Television and the Elections

Television and the Elections
Some efforts were inspired; others hyped; and one was quite unusual
By Hector Bryant L. Macale and Junette B. Galagala

LIKE THE well-oiled political parties they covered, the TV stations made sure they were ready to do battle in this year’s elections coverage. The elections not only saw politicians fighting it out for the public’s hearts and minds, but also the TV stations contending for the best reportage—and the highest ratings.
As May 14 approached,  the TV  stations—especially ABC-5, ABS-CBN 2, and GMA-7—aired special reports, news, and public affairs programs that took up election-related issues.
On election day, ABS-CBN practically devoted all its airtime to the elections, stopping only for entertainment shows like Wowowee and Game K N B? and the primetime telenovelas. Top ABS-CBN anchors hosted the coverage for hours and interviewed various sources in the studio. Reporters gave their accounts of election updates in areas where they were stationed nationwide.
According to Charie Villa, head of the ABS-CBN news-gathering team, the station fielded around 100 reporters and more than 500 technical staffers in 39 “live points” (places from where reporters can go on air live and report) nationwide. Four were fielded abroad. ABS-CBN’s Halalan 07:  Boto Mo iPatrol Mo coverage, Villa said, was “the largest deployment ever in the history of Philippine election coverage.” ABS-CBN also partnered with The Philippine Star, among others, for the coverage.
With the number of reporters and technical staff that ABS-CBN sent out to cover the elections, the station was able to give reports from as far as Basilan. While ABS-CBN’s coverage on elections day gave viewers an idea of what had been happening nationwide, there were many reports that generally relied on one source or were unverified. A number of stories lacked corroboration from other sources, confirmation, and context.
While anchors like Julius Babao and Cheche Lazaro were quite restrained in expressing their opinions during the coverage and focused on interviewing sources and hearing stories from their reporters, Ted Failon and Korina Sanchez did not hesitate to express their opinions as they have been doing in their early morning show in dzMM, ABS-CBN’s AM station.

Aiming for the top
Like its main competitor ABS-CBN, GMA-7 also focused on the elections the whole day, stopping only when the noontime show Eat Bulaga and the primetime telenovelas—the station’s cash cows—were aired. The Kapuso network’s preparedness to do such a coverage—including the number of anchors, reporters, staff deployed nationwide, the “live points,” the glitzy studio set, and the number of partners—rivaled that of ABS-CBN.
The station started preparations for the election coverage as early as last year when it held brainstorming sessions on content and form, and reviewed the station’s performance in the 2004 elections. Marissa Flores, vice-president for GMA-7’s news and public affairs, told PJR Reports in an e-mail interview: “We wanted to make good on our promise to give the widest, biggest, most comprehensive election coverage.”
“Practically every department in the network had some involvement in the election coverage,” Flores said. The station also partnered with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Newsbreak, the Catholic Media Network, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and other institutions.
“The last step to all of these was, of course, making sure that all the elements would make a compelling package,” she said.
For its Eleksyon 2007 election special, GMA-7 tapped its top anchors like Mike Enriquez and Mel Tiangco. As in the ABS-CBN coverage, the candidates and their allies as well as political analysts were interviewed in the studio. Reporters deployed around the country went  on air from time to time. Viewers were given updates on election situations nationwide, including poll-related violence, anomalies, and the illegal use of children to give out sample ballots on election day.
To be sure, such coverage gave viewers a general picture of what was happening on May 14. But, as in ABS-CBN’s case, many reports were not provided with enough background and context. A number of GMA-7 reports did not corroborate allegations or other pieces of information with other sources. Viewers were simply given a brief account of an incident or issue along with some sound bites.
There were some reports which both stations could have done away with, like telling viewers that senatorial candidate A had already voted in this place, while senatorial candidate B voted elsewhere.
“So what was the point of the report?” viewers were almost tempted to ask while watching some reports of either station.
The tendency to report events that were predictable and therefore not particularly newsworthy tended to make portions of the coverage drag. Viewers’ interest would perk up, however, when there were controversial reports or when studio guests gave stimulating discussions. Reports of alleged cheating and violence could have been given more airtime, along with their background and context. Just like the newspapers, television news largely ignored or underreported the party-list count.

