Bad Day

‎"please don't take a picture. it's been a bad day."

hear that, philippine broadcast media? yeah, remember that next time you're thinking of shoving your cameras into the faces of grieving family members.

The Last Late Night Good Night

Good night, Conan. Thanks for 16 years of immature, childish, and arbitrary humour. We loved it. See you in LA.

Remembering the Battle of Manila

Just watched Remembering the Battle of Manila, a two-hour documentary on the 1945 battle produced by Japanese television network NHK and aired on the History Channel.

The documentary had a very objective tone-- no sentimentality or emotion.  There was a good amount of discussion on objectives and tactics but hardly any mention of politics or motives.  The overarching message, though, was that most of the 100,000 Filipino civilian casualties and the almost total destruction of Manila was a result of American bombardment.  Which is quite accurate-- most of the deaths and destruction in Manila in 1945 were indeed caused by the American forces' indiscriminate use of force.  There are a lot of interviews with people-- Filipino civilians, American and Japanese soldiers-- who witnessed the battle and one can get a good picture of the suffering it caused.  One stark image is the destruction of the Philippine General Hospital by American bombers, who attacked the building and its thousands of patients and refugees "despite red crosses painted on the roof".

However, what troubles me about this documentary is what it does not say.  While it makes an indictment of American conduct during the battle, Japanese actions are mostly portrayed as defensive maneouvres.  While it does mention Japanese "outrages" committed against civilians in the name of "anti-guerilla offensives", it makes no adequate description of the gravity or the cruelty of these atrocities.  At one point it mentions the "Japanese anti-guerilla offensive" and "Filipinos fighting Filipinos" (i.e., revenge attacks against the makapili) as reasons, apart from indiscriminate American bombing, for Filipino civilian deaths, without any mention of scale or context as if the two reasons carried equal weight.  

While I didn't expect this documentary-- or any historical documentary-- to be totally objective, I did expect factual proportion.  In terms of scale, American bombs indeed killed more Filipinos and demolished more buildings, but the Japanese are at least equally to blame for the carnage.  The Americans were indiscriminate and reckless in their use of force, but the Japanese were rabid and sadistic in their retaliation, ordering their troops to fight to the last man and "annihilate all guerillas", guerilla being understood by the interviewed Japanese soldiers to mean any Filipino man, woman, or child.  While there were many graphic pictures of the victims of American bombs (women and children in particular) and even video of Filipinos mobbing a makapili, the only pictures of Japanese atrocities were Filipino men executed with their hands tied behind their backs.

Most troubling about this documentary is that it's primarily meant for a Japanese audience, being translated into English after it was made.  If PBS made this documentary for an American audience it would be a soul-searching second look at America's actions in Manila deserving of a commendation.  But it's not.  The documentary was made by NHK for a Japanese audience, making it an exercise in washing their hands of guilt.  Far from just "remembering the battle of Manila", this looks and feels more like a jab at self-vindication, as if saying, "Hey, the Americans killed more Filipinos than we did; we were just defending ourselves."  To lay the blame for the destruction of Manila and the death of 100,000 civilians at the foot of the Americans with only passing mention of Japanese atrocities is, to say the least, dishonest.

That NHK gave an unbalanced account under the veneer of fact and objectivity makes this documentary unethical.  That Japan, unlike Germany, has not truly reconciled itself with its wartime conduct makes this documentary offensive.  That militarist and revisionist elements are gaining clout in Japan makes this documentary dangerous.

Poll Dancing

My $1 tip on the ups, downs, spins, and gyrations of slippery polls. 

If you've been following the US presidential elections (you really should even if you're not American, because the US president affects you so much as your own president) you'd be constantly bombarded with opinion polls, most of them saying that Obama has a lead over McCain.  Some will say that Obama has a "commanding" or "clear" lead, while others will insist that McCain is in a tie with his opponent.  So what is it, really?

Without going into technical detail, let us interpret for ourselves what the polls mean without the spin.  Take this table from Real Clear Politics (as of 29 October 2008, 2300H Pacific Time), which convenietly summarises the major US election polls (click for a clearer image):

First of all, see that top line with the RCP Average?  Forget it exists.  It means absolutely nothing.  It makes no sense to get the average of different surveys taken on different dates with different questionnaires and different samples and different methodologies.  And to show how sensless it is they even highlighted it in yellow.

