The weather report carried on the front page of Malaya on Friday, September 16, 1994, was a classic. It showed the time for sunrise and sunset, the weather outlook for Manila, high tide and low tide, and what to expect for the rest of the f*cking country.
Naturally, the publisher, Amado “Jake” Macasaet, executive editor Pocholo Romualdez and editor Joy de los Reyes were scandalized, and broadsheet and tabloid editors suddenly became fans of Malaya, known as a fighting newspaper established by the press freedom icon Jose “Joe” Burgos Jr. in 1981, when the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos declared he had “lifted” martial law and ushered in a government that was supposed to restore democratic freedoms and the right of the press to print what it deems fit. Others believed the Marcos declaration, most discerning Filipinos shrugged off the proclamation as a continuation of the unbroken string of pathological lies.
Immediately, knives were out at Malaya, with management blaming an editor who apparently played hooky and flew to parts unknown, only for another editor to be assigned to put the paper to bed, which includes the diurnal duty of writing the weather report and doing the remat if big stories break out. Still unknown to management, the editor had not taken a day off the entire month and was heading off to another month of working seven days a week. No one toyed with the idea that he would end up doing the earthshaking weather report. Pocholo Romualdez knew what it meant to write a shamelessly lewd weather report as he was also kicked out to the doghouse when he was elsewhere when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 23, 1963. The Malaya editor shared good company.
His superiors called him up at breakfast and a quick check showed that the errant weather report was not copyread and thus not deleted from the weather report. Turned out the only two remaining copyreaders on graveyard weren’t on their posts. It was strange for a leading national daily to have its gatekeepers out on that dreary night of Sept. 15, 1994. Other editors knew that the gauntlet would fall on the editor, who told his superiors that the joke was not erased and guessed that he will have to pay a hefty price for it. The initial punishment was supposed to be one month suspension without pay, which wasn’t bad, only to be withdrawn later as Jake, who was peppered with brickbats, wanted the editor out.
The editor was prepared for it, but he wasn’t expecting that columnists like the late J.V. Cruz would ask Pocholo about it. “What happened to the guy who the weather report?” he asked Pocholo. The reply was curt: “He cut it on the chin?” J.V Cruz’s riposte was also a classic. “Why did you do that? The guy deserves a medal for telling the truth. We are a f*cking country alright.” Then Manila Standard editor Zip Roxas could not help but tell the J.V. Cruz-Pocholo Romualdez conversation to everyone who wishes to listen. He knew the editor well and argued the wayward weather report waited for a copyreader who, like Godot, never came. Business editor Butch del Castillo, like others, argued that editorial writers also do it to test just how good copyreaders are.
Instead of fighting it out, the editor went to a meeting with Pocholo, Joy and others who calmly asked for his resignation, telling him he was brilliant but the crime he had committed called for capital punishment. He had to watch while Pocholo, Joy and another editor bowed their heads and kept silent for about 5 minutes. The editor decided he would leave and told them: “I am resigning.” Forthwith, Pocholo heaved a sigh of relief. A fishbone stuck in the throat of Malaya was extricated. With all the vacation, sick and mandatory leaves he had not used, the editor said he would leave once he had used all of them. The following month, his brother, a classical guitarist, would die and he would request that Malaya use the obit. It did.
It has been 30 years after that f*cking country weather report came out. The editor had seen himself being drubbed by do-gooders, unmindful of the realities at the cityroom, or the working conditions under which editors toil. One Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist even lectured on him like a Jesuit priest about mortal sins in journalism, as if he knew the fellow and the working conditions at Malaya. Neither did he know that his target went out of his way to help his own newspaper avert a major tiff with tax sleuths.
Quick to the draw, slow on the facts. The moral crusaders lectured with aplomb but those who work the salt mines shrugged them off. No need to cry over spilled milk. He deserved a medal, as J.V. Cruz said, not an uppercut to the chin. Saner minds thought oppressive conditions in the broadsheets and tabloids, in radio and TV networks as well, deserved to be looked into. Thirty years on, we have not heard any sweeping assessment of how the press treats its own workers, or how the government compels it to be fair, with decent pay for everyone, and protects press freedom.
The same year, the editor was back on the job and doing investigative pieces that rattled corporations and their lawyers, spilled the beans on intra- and intercorporate brawls, disputes among wealthy brothers and greed, insatiable greed, that wrecked business enterprises, banks, transport companies and shipping firms. Alexander Graham Bell’s quip– a door closes, another opens — was true in the dark and dreary month of September 1994. There is no longer any quarrel about the f*cking weather report of Sept. 16, 1994. Actually, a 100% rate of prediction for the day’s weather is impossible but a f*cking country is always a reality. An annual f*cking country award, anyone? (DIEGO MORRA)
