Cold line

CHEERS TO abs-cbnNEWS.com for a Feb. 3 report that demonstrated in practice journalism’s being a discipline of verification.

The story reported that the “24/7” hotline of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) for workers displaced by the global financial crisis, which DoLE said had operational since Jan. 30, kept ringing without anyone answering (“DOLE’s global recession ‘hotline,’ not working”). The reporter twice called the hotline: at about 4 a.m. and again at 6:19 a.m. local time.

A labor official, given the chance to explain why no one was answering its much-publicized “hotline” was quoted in the report as saying that the telephone line had failed on the same day it was supposed to have been operational. The official said that their office has yet to repair the “vital hotline” that Labor secretary Marianito Roque himself announced, but which now seems to have joined the ranks of such other publicized but non-working “hotlines” as those of the Philippine National Police and the Department of Transportation and Communication.

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