THE controversy over the magazine cover splurge of Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco should deserve scant notice. It’s too petty an issue to be allowed to get in the way of seriously attending to the country’s tourism concerns. Nevertheless, for this column, it deeply touches a soft spot.
It was the early 1960s and I was into my learning years in journalism. I had not had any formal schooling in the profession, but couldn’t let go of whatever it was that kept me glued to the pursuit of the writing craft. Denied of any writing credentials, I certainly would not qualify for enlistment in any of the leading weekly magazines at the time. I needed to double up as personal aide to a publisher-editor of a small monthly entertainment magazine to be able to land the assistant editorship of the publication.
It was good, anyway. Early on, I was exposed to the hard knocks of journalism: freedom of expression is only as good as the publisher allows you, and such consent necessarily has to be limited by the publisher’s capacity in every aspect of the publishing enterprise, not the least of which being, to be blunt, money.
You need money to publish. And you source that money from anywhere possible.
The point I am driving at is that in the publication business, selling the magazine cover has become standard operating procedure (SOP) from as far back as my initiation into the writing profession.
It’s been legit. No debate on the issue.
Especially in the case of trade magazines which do not stand to survive on circulation alone, extra financial sources are necessary.
Ask any such magazine and among the SOPs in its operation that it will admit is selling the cover.
This is not to imply that Secretary Frasco must have indeed bought the magazine cover in this dispute. First, it is not in her character. Second, somebody who buys her way into a magazine cover certainly makes sure of a maximum pretty exposure. The case is not so with the secretary’s cover photo, which evidently is just a snapshot of the lady in one of her mundane moments, albeit in formal costume, taken with nary a regard for glamor photography and cropped to fit into a haphazard collage made to pass for an overview of Philippine tourism.
We can conjecture that well-meaning friends, sincerely wanting to help project Secretary Franco’s serious work, had initiated the magazine cover splurge, not conscious that such work requires delicate elan, taste and artistry.
So now, we’re into the Frasco fiasco.
In a Facebook post, one photographer called anomalous the feature of Secretary Frasco on the cover of a magazine, arguing that it is not the secretary that draws in tourists.
Here is how the photographer placed the issue: “You made us shoot almost 320 tourist spots from Region 1 to Region 13; 236,000 photos, 6,500 video materials, and this is all you would use, DOT.”
The complaint instantly betrays an inherent bad faith and malice. The photographer called out Secretary Frasco for promoting her person instead of the tourist attractions he and his team captured in photos and videos.
Anybody discerns the catch in the criticism?
If those photos and videos were the ones publicized, who would have gotten the credit?
The photographer!
As simple as that.
The photographer was mad not because Secretary Frasco was featured on the cover but because he should be the one to get the glory for promoting Philippine tourism.
Self-serving.
Envy.
Pettiness.
Whatever you call it.
But that’s all there is to the photographer’s chagrin.
A nonissue when you come to think of it.
In fact, the photographer must have soon realized his mistake in posting his complaint that in just a while, he deleted it.
But it had fallen into the hands of Rappler, and that made all the difference. We are suddenly witness to the bloating of a tiny molehill into a monster mountain. Such minute item as the Frasco name on a store sign in Cebu is magnified to form part of the deluge of aspersions of corruption in public office, affluence and avarice in lifestyle, abuse of authority, self-promotion and other self-serving practices that are heaped upon Secretary Frasco to the extent of demonizing her in the eyes of her constituents.
Before long, social media was abuzz with a swarm of content creators parroting the Rappler line. And when ultimately legitimate news outlets joined in the fray, it necessarily expanded the breadth of the controversy.
So, the question must surface now.
What crime did Secretary Frasco commit to deserve wanton media chastisement?
The Department of Tourism (DOT) vehemently denied it had a hand at all in the disputed cover feature; denied it provided any material for publication to the concerned magazine; denied it issued any money for the cost of the publication.
Secretary Frasco’s cover feature is, according to the DOT, entirely on the magazine’s say-so.
Indeed, it should be.
The controversial cover layout is far from one done according to aesthetics. It does not conform to standard ones whose elements, although varying from one another, form a composite determined by a singleness of theme, in this instance, Philippine tourism.
In other words, if the cover layout were a handiwork of the DOT, its elements should have been the product of meticulous composition right at the pictorial stage where Secretary Frasco in appropriate Filipiniana costume is photographed in the backdrop of a Philippine tourist attraction.
In the controversial cover, the elements do not make a thematically determined composite according to standards of esthetics but rather impress as an arbitrary juxtaposition of irrelevant images.
In the case of the photograph of Secretary Frasco, it is a big letdown for not being made to make her look her best.
That’s not something you do for a cover pictorial.
On these considerations, the brouhaha should have ended pronto.
But no. It continued to be bloated out of proportion. From the looks of it, it’s not going to end soon.
A statement from the secretary’s office has a way of explaining why, and it will not harm if we listen.
The statement betrays that she is up against formidable enemies intent on eliminating her from the job. Of course, the latent intention is to insert themselves into the tourism post which instantly promises enormous gains.
Secretary Frasco is simply admirable for her utmost circumspection. Instead of resorting to a combative stance, she chose to exercise civility and proper decorum fit for a respectable member of the president’s Cabinet.
Secretary Frasco did issue a stinging indictment of her detractors, but in a manner couched in an amazingly precise and polite intellectual verbiage.
Witness this:
“To collapse governance reporting into accusations of self-promotion is to misunderstand how government institutions function...
“Secretary Frasco’s leadership reflects her experience as a former chief local executive.
“Her consistent advocacy for local governments and host communities stems from lived reality. This bottom-up approach insists that destinations and residents share in tourism development. It strengthens local governments. It disperses opportunity. It challenges overly centralized models.
“This moment extends beyond one official. It asks whether Philippine public service still has room for leaders who are visible because the job demands it, candid because the issues require it and reform-driven because old approaches are no longer sufficient. If visibility is consistently conflated with vanity, the lesson to future leaders is clear. Do less. Say less. Disrupt less. That may preserve comfort. But it will not strengthen institutions.”
Very well said, Ma’am.