The media, the bishops and the missing ‘Pajeros’
By John Reiner M. Antiquerra
Published in PJR Reports, July-August 2011
The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) revealed last June that some Catholic bishops had received assistance funds for the purchase of motor vehicles including sports utility vehicles (SUVs). The agency cited the 2009 Commission on Audit (COA) report on PCSO, which said that the assistance was unconstitutional.
The prelates were tagged as “Pajero bishops” supposedly because the SUVs in question were Mitsubishi Pajeros. It later turned out that no Pajeros were involved but other SUV models.
Not only did the media get this fact wrong, they also failed to track the investigation of the controversy.
PJR Reports monitored the broadsheets Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star as well as TV news programs 24 Oras, Aksyon, and TV Patrol including their respective news websites from June 27 to July 14.
‘Pajero’ episode
In a June 28 Inquirer report, former board member and now PCSO Chair Margarita Juico was quoted as saying that based on the 2009 COA report on the PCSO, “six or seven Mitsubishi Pajeros” had been given to several Catholic bishops.
Juico denied that she said “Pajeros” whether when interviewed by the media or during her appearance at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings. She later on said sorry over the wrong tagging incident, but still denied that she had used the term “Pajero.”
All this could have been avoided if the media had bothered to verify what exactly was in the 2009 COA report; they could have asked Juico for a copy, for example. But they didn’t even need to do that. When PJR Reports asked COA for a copy, the agency said the report was posted online last June 29, but that a copy could have been obtained from the office prior to its availability online, since the report had been officially released earlier, on June 8.
What the 2009 COA report actually said was that “…five vehicles costing P6.940 million granted to Catholic Church archdioceses were charged to the Charity fund…” Not included in the 2009 COA report are two other cases of assistance granted some bishops in 2007 and 2010. There was no mention of any Pajeros in the COA report, only “vehicles.”
Apparently, the press did not check Juico’s claim with the said 2009 COA report. As a result, many news organizations continued using the “Pajero” tag as the controversy dragged on.
Bulletin, for example, erred in its July 7 article “CBCP: We’ll face the consequences,” which said that “In February 2009, Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos of the Diocese of Butuan asked President Arroyo, through PCSO Director Maria Fatima Valdes, for a brand new 4X4 as a ‘birthday gift’ when he turned 66 years old last year. What was bought under the P1.7 (sic) PCSO voucher was a Pajero.”
De los Pueblos received P1.7 million, and not P1.7, which would have been absurd; obviously the Bulletin’s proofreaders missed that typographical error. But the declaration that he bought a Pajero was not a typographical error. What De los Pueblos bought was a Montero, as was later established during the Senate hearings.
The Inquirer, meanwhile said on June 30 report (“Pajero bishops mum; some solons also got PCSO funds”) that they got “the names of five bishops who received a Pajero from a source in the Church, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
Only during the Senate probe did supporting documents like the checks issued for the request appear. The checks cleared up what the vehicles cost, and other supporting documents established what vehicles had been funded by the PCSO in response to the prelates’ requests for assistance.
Taking precautions
The broadcasting media, however, took their time in reporting the controversy. The story on the SUV issue had been running in the print media since late June. But only in early July did the reports appear in the TV news programs.
Instead of using the “Pajero bishop” tag, the monitored news programs used the terms “SUV” or “expensive vehicles.” The TV news programs’ coverage, however, still fell short. Their reports were more on the Senate probe and getting the reactions of the bishops involved in the issue.
However, the TV news programs also did print better by exploring other angles like the PCSO’s system of responding to health assistance requests. 24 Oras had a report on the PCSO system of processing requests for assistance on July 7, for example, which provided details on the process people asking for medical assistance have to go through to get guarantee letters from the PCSO for their hospitalization or medicine costs.
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