Not the usual
If ABS-CBN and GMA-7 news teams fanned out to places here and abroad, ABC-5 did the exact opposite.  With a leaner budget and smaller news teams, the network decided to concentrate on the elections in Metro Manila, although according to Ed Lingao, head of ABC-5’s news operations, reporters were quickly deployed to areas where there were controversial issues, like in Maguindanao where irregularities were allegedly taking place.
Lingao explained that one of the biggest costs in TV is transmission. At the 2001 rate of $8 a minute, “how do you transmit from a province your audio, video, and your live report?” he asked.
Although ABC-5’s partner organization, Radio Mindanao Network, was able to report on various areas via phone patch, Lingao admitted that financial difficulties hindered ABC-5 from moving beyond Metro Manila in their election coverage. With a budget of P300,000 on elections day—”unbelievably limited,” according to news production head Patrick Paez—ABC-5 was not able to do as many reports on the senatorial and party-list candidates as the two bigger stations. According to Flores, GMA-7 spent several millions of pesos in its coverage because of the remote sites involved, and the elaborate technical and production complement required.
Forced to be different and innovative, ABC-5 did something quite unpredictable. It featured an election special called Bilang Bayan where the station’s famous comic duo, Maverick and Ariel, reported and hosted segments as if they were regular news reporters. Was ABC-5 inspired by The Jon Stewart Show, a comedy in the US known for its satirical coverage of the news?
ABC-5 did have serious guests in the studio to discuss the elections like Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros and political analysts like Earl Parreño and Benito Lim. But it also had psychics like Madame Esther, Eric Angeles, and—gasp!—Madame Auring as guests talking about elections surveys.
Just what happened out there in ABC-5?

Elections as comedy
While Lingao admitted that putting Maverick and Ariel was a way of enticing viewers to watch the station’s coverage and make the issues more easily understood by the public, he said ABC-5  wanted to convey a certain message: “Kasi ganito ang eleksyon sa Pilipinas. Ginagawa nating piyesta.” (That’s how elections are in this country. We treat it like a fiesta.)
In fact, Paez said, the original title for the special was Bilang Bayan, Pistang Bayan. The management, however, decided to settle for the more conservative Bilang Bayan.
“It was not a haphazard thing,” Paez said. “We thought about it.”
He added, “Putting Madame Auring there, putting Maverick and Ariel there, was a statement.”
That was also why, he said, Bilang Bayan started with a quote from national sports “hero” Manny Pacquiao: “Sports at pulitika, pareho lang iyan. Kasiyahan lang naman ng tao ang habol natin.” (Sports and politics are the same. We just want to make people happy.)
Lingao said: “That’s how we’ve been treating the elections. Pinaglalaruan tayo ng mga kandidato. (The candidates treat us like playthings.) They sing and dance in front of us on TV.”
The tone and message of the special, he said, was amplified by a somewhat cynical message given at the end of the show: “Tawanan na lang ninyo ang eleksyon dahil ginawa na itong karnabal ng mga kandidato, pero seryosohin ninyo ang inyong mga boto. Tandaan ang mga pinangakong lahat sa atin ng mga pulitiko dahil kung hindi, tayo din ang kawawa, tayo din ang katawa-tawa. At tatlong taon mula ngayon, komedya na naman ang ihahatid sa atin ng mga payasong kandidato (Just laugh at the elections, anyway the candidates have made a carnival out of these, but take your votes seriously. Remember all the promises they made; otherwise, we will all be sorry, we will feel ridiculous. And three years from now, these candidates from the carnival will present us with another comedy”).
If ABC-5 focused mainly on Metro Manila in its Bilang Bayan coverage—with showbiz enter-tainers and fortune tellers as guests—it nevertheless managed to give viewers a comprehensive and even an in-depth coverage of the local elections. Four-minute reports were aired during Sentro, their late-night newscast.
According to Lingao, the station’s election budget was used “for special reports in provinces that appeared to be crucial, interesting, (and) unusual, because they seemed to be the micro of the macro.”

Looking for content
Thus, ABC-5 sent out teams to cover provinces like Pangasinan and Bicol for a week and as election day approached, special reports were aired on the sociopolitical problems in these places.
Instead of giving viewers daily updates of what’s been happening in the provinces, Lingao said, ABC-5 tried to look at “what has been happening there for the last so many generations.”
He added: “I think that will be more important in making viewers decide, ‘anong problema natin (What is our problem)?’”
Paez, who used to cover elections and manage coverage when he was in ABS-CBN, said big networks tend to show off their technological and financial capability in covering the polls. (Lingao and Paez both worked in the ABS-CBN public affairs program, The Correspondents, a few years ago).
Although the “technological capability is there,” Paez said, “the content is not.”
Who cares if a candidate filed a certificate of candidacy or that he or she was leading by five votes? “Big deal!” he laughed.
Through the years, election coverage has been characterized by “calendar reporting,” which means covering events that simply happened on certain special days, and “event reporting” which gave little more than a summary of what had taken place.
Paez regards these types of reporting as a waste of technology and resources.
There are “stories that need to be (done) better and well,” he said, and ABC-5 is trying to do this.
At the other end of the news spectrum, Hatol ng Bayan 2007, the joint coverage of government-controlled stations NBN-4, RPN-9, and IBC-13, left a sour taste in the viewers’ mouths even though it was supported by big media organizations like the Manila Bulletin and the Philippine Information Agency.
Aside from its obvious bias for the administration’s candidates in Team Unity, Hatol often experienced technical difficulties while receiving reports from its team. The audio in the poorly designed studio also created difficulties that made viewing a test of endurance.

