< hmmm... >

   Yesterday's siege at the Manila Peninsula left so many mediamen arrested and rounded up to Bicutan.  Their hands were tied with plastic straps and sent on over to a police station.  Media violence?

   Send me hate mail: I don't think so.

   Before anything else, the police had no right to cuff media practicioners with twist ties.  Heck, they didn't have any right to arrest a media practicioner, never mind that Magdalo members posture as mediamen.  But on the other side, just what are media practicioners doing in a sensitive military operation that involves gassing a hotel?

   I'm no lawyer, but I've been some degree of a journalist before: a bad one, at that.  I don't know what's worse: a "subjective journalist" without a Journalism degree like myself, or media practicioners with Journalism degrees who step over the line of prudence with cameras and tape recorders to get an exclusive.

   There's media violence: journalists who get abducted and/or killed for doing their jobs in the line of duty.  And then there's a violent media: the kind of media that shoves microphones and cameras to people, breaches security lines, all in the name of an "exclusive report."  From the standpoint of a viewer, I think it sucks: is it even "journalism?"

   I don't know: I'm not a journalist.