Wow, we got our big shocking earthquake a few nights back. My God, felt that it would never end. It was really scary. I’ve been experiencing earthquake here and abroad, but never felt like forever until the other night. It’s one of the unforgettable experiences for us here. Just by looking at the faces at the people at my house, we had one thing in common “very scared”.
Because of the intensity of the quake, we decided to try to watch on our TV stations here in the Philippines. My goodness we didn’t see any breaking news from our local TV stations or the stations from Manila. Are you kidding me? Did you know where we got some of the warnings and the size of the quake? Of course from the cable news channels abroad like CNN, BBC, FOX NEWS, AL-JAZEERA, NEW ASIA, BLOOMBERG. Can you imagine no cable news channel from the Philippines takes the news on air minutes after the quake? We have ANC and other news network that are similar to CNN here. But unfortunately they still continue on with their regular programming. Solar TV get live maybe like 45 minutes after. I was even turning on our local radio FM and AM. No live feed from them either.
Earthquake shakes the Philippines
So it got us thinking, is it because the event was outside Manila. Is that why the cable news station in Manila didn’t make any effort to feature the event? It was really frustrating that you have to know from abroad of what’s going here in our country. Like a lot of people were really tuning on to see what was the announcement from PhilVocs, is there a tsunami on the way? We saw on CNN and other cable news abroad giving a tsunami warning. It would be nice to see our very own TVstations (local & cable channel) here in the Philippines featuring people from PhilVocs and have their advice relay to people. Some people say that you can see it on Twitter of what’s going on, hey the people in the mountain don’t have twitter account and cable news channel. They just rely on our local TV and radio stations here.
Just like when they had that tsunami warning. I told my family in GenSan right away. So they were up just to make sure. Those neighbors that don’t have the access to any information just went on to sleep and just didn’t think of any danger. Well, it turned out that the tsunami warning was lifted like an hour or so after the quake. But still, what if there was really a tsunami and people didn’t know about it because no TV and radio coverage from the local stations. Many people might die then. Really its annoying to know that everything will be decided by the Manila office even the event were outside there. As everything goes here in the Philippines all the stuff had the decision of the Manila office or something.
Earthquake damage in the Philippines
I think I’m not the only one that’s frustrated about it. I saw all of those frustrations too from some of my friends on their walls on Facebook. We have the same thoughts, when something happened in Manila the stations there feature everything right away. Why can’t they do like that to the people in the other places here? Are they thinking we are just not as good as them? They should think where they get their food everyday. They don’t grow veggies and meat in the big city. Those things came from the provinces like Mindanao and the Visayas too. We work hard here like they do.
As if it’s not worth it to subscribe to the cable channel from Manila. But I know its needed too. I’m just so annoyed I guess. I have to vent a little here. Thank you guys for listening.
What do you think though? Are you okay that the stations here don’t bother to feature any event outside Manila? Let me know!