PR Piece for PNP

JEERS TO The Philippine Star’s report for publicizing the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) claim that it is 98% in compliance with human rights standards, without an independent fact-check on its veracity.

On January 18, The Star published a report based on one single source –PNP Chief Director General Oscar Albayalde – who cited the result of the PNP’s own review of the PNP’s anti-illegal drug operations from January to October 2018.

The review was supposedly made after the deaths of 5,760 alleged users and pushers drew local and international criticism.

“Despite these deaths, a recent survey or review conducted by our own human rights affairs office found that 98 percent of police anti-drug operations over the 10-month period in January to October 2018 are compliant with human rights standards,” Albayalde said.

The Star’s report then proceeded to recount the figures in the study. It ended with a quote from Albayalde claiming that the continuous decline of the crime volume proves the police are winning the war on drugs.

Missing from this first report were independent sources. Because the PNP’s conduct of the government’s campaign against drugs had been so controversial, any self-respecting news organization would have prevented such a piece of self-serving promotion.

The Star’s follow-up report the next day could have saved the first story from the charge of being an obvious PR piece on a subject of such significance, providing information about the reaction of Jose “Chito” Gascon, Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights’ (CHR). He questioned the basis of the PNP’s statement and urged the police organization to publicly release the records of their operations; so that an independent assessment of the PNP’s compliance can be done.

But the follow up did not touch on the obvious lack of objectivity of PNP’s self-administered and unpublished review.

Albayalde’s statement was also picked up by the online counterparts of other broadsheets. Unlike The Philippine Star’s first report, Inquirer.net and Manila Bulletin’s MB.com reports did not rely solely on one source.

But none of the reports from the three broadsheets examined the methodology of the PNP study nor detailed what standards were cited to prove compliance. Neither did the reports refer to prior studies conducted by other institutions and agencies like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to verify the PNP’s claims and to provide context on the issue.

Media credibility depends upon the credibility of the sources cited in news accounts. Multiple sources are needed to vet the claims of one source and it is important to include this in the first cut. Without other sources, the story is incomplete. A report based on a single source makes for a  partisan and misleading view of an issue—and becomes suspiciously like a press release poorly disguised as news.