In praise of special programs
To complement its election day coverage, GMA-7 also aired special programs that highlighted some key policy issues to help voters select their candidates.
For example, Philippine Agenda, an eight-part program, discussed corruption, housing, hunger, and employment.  A brainchild of Jessica Soho, GMA-7’s vice president for news who also served as one of the program’s anchors, Philippine Agenda “veered away from personalities of the campaign and instead focused on issues that elected officials should address,” Flores told PJR Reports.
Another commendable effort was Isang Tanong, a two-part election special that featured senatorial candidates in a question-and-answer format. Under time pressure, the candidates were asked to answer a question formulated by a GMA-7 news anchor, panelists from GMA-7, and coverage partners (called the “interrogators”), and another from a fellow senatorial candidate.
All senatorial candidates—including those virtually unknown to the public like Felix Cantal of the Philippine Green Republican Party—were included in the program and given the chance to talk about issues.
With the wide array of questions from a variety of sources, Isang Tanong gave viewers a glimpse of almost every facet of the candidates’ lives—their policies, advocacies, knowledge of government policies and laws, and even their character. The candidates made known their stand on issues and controversies.
One wondered if GMA-7 might have done a better job if it provided a similar program for party-list candidates running for the House of Representatives.
On May 2, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that the first episode of Isang Tanong earned a viewership rating of 17 percent, higher than a beauty pageant aired over ABS-CBN, which rated 11.1 percent.

Good ratings
Explaining Philippine Agenda and Isang Tanong’s positive feedback and relatively high viewership ratings, Flores said: “We’ve always believed in our news and public affairs programs and we believe that there is an audience for these shows provided these are compelling and well-produced.”
She noted that, “Because these programs aired in earlier hours, the numbers were higher. We continue to hold internal discussions as to how to air these late night programs much earlier.”
The unexpectedly high viewership of Isang Tanong showed that, contrary to the common notion, a lot of people were interested in public affairs programs. GMA-7 reporter and host Howie Severino, one of the program’s “interrogators,” told PJR Reports in an interview, “We’re quite proud of that program and format, and the reaction it got.”
ABS-CBN also created special programs for the elections, namely Forum 2007: The Senatorial Elections and Forum 2007: The Midterm Elections which were aired in the station’s cable news channel, ANC.
In each episode, Forum 2007 invited three candidates who were asked three questions on issues such as cheaper medicines, Charter change, corruption, environment issues, and poverty. Questions were asked by three guest panelists from various sectors of society.
With a similar format as Isang Tanong, ABS-CBN’s Forum 2007 took up issues such as the party-list system and interviewed party-list nominees. Both specials presented the profiles, legis-lative platforms, and advocacies of the senatorial and party-list candidates.
ABS-CBN also prepared several election specials which were shown days before the elections. Bumoto Kami Noon, Boboto Ba Kayo Ngayon? and TV Patrol World Sabado: Boto Mo, iPatrol Mo were aired on May 12 and Halalan 2007 Primer: Boto Mo, iPatrol Mo, on May 13. These programs tackled election-related issues like poll violence, political dynasties, and cheating.
Boto Mo, iPatrol Mo, which was hyped up by the station for several months, did not deliver as much as it was expected to. Still, it was a bold attempt to get the news and involve the public.

Truly public affairs
GMA-7’s Reporter’s Notebook highlighted issues such as the use of the pyramid scheme in vote-buying and how families competed for the same government posts. Background information on the bicameral nature of the legislature was provided, as well as the financial incentives legislators have in running for public office.
Despite its limitations, GMA-7’s Palaban attempted to acquaint viewers with senatorial candidates through Winnie Monsod’s 20-minute segment called “Senatoriables with Mareng Winnie.”
ABS-CBN’s public affairs programs, The Correspondents and Probe, also featured election issues. The Correspondents took up political dynasties, the system of hearing election protests, the difficulties faced by mayoral candidates in Metro Manila, Commission on Elections and the cheating that reportedly happened in 2004, and party-list elections.
Probe discussed the political tension that usually accompanied ballot counting, election anoma-lies, methods of cheating in Lanao del Sur, presidential son Diosdado Arroyo’s foray into the congres-sional race, and priests who took a leave from their religious duties to engage in politics.
Lingao admits that he would have wanted ABC-5 to have public affairs shows like those of ABS-CBN and GMA-7. “That’s what we used to do (until the recent cancellation of public affairs shows in ABC-5),” he said.
Because it did not have a public affairs program, ABC-5 took up complex election issues right in its news program Sentro.
“I wish we had a good public affairs department that can still do news magazines, encourage debate and all that,” he explained. “But I also have to leave it to management to make decisions like that. They know the capabilities of the company, if the company can afford to continue subsidizing these shows or if they have to say that with this much money, we’ll just have to keep the news alive.”
For their efforts alone, the three TV stations—ABC-5, ABS-CBN 2 and GMA-7—took election coverage to a new level.  They made the coverage of the 2010 presidential elections something to look forward to.

Comments are closed.