Veteran publisher-editor Vergel Santos backs me in face of Corona canard

By Raïssa Robles

I am greatly honored to have my former editor Vergel Santos give me his full support in the face of being publicly called a “pekeng manunulat” by the ex-Chief Justice Renato Corona during his three-hour diatribe to the Filipino nation last week.

UPDATE, 6:35 p.m. June 1, 2012: Because Facebook disabled  my personal account without any warning or reason, my hubby Alan has put up a Fan page for me.

Unfortunately I can’t access it because I have no personal FB account. LOL.

Alan will be posting my articles there. Pls go to this link to join –

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Raissa-Robles/338451912878886

Thanks –

Raissa

Vergel trained me as a young reporter to sniff out the news and to tell it very simply. He is a trustee of the watchdog Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and concurrently the publisher and editorial-board chairman of BusinessWorld newspaper.

I am especially touched by the following paragraphs he wrote in the shared column, In Media Res, since it’s coming from a blunt editor like Vergel:

Indeed, she is one of the few genuine journalists populating cyberspace—few, that is, relative to the hordes of impostors who have set up shop there. Under her belt are 25 years of serious, highly competent practice. Both she and husband Alan worked for newspapers I edited, and I haven’t stopped following them, proudly.

BusinessWorld replaced the late Raul Locsin’s Business Day newspaper, where I began my journalism career. One of the lies being spread about me, which was texted to my fellow reporters’ mobile phones, was that Locsin got mad at me for plagiarizing. None of the reporters who got the text believed it. They told me about it.

Before I go on, I would like to thank ABS-CBN News site for taking me on as an independent blogger.

Here is Vergel’s story –

A walking smoke bomb
By Vergel O. Santos / Posted on 01-06-2012

ANY NEWS subject who likes to hide simply cannot abide Raissa Robles: she’s a walking smoke bomb.

And she has never been so challenged, she herself admits, as during the impeachment trial of the chief justice, Renato Corona. In fact, even now that Corona has already been judged guilty and consequently booted out of the Supreme Court as well as barred from holding public office, for Robles the challenge has not ended: she remains under attack from an enemy mostly disguised or shrouded, or, at any rate hidden, although an enemy unable all the same to conceal being Corona partisans.

Where Robles shoots with facts and reasoned readings of them, her enemy snipes back by calling her names and throwing accusations with no basis in fact—accusations in fact too wild-sounding to be credible. For instance, she has been called shoplifter and plagiarist, two names easy enough to make stick if deserved: Show the piece of furniture lifted (yes, the supposed crime scene was that kind of shop) and the writings appropriated (incidentally too, Corona’s Supreme Court has tried to whitewash the case of a plagiarist member, but the stain just won’t come off—in fact the plagiarist is likely to be the next impeached).

To read the rest, please click on this…

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