Imbestigador's Theatrical Hysterics

I was merely staring at my computer’s blank screen and didn’t know what to write about. Not until my housemate switched the television on and I saw Mike Enriquez’s face in Imbestigador. It is not actually the whole being or the personality of Mike Enriquez that I don’t like. Perhaps it is the sarcasm in his not-so-modulated voice that irritates me the most. It really is nothing personal. This is just an opinion of a person who watches his show. More so, I don’t appreciate the excesses that his show commits: violation of the Journalists’ Code of Ethics with regards to the use of hidden camera, entrapment of a suspect with the camera on and the way it meddles with personal affairs.

It saddens me how quality Journalism seemed to have deteriorated in the passage of years. The past decades have paved the way for a “bloodier” media. It looks as if Imbestigador tends to train its audience to crave and look for blood in every news story. While it is true that conflict is an important element of a news story, Imbestigador perpetrating it is another issue. The show sensationalizes even the smallest matter there is on a case. More so, there seem to be a conflict of interest because it doesn’t know where to draw the line between its role as a program and its portrayal as an authority or a “Sumbungan ng Bayan”. I always hear people saying, “A suspect is innocent until proven guilty”. But due to the established power of the program to its viewers, everything, from a suspect’s entrapment to his trial is like theatrical hysterics. Everyone wants to watch and observe every movement of those involved. Like what we have discussed in one of my subjects, sometimes, news-oriented TV shows tend to push “trial by publicity”… And that’s exactly what Mike Enriquez’s program is doing.