Nick of Tingog.com renews his campaign to boycott the Manila Standard Today in light of its decision to reject Malu Fernandez’s resignation and keep her in its roster of writers. She resumed writing last Monday.
In his campaign, Nick implores everyone to boycott the Manila Standard Today, by not buying their paper or accessing their site.
While I vehemently condemn Malu Fernandez’s actions, and respect the sentiments of Nick and everybody else who have decided to join his campaign, I have decided not to join the boycott. I have several reasons.
First, I know that Manila Standard Today, and perhaps Malu, knows that any publicity is good publicity. By focusing on Malu Fernandez, people will invariably go back to its site. They will search for Malu Fernandez. They will read MST’s archives. Eventually, the call for a boycott might actually generate, albeit negative, enough interest on Manila Standard Today so that people will actually read on it some more.
And that utterly defeats the purpose of the boycott.
In fact, if you really want to bring an entity with an online presence down, you’d rather encourage everybody to browse every page of the website and leave them opened, all at the same time. A few thousand people doing that simultaneously would crash servers. You don’t even need to boycott them — their site won’t be there.
Second, one has to ask what will be achieved with this kind of boycott. Revenge? Justice? Moral ascendancy? If this actually works (in one of two ways, namely, Malu Fernandez does get fired or MST gets condemned and forgotten), will it give the blogging community, the “new media”, the satisfaction of the knowledge that they are capable of slaying old media? Is it an achievement that the Philippine blogging community will, five or ten years from now, be proud of? Would you be proud to have taken part in such an achievement?
I don’t think I would.
Finally, Malu Fernandez’s ilk and, perhaps, Manila Standard Today, do not deserve the attention that people are inadvertently giving to them by calling for a boycott. Nick himself says, in the campaign, that the Manila Standard Today is not a “big player” like the Inquirer or the Philippine Star. If you really want something to be ignored to oblivion, the easiest way would be for that thing to be forgotten.
Forgetting about Malu Fernandez might not be a good idea, but forgetting about MST will achieve the same result with much more effect than any boycott would.
Tess Termulo laments, over Twitter, that more people have given this controversy attention than Cris Mendez’s brutal murder. I agree with her (and I’m guilty of it too). The loss of an innocent life is infinitely more important than the words of a bigoted diva.
I would rather that the blogging community voice out on issues that are much more deserving of its attention. I’d rather that the blogging community focus on building bridges, not burning castles.
The more attention that we give Malu Fernandez, the more we feed people like her (and perhaps, papers like the Manila Standard Today) the publicity that they might very well be praying for.
UPDATE: Manuel Viloria writes a very informative piece about how to do an internet boycott the technical way.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Prudence // Sep 6, 2007 at 7:41 am
Is it perhaps because people think ousting Malu Fernandez and boycotting MST is a more achievable cause than putting a stop to fraternity-related violence? Many people seemed resigned enough that hazing is a cultural thing and that we cannot (or we just refuse) to do anything about it.
It is very sad that we’re more concerned about a flapping socialite than uprooting a deeply-ingrained culture of violence.
2 Zapping the Traffic of Manila Standard Today - Manuel Viloria.com // Sep 6, 2007 at 6:49 pm
[...] perhaps, in a quiet moment, when we decide to move on, when people grow tired of progeric online controversies, when the uzis who previously chimed in [...]
3 Jeg // Sep 7, 2007 at 9:52 am
The difference between Fernandez and the Cris Mendez murder is that the mainstream media was on top of the Mendez case, while it ignored the Malu case completely. It was up to the ‘new media’ to bring it to the attention of the public. The Cris Mendez case got the attention it deserved early on. I think an important aspect of the blogging community’s value is in bringing to attention stuff that the Big Guys ignore.
4 bugsybee // Sep 8, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Like you, I disliked what Malu Fernandez said about OFWs. Ang bastos! And it hurt because I have a lot of good friends, people I respect and admire, who are OFWs.
My initial reaction was, of course, “violent”. Nainis ako sa kanya and my first thought was “ang sarap sakalin”. But to call her a pig, etc. or to insult her because of her physical appearance was something that I couldn’t do even if I thought she was an idiot for flaunting her bad manners.
I also don’t subscribe to the idea of boycotting MST even if I am not a regular reader. I don’t read Malu Fernandez and I don’t think I will ever read Malu Fernandez. I also do not think that people should be free to write whatever they think … freedom of expression should not be an excuse to malign people or to belittle them. But I think it is better to ignore Malu Fernandez than to call for a public boycott.
And yes, we should focus our efforts on more important issues – Cris Mendez and hazing (bakit nakalimutan na yata yung ibang victims? we raise a howl and then forget about them after a year or two!), Jonas Burgos and all the other kidnappings and killings, etc.
More power, Jon!
5 Sidney // Sep 8, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I agree “they” and the topic don’t deserve so much attention.
I never read the Manila Standard Today.
6 Jon Limjap // Sep 10, 2007 at 5:56 am
Jeg,
So should the blogosphere be relegated to “niche” topics? Do bloggers ignore “well-discussed’ issues? Would we have been silent if Malu Fernandez were immediately taken up by mainstream media?
I wonder.
bugsybee,
Thanks
Sidney,
Unfortunately people noticed MST because of this issue. The backlash/boycott might have had the opposite effect.
7 Jeg // Sep 10, 2007 at 9:40 am
Jon: So should the blogosphere be relegated to “niche†topics? Do bloggers ignore “well-discussed’ issues? Would we have been silent if Malu Fernandez were immediately taken up by mainstream media?
Bloggers can do whatever they like. That’s the beauty of it. I dont think it should be ‘relegated’ to anything. Personally, if mainstream media took the Fernandez affair immediately, *I* would not have given her space on my blog. But, as the cliche goes, that’s just me and I wouldnt dare impose that personal choice on anybody else. Other bloggers are free to write about whatever they want and we shouldnt have ‘standards of behavior’ apart from the standards we already have in real life.
Another thing: blogs arent our lives. At least I dont think so. We have real lives apart from what we blog about. So it’s really not fair to judge someone’s life based on his or her blog.
8 Jon Limjap // Sep 10, 2007 at 11:50 am
Jeg,
Points well taken.
“Another thing: blogs arent our lives. At least I dont think so. We have real lives apart from what we blog about. So it’s really not fair to judge someone’s life based on his or her blog.”
Well, that’s another issue altogether. For many of use our online and real lives have already melded that it becomes hard to distinguish and separate them from one another. I would consider myself as one of such, since I’ve been online writing about things since I first got internet at home 10 years ago.
However, nobody can judge anybody else, period. Not based on their blog, not based on rumors, period.
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