"Media can serve to repress as well as to liberate, to unite as well as fragment society, both to promote and to hold back change."

The role of media as an agent of change has been growing and changing from era to era. In itself, the term media has come to be associated primarily with the dissemination of information and only secondarily with the particular technology it uses in such dissemination. But undoubtedly, the advent of new technology has caused media's power to grow exponentially since the creation of paper, the invention of the printing press, the discovery and application of the wave theory, and now the harnessing of light.

The Kapisanan ng Mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) plays a lead role in preserving and promoting our undiluted vision of a society that is just. Your organization provides the shield to protect the sanctity of the independence of the broadcast media from forces hostile to freedom of the press; but, more importantly, yours is the self-regulating entity that ensures that your members do not themselves desecrate this sanctity. More than anybody else, you in the KBP have the opportunity and the duty to transform this power into a concerted force to enable the Filipino people to live in a democracy directed by the light of truth, however inconvenient it may be.

Looking back, we know that the application of radio technology in the Philippines began in 1922, with a test broadcast using a five-watt transmitter in Nichols Air Base. Since then, the broadcast media has continued to play a significant part in our bumpy trip to democracy. One of the most dramatic examples of the contribution of media to the resuscitation of our democracy is the Radyo Veritas real-time account of the 1986 EDSA Revolution. When the transmitter of its radio station was bombed by the deposed administration to stop the people's revolution, the task to tell the people of the realities on the ground was taken up by Radyo Bandido.

Doubtless, the station's blow-by-blow, no-holds-barred account of events and its appeal to the people to resist the unwanted government accelerated the slide to oblivion of the 20-year authoritarianism.

If I extol the role of media to high heavens, it is because mediadeserves all the encomiums. The important role of media in establishing a just society is well established. I can do no better than quote the writer Ciaran McCullagh, to wit: It has become a cliché to say that we live in increasingly more complex societies and in a more complex world; but this statement has implications for the manner in which we think about and understand the power of the mass media.

As the societies and the world we live in grow more complex, the range of information that we "need" also increases. If we wish to function as informed and competent citizens, or even to pass as such, then we need to know about events happening in geographically distant places. We also need to know about events in socially distant places in our own society, such as the inner cities and the inner sanctums of power.

The range of issues with which we are expected to be familiar is also increasing rapidly.

The complexities of the politics of Afghanistan were not a key issue in the West a few years ago; now they are. The issue of drugs and the related gang violence in inner cities was not an urgent issue 20 years ago; now it is. But as the range of issues grows, the number of them that we can learn about at first hand declines. (To be continued on Wednesday)

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