What a month. A former president convicted on plunder charges; another president, in the vortex of the ZTE controversy, staring into the abyss.

I hope you will agree with me that the sheer amount of information available to us at this particular moment in our history has educational value: that is, they teach us (if we are willing to learn) valuable (if sometimes discouraging) lessons in citizenship and governance.

Because we are forced to process so much information, we find ourselves sharing in the work of reporters and analysts and opinion-makers. (This may well be the first lesson in citizenship; in the age of the blog, we are all, potentially, members of the fourth estate.)

But forgive me, I did not set out to talk theory. All I really wanted to do was to offer a reflection on something that has bothered me in the last four weeks or so. At the risk of leaving context behind, let me get straight to the point: I worry sometimes that we can easily mistake remembering for reporting.

In the first 24 or even 36 hours after the Estrada plunder conviction came down, speculation that the decision was “1,000-plus pages long” hardened. Indeed, in this blog, some of our commenters advised or teased or taunted their partners in the conversation to read the 1,000-page decision first, before jumping to conclusions. And yet—-and here is the worrying thing—-they themselves were jumping to conclusions, because in fact the decision was “only” 262 pages long (nowhere near the 1,000-page milestone).

I hasten to add that I saw this tendency, to accept something reported in the media and remember it as stock knowledge, at work in many other forums, too, especially in text messages sent to and read by radio news commentators.

After the first Senate hearing on the NBN-ZTE arrangement, when Joey de Venecia dramatically reenacted Mike Arroyo’s alleged intervention in the deal (”Back off!”), some included a superfluous, indeed non-existent, detail in their recounting. I read in one piece (which I cannot link to) and heard in a number of conversations that the young De Venecia had 1) stood up, 2) turned to his seatmate Vice Governor Rolex Suplico, and 3) pointed a finger at him, “two inches” from his face. Fine, except that there was no standing up involved. The two witnesses were seated the whole time.

And yet—-the worrying thing—-many of my friends (reasonably intelligent, I would think, at least most of them!) had remembered it differently.

If, weeks from now, one of us “remembers” Mad (este, Maid) Miriam as walking out “in a huff” from last Wednesday’s Senate hearing, let’s all do our bit of reminding. It did not happen that way. Yes, and contrary to Miriam’s later rationalization, she did walk out. But there was no drama in the actual, the physical, act. After her outburst (against the “commissioners,” and against the Chinese who “invented,” she said, both civilization and a culture of corruption), she stopped, drank from her bottle of water, puttered about for a few seconds, and then, while another senator was talking, left her seat. No huff, all puff.

Details, I know, and even minor ones. But facts, dates, the words actually said: It is these details that make the testimony. Granted, we do not need to be journalists to be reporters (and why should we want to be?). But we all need to be faithful “reporters” to be witnesses of history.