People always harp on being fair in terms of various aspects of life that affect them. Fairness is now becoming an abused term because people feel that they are not being given the fair chance to air their grievances on various programs, projects and activities of the government because of the practice of controlling the conduct of dialogues where everyone must actively participate and share their insights. Even in the normal course of life, fairness is always at the forefront of issues that transpire because everyone wants to be heard as their opinion on petty matters should be considered just to be fair about everything.
Fairness is being fair or impartial. It is the quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable. The definition clearly talks about the ideal situation but in reality, there is somewhat fairness to a certain degree but not absolute because of certain considerations that may have an effect on the decision-making of people, especially in deciding whether or not to be in favor of the various programs, projects and activities being rammed on their throats by the concerned government agencies, local governments and even the private sector.
In politics, many politicians often harp on fair reportage because they are being criticized for the lackluster implementation of their programs, projects and activities. Upon entering the political scene, politicians have already opened their private and public lives to extreme scrutiny by the public. More importantly, it has been time and again upheld by the Supreme Court (SC) that public officials should not be onion-skinned and should always be open to criticisms even if it is already below the belt. The 1987 Constitution grantees the right of the people to freedom of expression and of a free press with some limitations but individuals, whether in government or not, should not be deprived of ventilating their opinion on various issues and concerns besetting the country or even the locality where they are situated.
With the emergence of the various social media platforms, people can now freely exercise their right to freedom of expression in their respective platforms but with utmost responsibility because of the presence of laws, rules and regulations governing such freedom, particularly our libel and cyber libel laws. While it is true that malice is hard to prove, it is still important for people to be responsible social media users and for mainstream media to practice fair and balanced reportage.
Politicians should be reminded that no matter how big or small the media company is, its owners and editorial personnel have still their respective biases, thus, what is fair to them is not always fair to those being alluded to but that is the reality no matter how they view things.
What is ironical about the current situation is that supposed human rights advocates are now the ones abusing the human rights of marginalized people to the extent that they try to bully people for them to bow down to their whims and caprices simply because of patronage politics. Many of those who had been projecting themselves as human rights defenders have already become human rights abusers because they were already swallowed by patronage politics which they had been vocal against in the past. They even have the nerve to brand people of not being fair when in fact, they were the ones who had never been fair in the first place.
Actually, many people are now fully aware of the kind of patronage politics that these human rights defenders had been practicing over the past several years and that they no longer believe on their purported ideology because they already changed a lot after being into power. Remember, power corrupts and that is the reality on what is happening around us.
Evidently, fairness is subjective because of certain inherent biases that is beyond our control aside from our personal and collective motivations that tend to affect our judgement on certain private and public matters. Politicians have the right to demand for fairness if they religiously and not selectively practice fairness on their part but if they do not do so, then they should get a dose of their own medicine so to speak. People try to be fair in judging others but biases, on the other hand, are inevitable due to certain interests that persist and have existed through the years.
Let us admit that fairness remains subjective and was never objective from the start. Let us not use fairness to advance our own personal and political interests because it is leading us to the wrong direction instead of trying to put things in their proper perspective. Let us just learn to reflect on the way we treat others before we harp on fairness because we might be just getting what we deserve from other people.
