[Inside the Newsroom] Covering Alan Cayetano, professional gaslighter

These days, I don’t give Senator Alan Peter Cayetano much grace.

It might be jarring to hear a reporter admit that, especially when the prevailing notion about journalists, especially in the Philippines, is that they should remain “neutral.”

I’m Dwight de Leon, Rappler’s congressional reporter. For this week’s newsletter, let me get this out of the way before I continue discussing Cayetano: I don’t believe in the myth of objectivity.

To put it simply, it’s a school of thought in journalism that acknowledges how the very act of reporting is subjective. No one is “unbiased” because we all have our biases. They are shaped by our personal values, which affect how we frame our stories. We do our best to be fair, but we’re never neutral.

I’m saying that because I’ve recently written a number of stories highly critical of Cayetano.

On June 2, I pointed out that Cayetano’s move to cut off internet and air conditioning for his Senate rivals was a familiar tactic he also used when he tried to prevent coup plotters that moved to oust him as House speaker in 2020.

I wrote: “It’s crazy how history repeats itself six years later — it’s about a congressional leader insecure with his numbers, relying on childlike acts of vengeance to keep himself in power.”

Crazy? Insecure? Childlike? Dang, the purists in my profession would choke on all those adjectives!

On June 4, another story of mine highlighted how Cayetano’s responses to his ouster in 2020 and 2026 were oddly similar — he didn’t concede outright.

I wrote: “There may be three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Cayetano’s inability to simply accept defeat.”

It’s playful language, and some may say I’m editorializing, but, in my defense, it’s tagged as an Inside Track story — it’s Rappler’s section that is an “intelligencer on people, events, places and everything of public interest.” When I feel like a story has innate absurdities, I package it as an Inside Track to highlight the madness, the wackiness, perhaps the hopelessness, of the situation, because a straight news treatment won’t suffice.

In my opinion, Cayetano has long ago surpassed the threshold of the straightforward who-what-where-when-why-how (5Ws and 1H) reporting. This prolonged Senate instability reminded me of what he is capable of as a politician.

He’s never wrong, and always finds a way to interpret his most questionable acts as a decision for the greater good.

It’s the Senate side that first fired the gun during the shooting with National Bureau of Investigation agents on May 13. Cayetano says? The Senate is under attack.

The gunfire conveniently resulted in the escape of Senator Bato dela Rosa, who has an active International Criminal Court warrant. Cayetano says? The former top cop did not escape, he chose to leave.

Cayetano refused to convene the Senate for two days from June 1 to 2, putting the chamber on the brink of a constitutional violation. It’s a move seen to prevent any attempt to oust him. Cayetano says? He just doesn’t want the other side to stop the blue ribbon committee hearing.

Reporters and politicians who know Cayetano have long been familiar with his antics, his legal and mental gymnastics, and his creative ways to get out of the holes he dug for himself. No wonder, when Cayetano tried to prevent the arrest of Jinggoy Estrada inside Senate premises — arguing there was no precedent even when there was — Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla was not having any of it and insisted, “You lost that privilege when you let Bato escape.”

I acknowledge that I may have sounded defensive when talking about how I approach Cayetano. But here’s the thing: I was an employee of ABS-CBN in 2020, when the House he led rejected a new franchise for our company, leaving thousands of my colleagues without a job at the height of the pandemic.

He never apologized for it, and perhaps to this day believes he’s holding a moral high ground.

So why should I — or the media, honestly — give him so much grace? – Rappler.com

Inside the Newsroom is a newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every week. Visit rappler.com/newsletters to manage your newsletter subscriptions.