What to Learn from Jed Madela's 'Monkey' Controversy

"Let us practice responsible journalism po sana." -Jed Madela

It's a sad fact that because of a single social media post, Jed Madela gets involved in a huge controversy.

The story: he posted on Facebook about a bunch of monkeys. Got misinterpreted coz people thought he was talking about people from ASAP. Then when he cleared out that he was talking about some personnels in Cagayan De Oro airport, some locals wanted to ban him in the city. Full story at PEP.ph

In his interview with PEP.ph, he said that writers should practice responsible journalism.

Case In Point
The challenge is not just to the writers to practice responsible journalism. There is also a challenge to every human being to practice responsible usage of social media. Aside from that, a challenge to tame the tongue so as to model modesty and respect.

To actually call people monkeys is not post-worthy in social media. This applies especially to singers like Madela with thousands of followers.

We Are For...

For this matter we would like to clarify that we are not against the very talented and the country's pride Jed Madela. Because with all due respect, it's not easy to handle people in the airport who would not treat you well while you're already stressed enough. And all you're thinking of is to get to your seat on the plane.

What we are for is this: responsible use of social media. To think before you click. Because there are better ways to use social media rather than just social ranting. And there are better people to air out grievance rather than the public on social media. There is such a thing as actual friends.

Madela is just human. Don't easily pass judgment on him. But we can easily pinpoint the lessons we can learn from this news.

Avoid calling people names. Even when they mistreat you, you'd rather be blamelesa for your own good character.

Think before you click. Especially when eyes are on you.

We'll end with this appeal: to the people im Cagayan De Oro, it is very clear that he did not mean the locals were the monkeys so do not hate him.