, the famed actress openly campaigning for the presidential bid of the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. On Feb. 9, Gonzaga resigned as host of ABS-CBN’s Pinoy Big Brother TV show. The news grabbed headlines as it caught the show biz world by surprise. Gone was Gonzaga’s 16-year hosting career of the top-rated blockbuster. Although Gonzaga gave no reason for her departure, it was obvious that she caved in to the netizens’ social media bashing of her impassioned endorsement of Rodante Marcoleta’s senatorial try during the Feb. 8 Marcos-Duterte campaign rally that she herself had hosted. Marcoleta was one of 70 representatives who voted to shoot down the ABS-CBN franchise renewal on July 10, 2020. It is generally known that ABS-CBN nurtured Gonzaga’s show biz career from Day One.
Another case of “biting the hand that feeds?”
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