Foreign Secretary Blas F. Ople today said media power has become a revolutionary force in the Third World, a fact that compels journalists to exercise their function with a great deal of responsibility. It sets the agenda of a nation.

"The media are reshaping not just family relations, voting patterns and manners of dressing.  They are also changing popular values and cultures—originating from the West—that are transforming societies everywhere in the Third World," Secretary Ople said.

The foreign minister expressed his views in a lecture at the Friday class of The Manila Times School of Journalism.  He spoke on the theme of "media power in the Third World."  An open forum followed his lecture.

Ople, who has worked as deskman and columnist for The Daily Mirror, the 1960's sister publication of The Manila Times said that because of media's transforming power, print and broadcast journalism "constant exposure (on media) of what is possible raises expectations and generates feelings of relative deprivation that can set off resentments, disruptions and rebellions."

He said that one such rebellion, "embodying the frustration and protest of a Third World generation that has not become integrated into stable and progressive national societies, is embodied in the reactionary religious and
cultural movement we know as fundamentalist Islam."

"Islamist terrorism is by far the most extreme, and the most violent, of the unintended consequences of the cultural revolutions that western influence is introducing in the Third World societies," the former two-term senator added.

Secretary Ople reminded the media, particularly the Philippine journalistic establishment, to temper their power with a becoming exercise of social responsibility.

"Where free-range capitalism flourishes—as it does in our country—the national community depends almost entirely on the media's level of social responsibility," the foreign minister said.

He noted a tendency in media to sensationalize and to report negative stories for the sake of readership and street sales.  Over time, the effect of negative news on citizens is to withdraw into the shell of self-interest "rather than accepting the costs and risks of trying to build a peaceful and prosperous society."

Ople also emphasized the usefulness of media as an aid to nation building, in the areas of language formation, creating a unified nation out of diverse races and enthnicities, and as watchdog against corruption.

The media in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia "are already as effective counterforce to the old political elites," the former labor secretary noted, adding that in Manila, the media
have displaced the old factional machines as vote-getters while the Seoul press has established itself as South Korea's "fourth branch of political power." END