Media endorsing candidates

United States (US) newspapers endorsed their preferred candidate for President a few days before the November 6 US elections. On the day of the elections themselves, some of the US TV networks also projected who the winner would be.

According to the American Presidency Project, of the top 100 US newspapers, 41, with a combined circulation of 10,014,980, endorsed Barack Obama while 35, representing a combined circulation of 6,475,815, endorsed Mitt Romney. Twenty-three, with a combined circulation of 7,028,874, did not endorse anyone, while one, with a circulation of 78,819, was undecided. Among the most influential dailies that endorsed candidates, and what’s more explained their preference, were The New York Times and The Washington Post. (Both endorsed Barack Obama.)

On the day of the election itself, some of the US networks also projected who the winner would be even before the votes from some of the states were in. Their projection: Barack Obama would be reelected.

The last time any of the Philippine media organizations endorsed candidates was in 1969, when ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., The Manila Times and The Manila Chronicle endorsed the candidacies of Ferdinand Marcos for President, and, because the Philippine Vice President can come from another party, that of Marcos’ running mate Fernando Lopez for Vice President. Neither Philippine newspapers nor broadcast networks have since endorsed candidates for national posts, whether for President and Vice President, for senators, or for the party list elections.

On the other hand, the practice by some Philippine media organizations of projecting who the winner or winners of a contested post will be has replaced the endorsement of candidates, in some cases resulting in complaints that the “projections” serve to conceal electoral fraud.

In past US elections, public reservations about media projections centered on the differences in time zones among US states. Because the precincts may have closed in the East Coast, but are only about to open in the Western states including Alaska and Hawaii, reporting the results in the former could have a bandwagon effect in those states where citizens have yet to cast their votes. In 2004, media projections of a George W. Bush victory were also criticized for being premature because the votes from the “swing state” of Florida had not yet come in.

These complaints have not stopped some of the US media’s projecting who the winner will be, as was evident during the recent November 6 elections. Apparently, however, they exercised greater care in crunching the numbers. Cable News Network (CNN) projected an Obama victory only when the remaining popular and electoral votes in the states where the votes had not yet been counted, even if they turned out to be all for Romney, would no longer make a difference. The pro-Republican Party Fox News similarly projected an Obama victory despite its own preference for Romney.

Projecting who the winners would be in the Philippine is often presumed to be driven by either the media organization’s preferred outcomes; individual media practitioners’ being in the payrolls of the candidates they project to be the winners; or both—and worse, is presumed to be in furtherance of validating the results of electoral fraud by presenting “trends” that may not be representative of  the actual ballots cast. In the Philippine context, projecting the results of elections may have done more harm than good.

The Philippine media’s non-endorsement of candidates is primarily based on the media organizations’ fear of antagonizing the winner or winners should they have endorsed the losing candidates. Most of the decision makers in media would probably explain the end of the practice as a demand of  the supposed need for media organizations to be perceived as “objective” and neutral. Some practitioners also argue that openly endorsing a candidate on, say, the eve of an election, would affect their credibility.

What this amounts to, however, is to make media organizations which actually have preferences appear uncommitted, thus misleading readers/viewers/listeners into believing that what they’re getting are disinterested reports and comments.

The 2010 elections were instructive. Because some  practitioners who not only favored certain candidates, but who in some cases were actually involved in the campaigns of their preferences,  appeared to be neutral, their readers/viewers/listeners were almost completely in the dark about their favorite columnist’s or commentator’s pieces’ not necessarily being based on objective analysis. In some cases, the preferences of the media organizations themselves, while evident in their reporting and commentary, could be discerned only by a very few readers, viewers or listeners.

What Philippine experience has established is that no media organization is so neutral that it doesn’t have a preference during elections, which after all can and often do affect the commercial and political interests of the corporate media.

A media organization’s endorsement, even if mostly based on those interests rather than on objective analysis, alerts the public on what to expect from its coverage and commentary. An endorsement also provides the public with a framework with which to evaluate the media organization’s coverage not only of  elections, but of other issues as well. It also provides the public with a guide in understanding why the media organization emphasizes this or that issue in its coverage rather than another, why it covers it  in the way it does, and why it’s giving some candidates this much air time and others less.

The country will be electing senators, party list representatives, and members of the House of Representatives and other local officials in 2013. A clear declaration on the part of the media organizations on their preferences—perhaps by the tail end of the campaign, and in time for election day in May—in terms of support for what the candidates stand for, or, in the context of the public outcry against political dynasties, the need to enlarge the field of candidates from which citizens can make a choice, would do much towards infusing some intelligence—and on the part of the media, some honesty—in both Philippine elections and their coverage.