On trying to listen to Jun Lozada

INFLEXIBLE errands kept me away from Rodolfo "Jun" Lozada Jr.'s much-publicized visit here, so I didn't get to hear first-hand his comments about the "Archdiocese of Malacañang" or see how the crowd reacted to him. I didn't know how much time he spent discussing the "spiritual harassment" he has suffered, and how much time went to the message he was flown here to deliver. I got the sense that he revealed no new evidence, but that he stayed consistent to the allegations he raised in recent weeks. But like I said, all that is second-hand information.

As necessary as compression is in our work as journalists, it also often leads to losses of nuance or errors in translation. Out of everything a speaker says in an hour, for instance, the journalist may end up highlighting a 10-minute bit of the speech that the speaker never intended to be his central message. "What new thing did he say?" is a common question that reporters will hear from persnickety editors. "What new revelations did he make?"

So the charge that some of Lozada's champions recently made is valid. Why, they asked, have Cebu's media zeroed in on Lozada's criticisms against local church leaders? Why have political leaders tried to "spin" the events as yet another sign of the (often-manipulated) divisions between the capital and local communities?

Here's an attempt at an answer. The reason Lozada's barbs have caused an uproar goes beyond the fact that Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal remains a well-loved and respected leader of the Cebuano community—no matter how opaque, how cryptic his political opinions have, at times, been. Calling him a "congressman in a cassock" isn't just flattery that some of our lawmakers haven't earned; it is also incredibly careless. It raises doubts about just how careful Lozada and his supporters have been in the accusations they've raised about the broadband deal.

Which is a pity, because it's only going to make it more difficult for a lot of people to pay attention to what Lozada has to reveal—and it's already demanding enough to try to listen and see past the posturing of certain senators. Yet one must keep trying.

All this reminded me of one of the most interesting discussions in a Media Ethics class I participated in last year, which centered on Edmund Arens' 1997 paper on "discourse ethics" and how media workers could use it to restore a sense of purpose in our work. For Arens, discourse ethics challenges media practitioners to see how well we have lived by three universal ethical principles: (1) orientation toward truth, (2) truthfulness, and (3) justice.

An orientation toward truth means, first, that anyone who wishes to communicate should make sure they have proof and explanations, and should limit themselves to pronouncements "of whose truth they are convinced." Arens also reminds us that there are stories that need telling—whether it's the silences that our more guarded public officials or community leaders keep, or the existence of those who, after getting the doors of schools and workplaces slammed in their faces, make a living off our garbage bins.

Communication informed by discourse ethics, according to Arens, is a "cooperative search for a mutual understanding of the disputed claims." It won't suffice to listen to and examine only the claims of the contending parties. Everyone who can should be allowed to take part, because "justice that assumes the task of advocacy means criticizing and denouncing those communicative and social relations in which human beings have no voice, in which there is no word from them, in which they are not heard."

(Appears in the Op-Ed pages of Sun.Star Cebu's 24 March 2008 issue.)