None of our business, indeed

By Al S. Mendoza

 

TOKYO — I am here again covering the Tokyo Motor Show, now on its 43rd year.  This is my 20th year in the event, having first covered it in 1993.

Ah, how can I forego my chance to eat authentic sushi again, downing it always with sake?

Anyways, the talk of the town here is still about the raw between Korina Sanchez and Anderson Cooper.  The Japanese are as animated as we are.

Now this, the rule of thumb is, we don’t hit our colleagues.

Put in another way, we hit in private and praise in public.

If we can’t praise in public, we shut our mouths up.

Korina, one of the superstars of Philippine broadcasting, was recently in the news herself.

Again, it’s the newsmaker making the news herself.

It actually happens all the time.  Why, it’s the law of nature.  Almost.

Korina had lambasted Cooper for what Korina said was the broadcaster’s alleged inaccurate reporting on the Yolanda calamity.

Cooper didn’t take Korina’s tirades sitting down, in a manner of speaking.

“What does she know about Tacloban when she is not even here,” said Cooper of Korina.

There were retorts and counter-retorts.

In the end, it wasn’t a case of whether one is correct or not, of whether one is accurate or not.

In the end, what the people would remember was the tactlessness of it all, the stupidity of things.

No one’s correct here, absolutely, although in the beginning, the one’s at fault was Korina.

Why the hell did she question Cooper’s reporting?

Cooper was just only telling the truth about government’s ineptness in addressing the rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations in Tacloban.

Korina’s criticism might have some basis but she should have been the last person to do so — her husband, Mar Roxas, being the secretary of interior, the department that was tasked to oversee the relief operations.

Any angle you might view it, it would still look the same, always: Korina, in hitting Cooper, was defending the government, was defending her husband, Mar.

No sane journalist would have acted the way Korina did.

In short, it was a lose-lose situation for Korina, and a win-win stance for Cooper.

This is not in defense of Cooper but how can one fight a giant, such as CNN, the world’s No. 1 news channel.

Was Korina playing the role of David in the David versus Goliath classic?

But there was no such fight to begin with.  Cooper was just doing his job and for Korina to meddle with Cooper’s work was below the belt.  Plain and simple.

If Korina thought Cooper was acting stupid, she should have just allowed Cooper to wallow in his stupidity.

As the Yanks love to say it, “You don’t mess with my mess or you’ll get it in the neck yourself.

Thus, if Cooper had messed things up with his reporting, let him be.  That’s his life, anyways.  Let his bosses at CNN crack the whip.

In short, none of our business.

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