Malacañang Shredding: Chit Chat Journalism

Screengrab from Rappler.com

JEERS TO Rappler.com for trivializing a legitimate, important story by running it as chit chat.

Using unnamed sources, Rappler published on May 21 “They’re shredding documents at the Palace?” claiming that official documents were being shredded in Malacañang a few weeks before the inauguration of Rodrigo Duterte as the next president of the Philippines. According to “Palace insiders,” documents had been ordered shredded and electronic files deleted by persons the report did not name.

“It’s a straightforward and curt order: Shred certain government documents and memoranda signed by outgoing President Benigno Aquino III and other Cabinet secretaries,” the report said. Some staffers, according to Rappler’s anonymous sources, resisted the implementation of the alleged order.

If verified and corroborated, the report could have been explosive. Under Republic Act 9470 (National Archives of the Philippines Act of 2007), government agencies are prohibited from disposing of official records unless authorized by the National Archives of the Philippines. A “veteran government official” Rappler quoted also said that “transfer of records” is also prohibited as it is considered as a form of disposing of records.

Rappler’s story was posted under its “Inside Track” section, the news website’s “intelligencer on people, events, places and everything of public interest” that often contains gossip peddled by anonymous sources.

While the report included a statement from the Office of the Executive Secretary saying that there was no directive to destroy or transfer documents from the Executive Secretary to the Malacañang Records Office, Rappler could have probed further and corroborated the claims of the insiders. The statement from the Office of the Secretary should not have sufficed and more questions could have been asked to shed light on what the anonymous sources were saying.

Processed and published as a straightforward story, the Rappler piece could have exposed an illegal activity in Malacañang if it had found the facts to prove it. But by making do with what it had, Rappler missed an opportunity to investigate what is a serious charge. Unfortunately, it could not resist the temptation to indulge in chit-chat journalism or plain old gossip.