Ang Magiting - The Official Web Site of Rotary Club Makati North

Al Jazeera Up Close and Personal

By: Treas. Robert Syjuco
March 16, 2011

With 2011 turning out the way it is, disaster after revolution after disaster after revolution after nuke meltdown, it was apt to have Al Jazeera’s Manila bureau head Marga Ortigas as our guest speaker.

Marga is of course, no stranger to RCMN, for she is no other than the daughter of the late PP Tony Ortigas, one of the most decent, upright people RCMN I have met. Among other things, you know what they say about how a guy plays (and scores) golf shows his true colors… he counted his strokes in golf honestly, and that speaks for itself. Of course he was much more than that. Much much more.

Marga had appeared before RCMN over a year ago, and she is always most welcome as she always has refreshing insights to the world around us, as she has seen all the nitty gritty up close, sometimes way too close. She brought her colleague, Jam Alindogan, and since the Manila Bureau was composed of just 3 people, we had 2/3s of their entire staff! I wonder how their staff parties are….

PP Roger bought a tear or two from Marga as he recalled in his invocation the twinkle in PP Tony’s eyes whenever Marga’s name was brought up. From CNN, BBC, and now Al Jazeera she made her father proud.

Before Marga spoke, PP Joe did an update on the Pabling Calma Cup. P230k in sponsorship, another P400k in the pipeline! Good work Joe! Now go collect them all…

Marga showed us a very recent video of Al Jazeera’s owner talking on TED tv. He mentioned how his netwoks’ continued coverage of the revolution prevented it from becoming a massacre, lest the whole world see it live.

He also mentioned that the role of Facebook and twitter was something the dictators were not prepared for. Even if Tunisia’s security agencies spent billions of dollars to protect itself, it failed against the people who took the streets and the web. He clarified that his network does not make revolutions, it just reports them. And gets banned in many places for telling it as it is.

Marga then talked, and since she was in charge of reporting what happens in the country, her focus was mostly about Mindanao. Some highlights:

Asked about the Abu Sayaff, she said most Filipinos would rather treat the issue as something ‘over there’ , not news worthy, contributing more to the isolation of that region.

While the MILF is now entering peace talks with the government, it wants the people to think it has 6,000 troops, even if it barely has 1,000 as most had defected to the MNLF. It can’t even control those, breaking off into rogue units.

MNLF Nur Misuari’s ARMM owes Libya’s Gaddafi millions and millions of dollars personally for development funds in the region. .And since these funds need no auditing, it seems no development was made, except for Nur’s personal bank accounts.

The conflict in Mindanao is prolonged artificially. Both by politicians and the military for sustained funding. Most people in Mindanao don’t care about the conflict. They just want more options to escape the grinding poverty.

Asked of its opinion regarding 9-11 as an ‘inside job’, she said Al Jazeera has no opinion in the news they report. They may give experts from both sides air time to show their views, but leaves the viewer to make his own conclusion. They simply report as is.

Her work can be dangerous. Al Jazeera staff have been deliberately ambushed and killed in Libya. The network is banned in many dictatorships in the Middle East. But technology finds a way around that.

Assignments take her from hot spot to hot spot from Palestine to Tawi Tawi and everything in between. You should see all the ‘hot’ people she has on speed dial! It also allows her to see that certain misconceptions and biases are baseless, and that at the end of the day, most people in this planet are mostly one in seeking peace. A very interesting job indeed, you wonder what every day will bring. It really makes her father deeply proud.