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Correct me if I’m wrong but most other rape victims who successfully sent their rapists to jail do not enter into a compromise with the convict to overturn the conviction. Because of Smith’s conviction, Nicole got her dignity back. And I’m still trying to understand why she had to lose it so quickly again.

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Reading and rereading Nicole’s it, I am convinced that, more than anything else, it was meant to depict Smith in a benign light, that he was not the monster that this case has made him out to be.

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Journalists who blog and who value their profession have no choice but to navigate the blogging terrain carefully. As I found out in my case, being also a blogger eventually clashed with my values and instincts as a journalist. It’s tough to play by the rules in a game that practically has none.

CARLOS H. CONDE   A blogger has been having this endless wet dream about blogging being a threat to the mainstream media. He exploits every mistakes of journalists and the press to promote himself and blogging as the alternative, as if blogging and journalism are competing against each other in the first place.

CARLOS H. CONDE   Blogging about the Valley Golf brawl allowed me to let off steam. What that did was give me visceral pleasure – I hate arrogant pricks, particularly arrogant pricks who hold office — but it waylaid my instincts as a journalist.

CARLOS H. CONDE   Bloggers who benefited from the power of blogging to correct the injustice done to them have a duty to pay society back. And the only way I can think of is for them to raise hell, too, about the injustice done to other people.

CARLOS H. CONDE   A Cabinet secretary and peace negotiator condoning the violence his son and friends were inflicting on an old man and a 14-year-old boy? By doing nothing to stop the beating, Pangandaman Sr. betrayed his skewed ethical and moral sense. President Arroyo should fire him.

CARLOS H. CONDE     What other ignominious crap will Corazon Aquino inflict upon us? An icon of democracy and moral leadership? Hah! She is an icon of everything that is wrong with this country.

JOURNALISM  By Carlos H. Conde |  No matter how many of us view the action of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at Bush, this is undeniable: His rage is rooted in his own experience not so much as a journalist but as an Iraqi citizen.

POLITICS  By Carlos H. Conde |  In another time and under different circumstances, I would embrace the legendary Manny Pacquiao as the national hero that many Filipinos view him to be. But right now, he is such a national distraction.

PRESS FREEDOM   By Carlos H. Conde |  A Right of Reply law will undermine the Bill of Rights. It will intimidate journalists and prevent them from performing their watchdog functions because the potential cost of doing their job is rather high – fine, imprisonment or closure.

HEALTH | BUSINESS  By Carlos H. Conde |  What convinced me that aspartame is not safe are not just the studies that have found its link to cancer but also the efforts of Donald Rumsfield and the biotech giant Monsanto in ramming this product down our throats.

POLITICS   By Carlos H. Conde  |  Ignorance, or not being in the loop, has become a requisite for the job. Plausible deniability is a key part of the press secretary’s job. As such, he should be the least informed, not to mention the least loquacious, member of the cabinet.

By Carlos H. Conde |  Perhaps with the exception of the mosquito press during the martial-law years, the Philippine press has never quite shown us why it deserves to be called the “fourth estate.”

By Carlos H. Conde  |  If the US military can have its way in countries that are less friendly to Washington – Pakistan, for instance – how much more in the Philippines where Americans are given far greater access, whose people bestow on them a tremendous amount of trust that they probably will not find elsewhere?