Covering CoViD-19 Archives | Page 5 of 7

Covering the CoViD-19 Pandemic

EDITORIAL: Crisis in government communication calls for media to step up

COMMUNICATION IS vital to democratic governance in normal times. But it is even more essential during and in the aftermath of disasters, political, social and economic crises, and such public emergencies as the continuing COVID-19 threat to the health and well-being of the Philippine population. The citizenry needs to...

Still on COVID-19: A closer look at DOH mass testing

THE COVID-19 pandemic may have caught the world off-guard, but with the right combination of resources and sound policy-making, some countries have addressed the peril more effectively than others. South Korea is often cited as a model in mass testing, without having to impose a strict lockdown. In the...

GIA not Gallup Inc.: Parroting dubious surveys

PUBLIC OPINION polls are supposed to reflect the people’s sentiments. Thus, polls are an obvious source of information, reviewed and studied by interested parties, like governments, taking their cues from the public pulse. When it comes to the satisfaction levels expressed about government performance, media reports should help the...

The news that looks ahead

THE PUBLIC has had little guidance about what to expect after the extended lockdown period for Luzon, which was previously set to end on April 30 but is now scheduled to end on May 15. As in previous weeks, media reports have been focused on the count of COVID-19...

The Landscape of Information

ON ANY given day, the Filipino public can expect to watch at least four televised briefings providing updates on the COVID-19 situation as well as the actions undertaken by different government agencies. But because they’re not a coordinated communication effort, the information clutter fails to clarify the state of...

Focus on the Forgotten: Sad state of the NCMH

MEDIA COVERAGE of the pandemic has rightly placed medical professionals and all health care workers front and center in the news. The group’s vulnerability to the disease is obvious as they provide key services and hold the first line of defense against the spread of the disease. Cheers to...

Prison outbreak: PCIJ report warns of risk of COVID-19 contagion in the jail system

CHEERS TO the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) for a report posted on April 10 warning of the imminent spread of COVID-19 in one of “the most crowded correctional systems in the world.” Overcrowding Arrests have spiked since the imposition of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon....

The importance of information in time of pandemic

CMFR CHEERS Cielito Habito for deftly detecting a failure in the government approach to fight COVID-19. From the start of the crisis, none of the public officials seemed inclined to harness the power of information technology to solve fundamental problems orenhance the effectiveness of its responses. His column in...

Lost in the news: The purposes of testing

IT IS not easy for reporters these days to try and make sense of the science of testing the new corona virus, with official sources taking on different, sometimes contradictory, views from one another. Nothing is so disheartening for an already anxious public than to be confronted with so...

LGUs in action: Cheers to the cities

THE REPORTS on the cities of Iloilo and Baguio provide a record of best practices of local governments outside the capital. Local government officials elsewhere, along with civic and business leaders, deserve to learn about more stories like this, if we are to survive the peril of COVID-19 and...