The first thing you should look for in any survey is the margin of error (MoE in the table), which, assuming the survey is methodologically sound, depends solely on the sample size.  Say the Rasmussen Reports, with a sample size of 3,000 likely voters and MoE = 2.0 (it should really be 1.79), finds that 50% of their sample supports Obama.  The MoE imples that overall support for Obama in the population (i.e., all American voters) is probably somewhere between 48% and 52%.  Likewise, McCain's 47% support in the survey implies that support in the population is probably somewhere between 45% and 49%.

So, is Obama's 3-percentage-point lead "clear", or "dead even"?  As a rule of thumb (i.e., without having to use a calculator), a difference can be reported as significant if it is greater than or equal to (MoE x 2) + 1.  Using this formula, for MoE = 2 the difference should be at least 5 percentage points for us to say that Obama has a significant lead over McCain (i.e., beyond the margins); thus, Obama's 3-point lead in the Rasmussen Reports is actually a statistical tie.

Looking at the table, then, we can see that the only surveys where Obama has a significant lead over McCain are Gallup (Expanded), ABC News/Wash Post, and Pew Research.  All the other surveys have Obama and McCain in a statistical tie.  That said, all the polls put Obama in a marginal, if not significant, lead.  Either Obama leads by a small amount or he leads by a sizeable margin.  So, going by the polls, I'd have to say that Obama is the frontrunner in this election.  Overall, assuming the surveys were conducted scientifically, the elections are still Obama's to lose and McCain has an uphill battle ahead.

However, this being America and Obama being not white, I actually think McCain is still the candidate to beat.  Obama has to run a perfect campaign 100% of the time, while McCain only needs one innuendo that sticks to grab the election.  Whether he relishes it or not, McCain has hundreds of years of racism, prejudice, and cynicism on his side.  Never underestimate the power of hate, fear, and ignorance in America.

I sure hope I'll be proven wrong next week.

As if we needed any more convincing...

... that RP media is going to the dogs, we see this article:

Oil price rollbacks ‘big argument’ vs deregulation -- Palace

By Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 18:26:00 09/12/2008

MANILA, Philippines—The rollback in oil prices by P2 to P3 on Friday is a "big argument" against calls by leftwing militants to deregulate the petroleum industry, Malacañang said Friday. 

xxx

This is terribly sloppy-- not only on Mr. Guinto's part but also on the part of his section editor and anyone else who approved this article before publication.  Typos and grammatical mistakes are understandable (albeit regrettable for a broadsheet), but this is way beyond that.  This article defies logic.  In case they haven't noticed, the petroleum industry is already deregulated, that's why oil companies could raise (and lower) prices at will (RA 8479, anyone?).  And why would the lowering of prices-- a perceived benefit of deregulation-- be an argument against it?  Also, the last thing the Left will call for is the deregulation of anything; in case they haven't heard, the "leftwing militants" are actually calling for the reregulation of the oil industry.

At best this is just sloppy work-- maybe they meant reregulation when they wrote deregulation, or maybe they meant for when they wrote vs-- extremely sloppy that it is incompetent.  And this sloppiness is systemic, from the beat writer to the section editor to the copy editor.  

At worst they don't know what the hell deregulation means and the issues surrounding it.  And they're the ones who are supposed to tell us what the news is.

Boom De Ah Dah!

I Love the Whole World...



... and its longer, live version too...



... boom de ah dah, boom de ah dah!

Auschwitz... Dachau... Mauthausen... Taguig

Seems like the fallout after the idiotic siege of Manila Pen just keeps on coming:

Textbook Godwin's Law. Genius linking "final option" with "final solution", but why stop there? There's final exams, Final Fantasy, the World Cup Finals... the list goes on, you know.

I didn't post about the whole media thing after that idiotic siege, but I did make a comment about it in my Dear's blog. For the record, here's what I said about the whole thing:

I listened to the whole event on radio, and I don't think the police "arrested" media people because they were covering the event. The fog of war (ok, fog of idiotic coup) was present at the time, and I can't blame the police for picking up everyone in the same room as Trillanes and his cabal. The media people claim that they were well aware of the risks involved in staying-- well, being mixed up with the coup plotters is one of those risks. Trillanes used the media people as human shields, and the media people were more than happy to oblige. Well, willing human shields should not complain when they're caught in the crossfire.

