A Critique on John Nery’s
“Early pregnancy not always girl’s fault”
Our society faces a lot of social issues and one of them is teenage pregnancy, which is a common
issue across the globe. On February 23 2020, John Nery wrote the article entitled “Early pregnancy not
always girl’s fault”, and it got published in Philippine Daily Inquirer. It simply states that there are other
reasons as to why girls get into early pregnancy and that the entire blame shouldn’t be put on them
since it isn’t always their fault.
According to the article, pregnancy among Filipino girls are becoming more common, with the
number of births by young mothers aged 10-14 rising by 63% from 2011 to 2018. Though the influences
such as internet, social media, TV and etc. may indeed influence young people’s behaviour, pregnancy
and risky sexual behaviours are not all the fault of the young. For instance, most teenage pregnancies
are not consensual. Aside from that, though teenage pregnancies among girls aged 10-14 increased,
those pregnancies among girls aged 15-19 decreased. Juan Antonio Perez said that “individual” and
“institutional” factors were behind the contrasting trends between the two age groups. Such factors
include early onset of menstruation, lack of education, exposure to risky behaviors on the internet and
in the girls’ circle of friends, and provision of access to family planning services for the younger
population. Regardless of current sexual attitudes or behavior, what young people need most of all is
information, delivered by knowledgeable and, more importantly, credible, adults who will share the
facts without resorting to moral judgment or catering to myths and misconceptions. However, this
information will be no use if young people can’t access information or services on family planning from
public facilities.
The given evidences in the article are factual and the exact same lines in the citation could also be
seen in other credible sources, such as the GMA News. The writer included almost all of the information
seen from the other source, and put a few more information and his opinion about the evidences he
gave and cited. However, that could only be seen in the first and last part of the article, meaning that
the middle part of the article is full of citation. Despite of that, he wrote statements that further
strengthened his title’s argument.
In conclusion, early pregnancy isn’t always the girl’s fault since there are other reasons why teenage
pregnancies are prevalent today, such as non-consensual sex and provision of access to information or
services on family planning from public facilities. It’s really saddening how there are still a lot of cases of
teenage pregnancies in our country, even at the present time. Hopefully, more actions and solutions will
be presented in the near future in order to solve this ingoing issue.
Angela Marie G. Tabaldo
XI-Darwin
A Critique on Alfred P. Dalizon’s
“Why journalists should not be made witnesses in drug raids”
On February 25 2020, Alfred P. Dalizon wrote an article entitled “Why journalists should not be made
witnesses in drug raids” on People’s Journal. In here, he told his experience about being made as a
witness in a drug raid, and told his and his colleagues’ sentiments when it comes to being made witness
in these raids.
Journalists who cover police anti-narcotics raids are required to appear in court under the
Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. Alfred P. Dalizon could say that being made as a witness
in, say a raid on a secret shabu laboratory where drug lords and their employees are arrested, is really
dangerous to one reporter’s life, work and health. He cited his own experience when a police generalfriend of his asked him to join him in a raid and then asked to be a witness after the operation. He was
summoned to the court to give a testimony, which potentially could’ve affected his health if he boarded
the passenger jeep that transported some of the recovered drug evidence to the court, and it had left
him fully exhausted, tired, feeling harassed and somehow frightened by the fact that he had to come
face-to-face with arrested drug lords after returning from Camp Crame. In short, reporters are
compelled to appear before the court, thus interrupting their work and most importantly, consuming
precious time they need to gather news in their assigned beats. Not only that, members of the media
are literally being asked to testify against dangerous drug personalities who have the money and
influence to order a hit job, even though they are already in jail. With this, a media man’s life is being
put in peril.
The information under the laws given in the article matched what the author put. For the most part
of the article, he cited his own experience to give testimony to his stand in the article or the title itself,
which is somewhat necessary since he’s from the media team himself. He also included the hearsays
from his friends who work in the police force, but by the word ‘hearsay’, you can’t really verify if what
they said to him is true because there aren’t any other articles about it. Lastly, the idea of a media
man’s life being put in peril, as said in the last concluding statement of the article, is also factual since
there is a case of a media person being threatened by an assaulted drug dealer since they testified as
witness in the operation.
In conclusion, journalists are there to record events and not to testify since it would mean that
they’re already taking a side in the cases. This is an ethical problem in the side of journalists and I,
myself, agree that there should be actions made regarding this. This article provided enough evidences
to answer its title’s argument, and hopefully amendments will be made.