ABS-CBN News Online misread the CMFR-SEAPA March 3 Statement

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) takes exception to ABS-CBN News Online’s interpretation of its March 3 statement, which it issued with the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), that we “slammed the media” for being “partly to blame for the slow progress of court cases” in the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan massacre.

On the contrary: the statement asserts that only a free press and a militant public can prevent a miscarriage of justice as well as the repetition of similar atrocities against journalists and media workers.

The statement did refer to “the media’s short attention span and susceptibility to the lure of reporting those events that help boost ratings and circulations.” But it did not say that these problems are now the cause of the difficulties in the quest for justice in the Ampatuan massacre.

That part of the statement was merely warning against the possibility that both the media and the public could eventually forget the massacre as well as the imperative to punish those responsible, rather than saying anything about the way the media have been reporting the massacre and its aftermath, including the cases now pending in the courts.

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