Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago delivers a backhanded compliment
on Sen. Jinggoy Estrada's bill and the Filipino twitterverse prattles about it.
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| Photo from www.inquirer.net |
Senate reporters love Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, she's a good source of scrumptious sound-bytes and quotable quotes. And last night, she became the talk of the Filipino twitterdom and this was mainly because of her comment on
Senate Bill 455 which was introduced by Senator Jinggoy Estrada.
"There is no reason why only members of the broadcast and print media should be included in the proposed law," Santiago said. "Due regard must also be given to practitioners of the 'digital media,' or those whose mode of communication is the internet and mobile phones."
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"Further, with the popularity of blogs and video-sharing websites such as YouTube, there are now a lot of people who regularly post sensitive political commentaries online, with content similar to those traditionally published in newspapers or broadcasted over the television. Even though they are not traditionally referred to as members of the media, they may actually be exposed to the same dangers encountered by institutional media practitioners," Santiago explained.
Santiago cited as an example the case of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who was reportedly subjected to harassment and threats after his website published sensitive and confidential information, including hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables.
Now, I don't know if the punchline in the both the bill filed and statement Sen. Santiago escaped people, but we may all have been victims of a very dry, very subtle humor.
