PRESIDENTIAL aversion to untrammeled dialogue with the international press came to a head on Thursday when Malacañang aborted a scheduled press conference with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap).

The scrapping of what would have been a free-wheeling encounter with Focap plunged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s often hostile relations with the media to its lowest depth in her elected presidency since 2005.

The cancellation broke precedent in that President Ferdinand Marcos did not commit the foolish act to provoke a rupture with the Manila-based foreign media at the height of his dictatorship.

The scrapping of the dialogue heightened the perception among the Philippine media, both foreign and domestic, that Ms Arroyo has become the most inaccessible of all post-1986 Filipino presidents, following the reinstatement of democracy in the wake of the popular overthrow of the Marcos regime.

There has been some bad blood between Ms Arroyo and Focap, let alone with the unfriendly sectors of the press, against which the administration has been waging a vendetta.

The rupture with Focap flared over the impasse provoked by the condition laid down by Malacañang that the interaction should exclude “political questions.”

In a letter to Press Secretary Jesus Dureza on Sept. 30, Focap president Jason Gutierrez wrote that the Focap board and many of its members “were dismayed when we learned that the President will not entertain political questions.”

Focap requested Ms Arroyo to reconsider the decision and “allow a free-flowing interaction.” It protested that its members “strongly object to any form of media management, prior restraint or censorship.”

Focap has invited Ms Arroyo to a luncheon it organizes in October each year, but she has skipped the event for the past two years, during which her relationship with the media deteriorated sharply.

In an initial meeting with the Focap board, Press Undersecretary Martin Crisostomo asked that questions be given to Ms Arroyo beforehand for vetting.

Focap rejected the demand, saying, “First of all, we don’t know what questions our members will ask because they have their own stories to follow up … and we wanted a free flow of interaction with the President.”

Goebbels-like propaganda

In reality, there’s no way in a free press conference to control follow-up questions. These questions acquire a life of their own. Crisostomo told Gutierrez that Ms Arroyo “wanted to talk about the economy and would not answer political questions.” Nothing could be more amateurish.

Dureza said the preparation for the Oct. 2 roundtable hinged on economic issues given the Wall Street fiscal crisis that “necessitates focus on the economy and other economic issues.”

The Palace demand clearly smacks of rigging the agenda of the exchange and allowing the President to control discussion of issues. It reduces the exchange into a presidential monologue, in which she dominates the choice of issues to be highlighted and excluded.

Focap did not take long to realize that the exchange would be no more than a farce, in which the journalists would be manipulated to promote Ms Arroyo’s self-serving agenda.

This is not the essence of a democratic exchange of ideas, carried out under conditions of pre-censorship and prior restraint.

It becomes a Goebbels-like propaganda format for Nazism. Focap could have fallen into a propaganda trap that would legitimize the priorities of the administration. The public is better served without having a counterfeit dialogue between Focap and the administration.

The exclusion of the political issues from the exchange and the sole focus on the economy present the distorted scope of public issues and propagates the false notion that economic and political issues are separate and mutually exclusive. Economic and political issues shade into each other. Any exchange that separates these disciplines project a false and misleading reality.

There are issues tied to the economy and they include issues of governance and corruption, hence political questions.

The administration is allergic to these issues which are hard to defend. This is the reason it seeks to put blinders to our eyes.

The focus on the economy is not going to help the administration maintain stability and ensure the safe passage of the President until it serves out its term in 2010.

The current financial turmoil that is increasingly engulfing the global financial system can only highlight the downside of the Philippine economy. She cannot talk anymore about high growth rates in the midst of a global economic downturn.

The issue that faces her is not about growth but how the political leadership can survive the financial crisis.

Restricting the freedom of media in presenting critical issues has been the administration’s stock answer to political crisis that has rocked it since 2005 following the explosion of the Garcillano tape scandal in the 2004 presidential election.

Ms Arroyo has stonewalled behind the bunker and took on the media to protect it from bad news.

Self-defeating petulance

In July 2005, Ms Arroyo launched a media blitz to counter the fallout of the Garcillano tape scandal. The blitz started on the wrong foot.

The press secretary limited the rare Palace press conference to Malacañang reporters, hoping that he could manipulate them more easily. It excluded Focap and limited questioning to friendly reporters.

Although then Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye assured that the President would meet the Palace press corps once a month, he allowed only 10 reporters to ask questions.

The press briefings were stage-managed in such a way that Ms Arroyo monopolized the briefing with an overview followed by questions for only 25 minutes from selected reporters. Questions were vetted by Bunye.

The President granted occasional exclusive interviews to friendly journalists, a clear case of favoritism and news management.

As time went on and as political crisis mounted, Ms Arroyo increasingly became less accessible. On occasions she held press conferences, she would summarily cut short questions when reporters asked political issues or refused to answer them.

She would flare up with petulance. This approach led to the political isolation of the President. It proved to be self-defeating.

The standoff with Focap represents the eventual collapse of the blitz and the parochialism of news management.

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