PH gets barely passing score in media assessment 13-Dec-11, 3:54 PM | Nonoy Espina, InterAksyon.com The Philippine assessment, presented to journalists and journalism schools on Tuesday, is the fourth undertaken under the Asian Media Barometer, a project by Friedrich Eibert Stiftung and partners in participating countries that involves a series of “self-assessment exercise(s) based on criteria derived from international standards of media freedom.” The first three countries to undertake the assessment are India and Pakistan -- both in 2009 -- and Thailand last year. The 104-page Philippine report is the result of a two-day panel discussion in early October in Tagaytay to which 10 experts -- five each from media and civil society -- were invited to assess the media situation in the country based on 45 predetermined indicators, in turn clustered into four sectors, that they were asked to grade anonymously on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the best possible score. Overall, the Phili...

Fr. Bernas: Contraceptive devices are not 'anti-life' CANDICE MONTENEGRO, GMA News 09/26/2011 | 01:50 PM Influential Jesuit priest and constitutional lawyer Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ said that family planning as proposed in the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill is not necessarily "anti-life", putting him at odds with conservative Catholics who oppose the bill. In a column published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Monday, Bernas sought to clarify what being "anti-life" precisely means, for the term has been used "in the most pejorative way" in current RH bill debates. "It is used in the sense of being against existing life. Murder, in other words," he said. However, he said that in the currently toxic debate on contraceptives, "anti-life" could be construed to include people who do not want to add more human life to an already crowded population. He cited for example a married couple who decide to abstain from acts th...

DIRECT LINE By Boy Abunda (The Philippine Star) Updated September 02, 2011 12:00 AM A certain Mr. Pedroche wrote a letter to another broadsheet some months ago rebuking me on two major points. That I should not be talking on behalf, but to the LGBT Community that if one works hard he can be successful. And that my active participation in Ladlad is just in preparation for abundant politics suggesting that I am preparing for a political career using the fledgling partylist. Here is my answer to Mr. Pedroche en toto. Dear Mr. Pedroche, To say that where I am working (ABS-CBN) and where I went to school (Ateneo) are the very proofs that I was not discriminated is an uninformed statement. And to conclude that since I was accepted by the two institutions disqualifies me from talking on behalf of the LGBT Community is a lousy assessment. Please indulge me on the following. • I can do both — talk to and on behalf of Ladlad and the LGBT community because I have a voice and a life story that mos...

The 9/11 attacks as a literary watershed 04-Sep-11, 10:00 AM | Myriam Chaplain-Riou, Agence France-Presse PARIS - Ten years on, the dust from the twin towers hasn't finished settling on the literary world and continues to feed a growing body of fiction exploring the moral and physical loss the attacks left behind. Initially, few writers dared get too close to the horror that the entire world was able to imagine after watching the World Trade Center go down live on television. The first one to choose hyperrealism and attempt a description of the fateful moment itself -- the planes crashing, the fire, the panic, people jumping off the towers -- was Frederic Beigbeder. In "Windows on the World" (2003), the French author said he wanted to "tell what could not be told". "The only way to know what happened in that restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center's North tower on 11 September 2001 between 8:30 and 10:29 am... was to inve...

Danton Remoto: Questions for the heterosexual 20-Jul-11, 5:42 PM www.interaksyon.com Online news portal of TV5 Years ago I attended a seminar on gender issues organized by an international NGO. Some young journalists comprised the core of the participants. Well and good, I told myself, because the cliché holds true that, perhaps, hope lies among them. I still remember my legendary debates with the macho editors who used to splash photos of near-naked “prostitutes” (call them sex workers) and of raped housemaids on the front pages of the newspaper I used to work for. During one of the editorial meetings held every day, the fiercest among them, who looked like a bulldog, barked at me: “What are you complaining about? Their faces are shown on the evening news. Why can’t we show those pages on our front pages?” Since Bulldog must have forgotten his class on Ethics in Journalism, I reminded him that a newspaper is a public record. Surely, nobody tapes the evening news and runs them again ...

US military ready to repeal ban on gays www.gmanews.tv 07/22/2011 | 08:58 AM WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will announce on Friday that the U.S. military is ready to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces, the last major hurdle to formally ending the policy, U.S. officials said on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity. President Barack Obama last year signed a landmark law to allow for the repeal of the nearly 18-year-old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that forced gays to keep their sexual orientation secret in order to serve in the military. But Pentagon leaders first needed to certify that military readiness would not suffer as a result -- something that will now be done by new U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Admiral Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Once the Pentagon has signed off, Obama can certify the repeal -- fulfilling a 2008 campaign promise to end a policy that ...

COMMENTARY: Reflections of a gay seminarian 09-Jul-11, 2:15 PM | Danton Remoto www.interaksyon.com Online news portal of TV 5 Photo from www.priscasvoice.com The vilification of same-sex couples who had gone through commitment ceremonies a week ago led some bishops to make callous statements like “kadiri” and such. This is what we get for falling in love with whom we choose to love? This led me to dig into my email files. I found a letter sent to me by a seminarian a few years ago. He is gay and has found peace with his sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). Let me quote excerpts from his email. "Let me commend you for being a sober voice in the discourse on gay rights in the country," he starts. [Thank you, ahem]. "However, let me chastise you also for your statement on national TV that some priests know nothing about love. Well, let me tell you that priests also know and have experienced loving and being loved. There are honest and sensible priests around, un...