monitor Archives | Page 6 of 13

Call for timeout: What was accomplished?

THE MEDICAL community’s distress call to the government last August 1 was clear in its purpose: representatives of medical associations asked for a two-week timeout to allow them to... Read more

Media follow government lead in reporting historic economic recession

THE GOVERNMENT announced the country’s first recession in three decades on August 6. At a press conference, the administration’s economic managers reported that in the second quarter of 2020,... Read more

Media failed to flag HB 78: Semantics flouts Constitution

SHOULD HOUSE Bill 78 become law, it will amend the 84-year old Public Service Act to strictly define and differentiate between “public service” and “public utility.” The 1987 Constitution... Read more

Making the uncounted count: ABS-CBN looks beyond official COVID death toll

THE DEPARTMENT of Health updates the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, as well as recoveries and deaths daily. Cases in the Philippines have breached the 15,000 mark and continue... Read more

Have we “flattened the curve?”

IN APRIL, as the clamor for COVID-19 mass testing intensified, the government scrambled to scale up its testing capacity. On the 30th, during the regular press briefing of the... Read more

The pandemic’s economic fallout

PRESIDENT RODRIGO Duterte on March 16 placed Luzon under “enhanced community quarantine,” which restricts the movement of roughly 60 million Filipinos. The quarantine mandated the temporary closure of non-essential... Read more

Senate’s war on terror: Bill goes unquestioned by the media

ANOTHER MEASURE broadening the scope of state action to fight terrorism is on the horizon. But the proposed legislation, which was approved on its third and final reading this... Read more

Curious confidential funds — and media’s curious loss of interest

THE RESIGNATION of a public official at the level of undersecretary does not usually make news. But when Eliseo Rio, Jr., undersecretary in the Department of Information and Communications... Read more

Problematic numbers: Reporting the “Duterte Legacy”

WITH TWO more years to go, the Duterte administration seems overly concerned with drumming up publicity over its legacy. The Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) launched a “Duterte Legacy”... Read more

A piece of PR: Supposed approval by indigenous people of Kaliwa Dam

IN THE age of social media, news readers often find themselves just scanning newspapers and seldom going beyond the headlines. A misleading headline fixes the falsehood in the public... Read more