The media freedom card should not be used wantonly. Media people should know the difference between an attack on press freedom and an attack on their personal convenience.

And by fallout I mean the pieces that fall after idiots smear their shit on the walls.

Very Bad Taste

Before everything, I would like to convey my condolences to the Saguisag family. They truly suffered a terrible and unimaginable loss.

I'll go straight to the point-- the Inquirer's front page today (9 November 2007) is in very bad taste. It's so bad that I think it crosses into the unethical.

Just yesterday, dr.sbdink and I were discussing another article on the accident posted at GMA News. He felt that the treatment of the story was voyeuristic; i.e., that details such as "dragged Saguisag's van by 20 to 30 meters" or "The van was crushed" were unnecessary. I took a different view-- details on the strength of impact were needed to give a complete picture. I thought those details were valid in an article reporting an accident, although I have reservations about the style of the writer (there's a reason why obituaries are separate from the news).

On the other hand, the Inquirer front page crossed the line by publishing the bodies of the dead and injured. What value does that serve in the article other than pure voyeurism? The accident picture showing the impact would have been enough-- why did they have to publish slumped bodies and shocked victims?

Publishing pictures of the dead, dying, or injured is an ethical tightrope. Even during wartime, when the horrors and evils of war are the story, it isn't an easy decision whether or not to publish these kinds of images. Editors have to ask themselves whether publishing those images is necessary, and weigh two sometimes opposing forces-- what the public needs to know vs. the dignity of the dead, dying, or injured. In war, sometimes the public does need to see in stark red how horrifying the situation is, but in an accident? Does the public really need to see that? And did the Inquirer editors even consider for a moment how the Saguisags would feel to see their slumped mother published on the front page of a national broadsheet?

Now compare this treatment to another tragic accident-- the death of Princess Dianna in 1997. Photos of a dying Princess Diana were taken and offered to various papers, but no tabloid dared publish them even ten years after the fact (they were eventually shown only in court). Dianna deserves more respect than that, and her family doesn't need to see her dying image in the corner newsstand.

Even for the British tabloid press, known for its crass sensationalism and voyeruism, some ethical lines should not be crossed.

Survey Says...

Family, not sex, is Pinoys’ No. 1 source of happiness (from the Inquirer)
How Happy are Pinoys with Sex? (by Dr. Romulo Virola, Secretary General, NSCB)

Despite the titles, note that the results cannot be generalised in any way. The data are from a pilot survey among 167 nonrandom respondents taken from participants in a meeting; therefore, one cannot generalise these results to the general Filipino population (or to the meeting participants' population, for that matter). So no need to be surprised. Yet.

What surprised me is the write-up in the Inquirer. If you only read the write-up, it would seem that the results are from a full-fledged National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) study, which would make the study laughable given the sample selection and size. However, going to the source article by Virola, you get the sense that the results are from an informal study done after a meeting-- equal in generalisability to a Best Dressed survey. He repeatedly points out that the results are from nonrandom respondents as a caution to the readers-- a caveat lost in the Inquirer article. More importantly, Virola attributes the results only to the sample, while the Inquirer write-up uses generalising language ("among Filipinos")-- a glaring misrepresentation.

The Inquirer reporter should have stressed that the results were in no way generalisable; however, doing so would trivialise the article. Which is exactly the problem-- they were trying to make news out of a non-event. They could have referred to the results in passing as part of a bigger story on Filipino sexuality or sexual taboos. Instead, the results were made the story.

Having worked in media, I know the pressures of putting some spin in your article to ensure that it makes the press, particularly on matters as staid as statistical data. However, as someone who also does survey work, I draw the line at misleading the readers in interpreting the data. Reporters have the responsibility to aid the readers in reading the data and lay out any and all caveats to interpretation. Statistics are difficult enough to understand and malleable enough to be spun; we don't need to add misrepresentation to the mix.
---
Below are the results of the nonrandom pilot survey, taken from NSCB: