[Filipinism Homepage] Political ads reflect the kind of leadership the candid...

[josephdream]

As the election campaign near its end, all hell breaks lose in Philippine politics as mudslinging and black propaganda fill up the media outlets.
   The recent fiasco was the press conference of Nanay Curing together with Manny Villar’s sisters.  Though this unfortunate conference received the flack of thousands of Filipinos, the publicists even sweetened and converted this into a political ad.
   The document of the Church “The Ethics of Advertising” should give us a clear idea on proper role     advertising gives the public:  “In doing so, the Church stresses the responsibility of media to contribute to the authentic, integral development of persons and to foster the well-being of society. The information provided by the media is at the service of the common good. Society has a right to information based on truth, freedom, justice and solidarity.”
   Regarding political advertising. it can make its contribution by informing people about the ideas and policy proposals of parties and candidates, including new candidates not previously known to the public.
   Negatively, political advertising can obstruct proposals and ideas. “This happens when, for example, the costs of advertising limit political competition to wealthy candidates or groups, or require that office-seekers compromise their integrity and independence by over-dependence on special interests for funds.”
   “Such obstruction of the democratic process also happens when, instead of being a vehicle for honest expositions of candidates’ views and records, political advertising seeks to distort the views and records of opponents and unjustly attacks their reputations. It happens when advertising appeals more to people’s emotions and base instincts — to selfishness, bias and hostility toward others, to racial and ethnic prejudice and the like — rather than to a reasoned sense of justice and the good of all.”
    We have witnessed how the poor, the children, and the elderly were used for the sake of creating sympathy votes for a candidate. What do these ads say about the values of the candidate running for the highest post of the land?
   Advertising should “respect the human person, his right duty to make a responsible choice, his interior freedom; all these goods would be violated if man’s lower inclinations were to be exploited, or his capacity to reflect and decide compromised.”
    That being said, we leave it to the public what kind of leader we will put to Malacanang since in just a short time, we have seen how they have manipulated and abused the voiceless to fit their own selfish ends.  The voting public should be aware of any manipulations done to them before things are too late and that we will spend another six years worse than all previous years we’ve spent suffering from the clutches of corrupt regimes.

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Posted By josephdream to Filipinism Homepage at 5/08/2010 03:49:00 PM

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