The year that was in the news media
SOURCE: “25th Anniversary Celebration of the TV Patrol (Speech) 7/27/2012“, Presidential Broadcast Staff Radio Television Malacañang
TV Patrol
Later that same day, Aquino delivered another speech critical of the media during the silver-anniversary celebration of the ABS-CBN evening news program, TV Patrol. He reiterated his argument that the news media aired or printed more negative rather than positive stories. In addition, he did not name, but referred to a TV Patrol anchor, whom everyone present knew was former Vice President Noli de Castro, for putting a negative spin even on good news. Noli De Castro has been anchoring TV Patrol almost immediately after his term as Vice-President.
Aquino recalled instances in which reporters were submitting “positive” stories that de Castro’s comments turned into negative ones. One reporter, according to the President, had a story about how more airline passengers are arriving in the country through NAIA 3, to which de Castro commented that “That’s NAIA 3. NAIA 1 is bad.”
Aquino went on to say that serving Filipinos with bad news every night for dinner produces hopelessness regarding the country’s current situation. Since TV Patrol reaches audiences that include Filipinos and foreigners overseas, foreigners are being discouraged from visiting the Philippines, making Filipinos lose out on the jobs a boom in the tourism industry could generate.
That would not be the last time the president would deliver a speech criticizing the media in the presence of journalists and media-practitioners.
On Nov. 15, Aquino once again found himself speaking to members of another media organization. This time, it was outside Manila, in Tagaytay, at the 38th KBP Top Level Management Conference. KBP is an association of broadcasters in the country that provides broadcasting guidelines to its members and enforces these guidelines through sanctions.
The president praised the organization for upholding ethical practice in the media and for its efforts to inform citizens on the results of the administration’s efforts at good governance. However, he still complained about the lack of “good news,” citing a media-practitioner who asked why local media had not picked up a story about a “first-world” writer tagging the Philippines as an “emerging Asian tiger.”
He then brought up the right of reply, saying that “if both sides of a story are fairly reported, if each detail of a report is correct, and if the Filipinos’ freedom to create their own views and opinions on social issues is given importance, then reporters have nothing to be afraid of.”
Days later, on Nov. 23, Aquino was back in Tagaytay, speaking to media-practitioners as well as media owners and “gatekeepers” at the 9th MediaNation “Summit.” The three-day summit opened on the third anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre and the second International Day to End Impunity (IDEI), but had for theme “Corruption in the Media.”
Unlike in his previous speeches where he basically just asked for more good news to be highlighted without any spin, President Aquino kept to the summit’s theme and talked about “the lack of common standards, and corruption in your industry.”
“I am not here just to make suggestions,” he said at one point, and instead began asking such questions as “What are the parameters concerning endorsements? What are the requirements for sources? And when anyone is unhappy with how a media person conducts himself, what are the mechanisms for redress?”
In talking about “corruption in the industry,” the president brought up the low wages and poor benefits of media-practitioners as a possible cause of corruption, but did not go into detail.
Corruption acknowledged
The existence and extent of corruption in the media is acknowledged by much of the media themselves, and Aquino’s suggestion that media practitioners should be compensated in accordance with their responsibilities was generally well- taken.
But his comments on the supposed emphasis on bad news and his implication that inaccuracy is rampant in reporting were not as valid—at least not in the coverage of 2012’s major news events, among them the Corona impeachment trial from Jan. 16 to May 29, and the coverage of such disasters as the monsoon rains of August and “Typhoon Pablo” (international name Bopha).
In crisis-ridden times, such improvement indicates the huge potential and effort on the part of media to do better and deserves to be noted and encouraged. It seems ironic that this seems to have been lost on the President, who had political stakes in the outcome of the impeachment trial; and whose government has also driven its agencies toward better management of disaster, to make a difference from the terrible impact of and the Arroyo administration’s mismanagement of typhoon “Ondoy” (international name Ketsana) in 2009.
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