Anchorman Ted Failon is in
legal trouble after trying to
cover up his wife's (eventual-
ly successful) suicide attempt.After the initial emotional impact of seeing your wife lying critically injured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the bathroom... after getting her bundled up and rushed to the nearest hospital in an attempt to save her life... and as you are one of the country's more recognizable faces and well-liked personalities — anchorman for the national nightly news... I suppose that it wouldn't be unthinkable that the next step you take is to try to keep people from finding out about your wife's... your family's situation.
Unfortunately, gunshot wounds are a police matter. When ABS-CBN News Anchor Ted Failon failed to contact the police about this tragedy... when he got his relatives and household staff to clean up the bathroom — the crime scene... when his wife subsequently died a few hours later... Mr. Failon's day found a way to literally add insult to injury as everybody wound up in a jail cell, held for obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence.
Poor guy. That's a rough thing to deal with. And in a way, Mr. Failon was right in his thinking: The Filipino media is a ghastly wolfpack fixated on the lives of the rich and famous, and this story was a buffalo-sized chunk of red meat for them: There was two hours of live coverage on the networks tonight.
It goes without saying that about two-thirds of the newshounds feast came from the actions of Mr. Failon himself. That he deserved it? No... not so much.
Oh, and p.s.: When you've got one of the country's most beloved journalists, champion of the little guy, foe of corruption, facing a tragedy of immense proportions — along with his grieving family — in custody, in a huge media spotlight, and you are the PNP (the police), do you make extra sure not to come across as brutal, callous, insensitive, and vindictive? Oh hell with that.
1 comment:
Of course... he was especially vocal about police corruption.
It's one of those instances where you have proven that some people aren't a tenth as intelligent as you give them credit for: Here the police have the guy in custody who is famous for saying that police are brutal and insensitive and what do the police do when all the cameras are focused on them? Go out of their way to prove the guy who says that police are brutal and insensitive right.
Seriously: That's polack-joke-level intelligence.
The problem with the police in The Philippines isn't that they are corrupt. It's that they don't give anything back to the public in return for their corruption. I wouldn't have a problem if they did that.
A corrupt police force that upholds the law, is courteous and maintains order and ensures domestic stability... that's Thailand (more or less). If nothing else, the Thai police at least make fair efforts at public relations to ensure that their being corrupt could be overlooked by the general population.
The Filipino police focrce simply seems to have no concept of the politics of public relations.
Post a Comment