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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Flak and fluke

Flak and fluke

Published Jan 27, 2022 12:05 am

MEDIUM RARE

Jullie Y. Daza

After the noise and buzz over BBM’s nonappearance on a TV show, the flak was quickly followed by a fluke.

On TV 5’s Frontline newscast immediately after that no-show on GMA 7, netizens polled for their reactions to the day’s most newsy event (or nonevent) showed an uncanny 74 percent staying neutral, with the 26 percent minority almost evenly split between the naysayers and the yessirs. What does it mean? The majority are telling us the May elections aren’t deserving of their time and attention? They’re bored already?

An insider inside the BBM camp said, though not in so many words, that it was much ado about nothing. He stuck to his opinion that “it was the right political move not to be there.” Anyway, “the person from whom they hoped to get votes was not there, nor were his followers.”

If BBM did not show up, one other presidential candidate, Leody de Guzman, demanded to know why he was not invited. He implied, by asking, if the race was only for the rich. Thereafter, yet another presidentiable, Isko Moreno, declined to join his rivals in a show on DZRH. Why not, I asked Yorme, and he replied by text, “Delikadesa,” explaining that station manager Cesar Chavez was with his City Hall staff once upon a time and it would not do for him to be seen as enjoying an advantage over the others.

After the flak and the fluke, I sat down to watch BBM being grilled on DZRH for two hours last Tuesday by a panel of four guys in black and dark blue. A friend called to ask if I was watching because in her area, signals were jammed and she was out of the loop. An engineering accident or incident?

Nothing in the etiquette books or KBP rules says management and its anchors have the duty/responsibility to accommodate every Tom, Dick, and Harry in their programs, whether these are designed for entertainment or meant to catch the unprepared and the untelegenic. Likewise, there are no guidelines mandating that a guest should and must accept an invitation like it was a court summons or police warrant. The only exception is equal time to reply to an allegation or accusation.

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