Elections 2016 Archives

Election Canvassing: Explaining the Rules

CHEERS TO CNN Philippines and Rappler for reporting the rules of the canvassing by Congress of the votes for president and vice president as the legislature began its... Read more

“IT Experts”: Disingenuous Use of Single, Anonymous Source

JEERS TO The Standard for running a one-sided report based on unverified information from a single anonymous source. On May 23, 2016, The Standard published “IT experts: Servers... Read more

Exposing the Perversion of the Party-List System

CHEERS TO the Philippine Daily Inquirer for looking into the state of the party-list system. In “Perversion of party-list system hit; SC blamed,” the Inquirer reported how the... Read more

TV5 Beats Rivals in News and Production Values During Election Day Coverage

TV5’s vote count MOST CHANNELS enhanced presentations with the standard polish of TV newscasting, but TV5’s countdown on the night of May 9 was a clear winner. CMFR noted... Read more

Collective Voting in 2016

No Religious Vote LAST MAY 1, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) released a “pastoral appeal” which said, “The Catholic Church has never asked any political candidate to... Read more

Television Rules: Bullying etc. Damage Social Media Credibility

By: Luis V. Teodoro TELEVISION RATHER than social media was the main source of public information on election-related developments during the 2016 campaign and elections. It was not only... Read more

Trillanes vs. Duterte: Asking the Tough Questions

ON APRIL 27, based on information provided by vice presidential aspirant and incumbent Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, the Philippine Daily Inquirer broke a story on Davao City Mayor... Read more

Helping Voters

CHEERS TO CNN Philippines and Rappler for their informative “how to” pieces on the proper way to vote in the upcoming May 9, 2016 elections. CNN Philippines’ May... Read more

TV News Programs as Campaign Logs

Editorial Note: Up to the last week before the elections the TV news programs remained neutral but failed to provide the critical information that citizens need when casting their... Read more

Electoral Cockfight and Horserace

PREVIOUS CMFR monitors have pointed out the dominance of election-related reports in primetime newscasts (“Campaign Trail Story Dominates Election News”). But the reports tend to be repetitive, providing mere... Read more