The 2008 SONA: Predictable coverage of a ho-hum event
Media provided the usual reports praising and criticizing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s last State of the Nation Address (SONA)–without offering much-needed analyses of the July 28 speech as well as the issues it raised.
The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) monitor from July 27 to 30 found that most of the reports in both print and broadcast focused on the response of her allies and detractors to Arroyo’s facts and figures.
The reports lacked the analysis and backgrounding needed to aid people in understanding the implications to the present situation of the public policies she said would continue, among them the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and the Value Added Tax (VAT), or the politics behind her decision to support natural family planning.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer noted discordant employment figures from different government offices in its front-page reports “Jeers from foes but a near-perfect score from top ally” (July 29) and “How GMA fared in previous SONAs” (July 28), but did not try to explain the inconsistency.
Neither did any media organization bother to confirm if the likes of Alan Amanse, the former fisherman turned whaleshark watch officer, along with the other human props Arroyo trotted out, were indicative of the country’s present condition.
Red carpet treatment
Much of the SONA coverage of the three major dailies (Inquirer, The Philippine Star, and the Manila Bulletin) and news programs of the two top networks, ABS-CBN 2 (TV Patrol and Bandila) and GMA-7 (24 Oras and Saksi) was limited to an account of the events prior to and after Arroyo’s speech.
The press highlighted the SONA as a red carpet event in which the politicians and their wives’ clothes were given detailed coverage. A particular case was that of the Nagtipunan mayor of the Bugkalot tribe in
The Bulletin even had a full page photo display of the women politicians who came in ternos—complete with the names of their respective couturiers.
Looking back
To be sure there was an effort to provide a detailed background on Arroyo’s previous SONAs. Abs-cbnnews.com and the Inquirer, for example, listed the themes, key points, promises, and accomplishments by the President from year to year. But the effort came to naught as the flood of figures without explanation did not foster a better understanding of how well or how badly Arroyo had met expectations and fulfilled past promises.
The blogsite of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), meanwhile, provided the few bright spots in a generally ho-hum, coverage through the articles “Hunger, poverty figures the President chose to ignore” and “SONA pickiness with numbers leaves state of economy hazy” last July 28, which challenged the validity of the data in the 2008 SONA Technical Report prepared by the Presidential Management Staff. PCIJ’s “Covering the SONA ritual” article, on the other hand, noted how the press considers Arroyo’s SONA more of a predictable political event rather than an opportunity for her to assess where the country is and to indicate where it’s going.
Abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak also reported in the article “GMA’s SONA stats don’t show complete picture” how Arroyo did not provide the context that would have made the data she presented meaningful.
The SONA coverage was in short as predictable as the event itself.
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