Reporting On An Illness: Covering Mike Arroyo’s medical emergency

Covering Mike Arroyo’s medical emergency
Reporting On An Illness

HEALTH issues are very important stories, especially when they concern the highest officials of the land or their families.
From the twisted ankle and ear ailment that President Corazon Aquino suffered during her term, to the surgery that President Fidel Ramos underwent in 1996 to clear a blocked carotid, media have always been very watchful about developments affecting the health of the chief executive.
This time, however, it was not the President but her spouse who was the subject of a medical emergency.
Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, the controversial husband of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was rushed to a Metro Manila hospital and operated on for a heart problem.
Initially, the media quoted a doctor from a Baguio hospital who said that Mike Arroyo was just suffering from gastritis, or inflammation of the stomach lining. The following day, however, the newspapers reported that he was in urgent need of surgery for a serious heart problem.

No simple job
Whenever a big issue breaks out, expect the press to cover it. So when presidential spouse  Arroyo was hospitalized last April 8 for gastritis, it was not surprising to see how the media rushed to get the details of his illness.
The media frenzy over Arroyo’s health condition reminds one of the press coverage of the health condition of former president Ramos when he was hospitalized on Dec. 12, 1996. Back in 1997, the Philippine Journalism Review (PJR) observed that the media coverage of Ramos’s condition was “interesting as a study of the information management undertaken by Malacañang which kept the public in the dark on the real state of the president’s health and affliction.”
PJR then noted that reporting on health issues is no simple job because partly it involves the use of technical and medical terms.  Describing the coverage at that time as a “mix of official line statements and anonymous sources,” it said that speculation, unverified news, and views of anonymous sources must not be passed off as news.
The press, this time covering Mike Arroyo’s health condition, necessarily used official statements from Malacañang on the First Gentleman’s condition. But the press did better as it also turned to other sources who knew about Arroyo’s condition, such as his doctors. Well-wishers who visited Arroyo in his hospital room—first at St. Louis University Hospital in Baguio City where he was first admitted, and later at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Manila—were also quoted in the reports.
Television news programs and newspapers tried to help the public understand the complex nature of Arroyo’s ailment, including the surgical procedure that would be performed on him. TV news programs were able to convey what was going on. Public affairs programs also held discussions on how to care for the heart since coronary disease has become a major health problem in the country.
From the start, the media described the surgery as very risky.  Stories emphasized that most patients who suffered from the same condition as Arroyo failed to fully recover.  Arroyo himself was said to have only a five-percent chance of survival.

Hair and wardrobe
While sufficiently creating concern among the public, most of the stories failed to explain why the surgery that the President’s husband was to undergo was more dangerous than other heart operations. Media turned its attention instead to other angles—such as the President’s appearance whenever she left the hospital.
The press could not resist editorializing or dramatizing the news, as it portrayed Mrs. Arroyo as a dutiful wife and president. Squeezing the story for all it was worth, the broadsheets reported on her moods and even her outfits as she attended meetings (Manila Bulletin, April 11 and The Philippine Star, April 13).
Reported as well were the times she left the recuperating Mike for her official appointments. The Bulletin on April 14 said the President’s attendance at a thanksgiving mass the day before, was “one of the rare times she had left Mr. Arroyo who continues to recuperate.”
Not to be outdone, the Inquirer on April 12 reported that Mrs. Arroyo “refused to leave her critically ill husband;” what’s more, she had converted a luxurious hospital room suite (rate: P21,000 per day) into a little Malacañang in order for her to continue working without leaving the hospital. Other articles described her as “haggard,” and even said that  her hair had not been blown-dried.  Some readers could not be faulted for half-expecting the broadsheets to declare Mrs. Arroyo a candidate for sainthood.
Rather too emphatically, TV Patrol World featured the well-wishers who took note of the President’s resilience in the midst of a trying situation. “Bagamat bagabag siya sa kalagayan ng Unang Ginoo, nagtatrabaho pa din siya. Talagang napakasipag po (Although worried about the condition of the First Gentleman, she continues to work. She is really very hard-working),” said actor Cesar Montano, who is currently running as senatorial candidate under the administration banner Team Unity (TU).
Many other visitors were also interviewed, the stories duly noting their comments on the condition of the First Gentleman although they had not been able to talk to the doctors or to the President, or even entered Arroyo’s recovery room.
“He was able to wiggle his toes and that is said to be a good sign,” a grim Vice-President Noli de Castro said in an Inquirer article.
But even the coverage of Arroyo’s illness could not be spared from politics. On April 12, GMA-7’s 24 Oras not only reported on the prayer vigils initiated by various religious leaders for the  President’s spouse; it also asked El Shaddai leader Mike Velarde if he was endorsing more candidates from the administration-backed TU than from non-administration parties.  – Ma. Crizelle Ramos, Rachel T. Rañosa, Abegail Rose L. Valenzuela, and Ivy Jean N. Vibar

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