Journalist or ad solicitor?

NAMED AS one of three media personalities who allegedly accepted bribes from a government corporation involved in the diversion of pork barrel funds to non-existent NGOs, TV5’s Erwin Tulfo admitted accepting over a quarter of a million pesos from the corporation, but argued that the amount was payment for advertisements the corporation had placed in his program. 

Mr. Tulfo did not say if he solicited the advertisements, or if it was the government corporation’s initiative to ask him to accept its ads. Although the whistle-blower who named Mr. Tulfo quoted the head of the corporation as declaring that it was necessary to “pay off” the media in exchange for immunity from criticism, by declaring that he indeed received the money, Mr. Tulfo evidently saw nothing wrong with the transaction.

In addition to his seeming unfamiliarity with the ethics of the profession he has been practicing for a number of years, Mr. Tulfo probably thought there was nothing wrong with the practice also because he’s familiar with how broadcasting and print reporters’ and commentators’ soliciting and accepting advertising from various sources has been practically institutionalized in some media organizations.

Many reporters in some community newspapers are not paid for the work they do as journalists, but for the advertising they manage to solicit. The practice is even more common in radio and television, particularly among blocktimers – those individuals who buy blocks of airtime from radio and TV stations so they can put together a news and commentary program for sponsorship, usually by political and business personalities and groups.

The consequences for both the media and the media audiences are as devastating as the impact of such other forms of media corruption as direct bribery, although it may be argued that placing advertisements in a program whose reporting and commentary the advertiser expects to be favorable is a form of bribery.

A conflict of interest necessarily ensues between the public’s right to impartial, accurate and fair information on the one hand, and on the other, the advertiser’s expectation of favorable media treatment, which in most cases prevails over public interest. Because the transactions between media practitioner and advertiser creates a relationship inherently biased for the latter, the result is one-sided, biased information and commentary in favor of the advertiser and the public’s consequent inability to arrive at informed opinions on the issues it is usually called upon to decide in a democracy. This is particularly true in the communities, where such issues of public concern as environmental destruction, disaster preparedness, criminality, and public sector corruption have a direct impact on people’s lives.

Meanwhile, those media practitioners who are not paid as reporters, columnists, or commentators who can only be paid out of advertising commissions, or the blocktimers who depend on the advertising their programs generate, often without their knowing it also surrender in favor of advertiser interest the freedom and initiative media practice demands.  By surrendering the right and responsibility of autonomy, the media practitioner is transformed into no more than the pawn and mouthpiece of limited interests. The resulting loss of practitioner credibility affects the entire media community, and contributes to public cynicism with, and distrust of, the news media.

These are among the reasons why those media organizations that take the task of informing the public seriously draw a firm organizational distinction between their editorial and advertising departments. A media practitioner who reports and comments on issues of public concern, and who therefore feeds the citizenry that’s supposedly sovereign in a democracy the information and analysis it needs, cannot at the same time be soliciting advertisements from the very personalities, groups and interests in the news he or she has to report or comment on. He or she can be one or the other; but he or she can’t be both without inflicting serious damage on the public’s right to accurate, fair and impartial information, commentary and analysis.