Monitoring the coverage of the May ’07 elections: Will Media Do a Better Job This Time?

Monitoring the coverage of the May ’07 elections
Will Media Do a Better Job This Time?
By Venus L. Elumbre and Hector Bryant L. Macale

WITH THE elections just two months away, is the public getting relevant information about the senatorial and party-list candidates from the press? Is the press helping Filipinos decide who to vote for on May 14? Or are voters just getting more confusing and misleading information?
“The news media can be crucial in this decision, not by partisanship but first and last by providing the information and the interpretation that can help the electorate understand what is happening, what is at stake, and who to vote for,” said Luis V. Teodoro, deputy director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), in a roundtable discussion on monitoring elections coverage last March 5 at the Ateneo Professional Schools in Makati City.
Organized by CMFR with support from the Canadian Embassy, the meeting gathered journalists, leaders of media organizations, civil society groups, and the academe to discuss the monitoring of the news media coverage of the elections as well as how the press could improve its elections reporting.
In the discussion, Teodoro, who also teaches journalism at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication (UP CMC) where he once served as dean,  presented the findings of CMFR’s “Citizens’ Media Monitor” project in 2004, which monitored the campaign and elections coverage in the last presidential elections. It was the first time that citizen groups were involved in a broader media watch of press coverage and that television was included in the monitor of elections coverage. For the first time also, CMFR released its findings during the campaign to assist news organizations in assessing their own performance.
Positive developments
Through the Citizens’ Media Monitor, CMFR validated long-held assumptions about the limitations of the Philippine media coverage of the elections. Too focused on the presidential candidates, the media gave little attention to the Senate, party-list, and local elections. Policy and development issues were not well-covered as well.
However, CMFR noted positive developments in the 2004 coverage. During the campaign period, several television news and public affairs programs engaged candidates in a discussion of their stand on issues such as the death penalty and abortion. No organizational bias was evident in the coverage, as the leading presidential candidates were given fair treatment by the media.
CMFR, which has been monitoring media performance during elections since 1992, is again monitoring the news media coverage of the 2007 senatorial and party-list campaign and elections, with the help of Prof. Danilo Arao and journalism students from UP CMC.
The 2007 monitor includes six television news programs and the front pages of the Manila Bulletin, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star. The six news programs monitored for the project are TV Patrol World (ABS-CBN 2), Bandila (ABS-CBN), 24 Oras (GMA-7), Saksi (GMA-7), Sentro (ABC-5), and Teledyaryo (NBN-4). The remaining broadsheets and news programs continue to be subjects of regular monitoring. As in 2004, CMFR issues an analytical report every two weeks, which is uploaded on its website (www.cmfr-phil.org). CMFR also electronically sends the reports to media organizations and other interested groups during the period.

Resources needed
During the roundtable discussion, Malaya columnist Ellen Tordesillas and May Rodriguez of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) suggested that tabloids and radio be included in the elections monitor because of their impact on the masses.
Because monitoring tabloids and radio requires huge resources, this can be explored for future monitoring efforts, said Teodoro. Ateneo de Manila University journalism professor Chay Florentino Hofileña said that the CMFR could team up with other institutions to include tabloids and radio programs in the monitor.
Participants in the discussion agreed in the finding of the CMFR’s 2004 monitor that the media provided very little background on most election-related news. Pushing for contextualization in TV news reporting is difficult because of lack of planning in election coverage, said Jade Lopez, ABC-5 News and Public Affairs manager for operations.
Vergel Santos, chair of the editorial board of BusinessWorld, said that instead of looking at the elections as a race or an event in itself, the media should determine what issues and subjects to focus on in the May 14 elections. Santos, former chair of the CMFR board, suggested that the media look into the profiles of the campaign managers of the candidates and discuss the credibility of the Commission on Elections as an election referee.
GMA-7 news operations manager Grace dela Peña Reyes said it would be difficult for TV to provide that kind of contextualization given the limited airtime for newscasts. Better contextualization, she said, can be provided by the public affairs programs.

A market-driven industry
A problem, however, as the results of the 2004 elections monitor showed, has been the delayed airing of these programs, as well as some newscasts.
GMA-7 reporter Howie Severino said, “The basic problem is that (media) is a market-driven industry and they’re looking at audience numbers, ratings, and revenue numbers.”
But Santos said the TV medium should strike a balance between going for profit and doing its mission.
Aside from commercial interests, politicians control the way the media shape the news, observed Vincent Lazatin of the Transparency and Accountability Network, an anti-corruption coalition of multi-sectoral organizations. Lazatin said the media should pursue its own agenda, not those of the politicians. He added, “They make us believe that it is a GMA (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) versus FPJ/Estrada (Fernando Poe Jr./Joseph Estrada) fight when it is not.”
Hofileña agreed, saying that the framing of the coverage itself is focused on the administration versus opposition angle. The media, she said, should shift to reporting on the track record of the candidates, what they promised in 2004, and how they performed afterwards. Less attention should be given to the candidates’ campaign sorties, she added.

Better coverage
On the other hand, the media must exert more effort in delivering better election reporting. There are indications that the media are responding to needs of the market, said Jose Torres, NUJP chair and managing editor of the GMA-7 news website GMANews.TV.
ABS-CBN and GMA-7 have tied up with various organizations for their elections coverage. GMA-7 will also train its staff this month on elections coverage, Torres said.
Still, the media have a long way to go. Teodoro suggested two long-term solutions to the challenging task of covering the elections. First, practitioners can negotiate with their media organization for improving coverage. Second, this effort has to be accompanied by a media literacy program so that the market itself will demand better media coverage, he said.

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