Journalism Review Archives | Page 120 of 162

Death Penalty: Legal, Rights Issues Ignored

HIS PROMISE to eradicate crime in a span of three to six months was at the forefront of President-Elect Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign. Known for his tough stance on crime, Duterte announced in a May 15 press conference that he would urge Congress to restore the death penalty, preferably...

Duterte’s Proposed EO on FOI: Not Very Well-Informed

THE PHILIPPINE press has been promoting the passage of a Freedom of Information (FOI) act for years, the idea being that if there’s a law that would ensure transparency and access to government information, citizens could monitor government more closely and help check corruption, while the media could...

All the President-Elect’s Men: Who Are They?

A PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENT or even president-elect publicly identifying the people he wants to play a key role in his administration may well serve purpose that the press could help accomplish. These announcements, perhaps unintentionally, serve as trial balloons that could prompt scrutiny by the public about the incoming...

Misleading headline

JEERS TO the Philippine Daily Inquirer for using the misleading verb “snub” in a report on the proclamation of the incoming president and vice president which Davao City Mayor and president-elect Rodigo Duterte’s skipped. The Inquirer had “Duterte snubs proclamation” for its May 31 banner story, which reported on...

Disaster Preparedness in the Time of La Niña

CHEERS TO ABS-CBN 2’s Failon Ngayon for looking into the state of government’s pending flood-control projects as summer segued into the rainy season. The Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) announced the onset of the rainy season Tuesday, May 24. The weather bureau expects the El...

Election Canvassing: Explaining the Rules

CHEERS TO CNN Philippines and Rappler for reporting the rules of the canvassing by Congress of the votes for president and vice president as the legislature began its count on Wednesday, May 25. CNNPhilippines.com posted “Rules of Canvassing: How does Congress do the official count of votes for...

Malacañang Shredding: Chit Chat Journalism

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...

Mischaracterizing Purisima: Arrested, Nabbed or Surrendered?

JEERS TO several media organizations for the headlines in reports that mischaracterized the “arrest” — or “surrender” — of former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Alan Purisima, who was taken into custody by the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) on May 20 at the NAIA...

“IT Experts”: Disingenuous Use of Single, Anonymous Source

JEERS TO The Standard for running a one-sided report based on unverified information from a single anonymous source. On May 23, 2016, The Standard published “IT experts: Servers shipped to Laguna to rig vote” on its front page. The report quoted unnamed “IT experts” who claimed that the...

Exposing the Perversion of the Party-List System

CHEERS TO the Philippine Daily Inquirer for looking into the state of the party-list system. In “Perversion of party-list system hit; SC blamed,” the Inquirer reported how the party-list system, which was supposed to improve the representation of marginalized sectors in the House of Representatives, has been “perverted”...