Press Releases in the Guise of News

JEERS TO the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Manila Standard for publishing single-sourced stories on the House of Representatives’ supposed completion of President Rodrigo Duterte’s legislative agenda. Both reports come off as unedited, self-serving press releases from House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s propaganda machine.

The Inquirer ran “House Delivers on Du30 Agenda says GMA” while the Standard published “Rody’s agenda fulfilled under Arroyo” on December 14.  Both were on Macapagal-Arroyo’s speech before Congress adjourned for the Christmas break, in which she said that “as of yesterday, the House can report with confidence that we have already passed the President’s entire legislative agenda as he announced in his 2018 State of the Nation Address.”

The Standard report listed, among the bills passed, the Bangsamoro Basic Law, the Security of Tenure Act, the Utilization of the Coco Levy Act, the NationalLand Use act, the Creation of the Department of Disaster Resilience, and the RiceTariffication. The report added that “Under Arroyo, the House has processed about 1,361 bills, approved 492 measures of which 95 have been passed into law.”

The quote from Arroyo was in the same spirit of self-promotion: “It’s an honor to be House Speaker, and a position that I do not take lightly. And I thank you all for your support and cooperation. As you have seen, my leadership and management style as Speaker is still similar as when I was President.”

The Inquirer was more muted, with the quote from Arroyo expressing her concern to support President Duterte’s legacy. She said the House will now focus on its oversight function in her remaining months as Speaker to help the administration implement the laws.

A review of legislation passed in either House is legitimate news. But it should be done without the prompting of a press release or appearing to be one. Those assigned to Congress should be keeping track of bills filed, following up on the process, the issues taken up in debates among senators or representatives. The text of the laws should be scrutinized to evaluate the impact it will have, whether implementation will require further rules and regulations. The listing of theHouse-approved bills could have served the public better with some information on how these bills were moving in the Senate; or given some evaluation of the actual benefits to be gained for Filipinos. But the reports were obviously written as puff and boost pieces for Arroyo – given hardly any effort to disguise a press release as news.