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PHILIPPINH IOURNALISM REVIEW

ISSH 0119-fi1$rt

rEI IITOR'S NOTE

A"FALSE PROPHET''?

N IUNE 26 this year, the Manila press murders, for example, do happen more drivers returning reported the results of a Pulse Asia survey frequently than taxicabs, or murderers' money left in their which said that L9 percent-or nearly on"e being caught.
As this was being written, for example, there was a dearth of the good news that President Arroyo and her predecessors equally crave/ with the impending collapse of the peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Although not as controversial as it so many words, as news about graft and Front (NDF) occupying the front pages, appeared-anecdotal evidence has long c o r r u p t i o n , c o u p a t t e m p t s , t h e b a d together with speculations that she had suggestedthat disappointment over the performance of the economy, poverty, sanctionedthe filing of graft chargesagairut failure of PeoplePower 1,,a^d after 2001,, social unrest, etc.-as news that reflects former Secretaryof EducationRaul Roco PeoplePower 2, to bfing aboutchangesin badly on the government-even as good to force his resignation, and to erode his govemance, politics and the ,economy had news is defined as reports on positive popularity as a potential presidential created an ironic senseof hopelessness developments,among them the success candidate in 2004. among the middle class-the Pulse Asia stories of individuals, economicgrowth, Yet noticeablein the press,even in such s u r v e y p r o v o k e d a c o m m e n t f r o m and thosereports that suggestthat all's not government nemesesas the Philippine PresidentGloria Macapagal Arroyo that by lost, among them stories about honest Dally Inquirer, are the reports that do try emphasizingwhat she called "the bad policemen, dedicatedteachers, and so on. to look for somethingto evenas celebrate news," certain sectorsof the press were Events and developments that can be the country is assailed by events and being "false prophets." the subjectof both "bad news" as well as developmentsthat can hardly be described "Who arethe falseprophets? Thereare "good news" reports do happen even in as encouraging.In the June30 issueof the thosewho tell a lie or thosewho tell a half- poverty-stricken, crisis-wracked Philip- Inquirer,for example, P/R noted several truth or only tell part of the truth...They pines. "good news" reports amid reports on the include those who give only the bad news P r e s i d e n t A r r o y o i s c o r r e c t i n resignation of former Foreign Affairs of to the extent that if the bad news is so demanding"balance"- but in the sense SecretaryTeofisto Guingona (for example, pervasive, it brings about a state of the need for the pressnot to be committed "Good cops turn to farming," by Andrea h e l p l e s s n e s s . . . ( a n s k e p t i c i s mi n t h e to any agenda of reporting only the bad Trinidad Echavez).This deliberate effort, d) news,but news whether good or bad. It is country. however, does raise questions of its own, " S o b e w a r e o f t h e m , " c o n t i n u e d also equally valid for the Presiderit to among them that of whether seeking the PresidentArroyo. "It is important to point demand reporting as much of the truth of good news is any bit better for journalism out also the good news to balanceit so that an event rather than reporting only part and the public as seeking out the bad. of it, because our peoplewill not despair." any omission can result in For all this, however, the debate over The criticism that the pressreports only readers'getting a mistakenunderstanding what the news is supposed to be is a real the bad news is a theme every Philippine of an event and its significance. enough issue, and not only in Philippine president within memory- from Sheis, however, mistaken in assuming journalism. P/R thus thought it timely to Ferdinand Marcos to Corazon Aquino to that the newspapers, except for a few devote part of this issue to a discussionof Fidel Ramosto Joseph Estrada-has felt it exceptions,ignore events that can be i! which beginson pp. 18-19, and continues necessaryto explore. labeled "good news" or that they are in pages 20-22,23,24-26,and 27-28. The agreement among these former dedicated solely to reporting the "bad presidentsand now PresidentArroyo that news." focusesorL or limits That there does seem to be more bad the pressemphasizes, itsglf solely to the bad neiars apparently news in the newspapers than good news is based on perceptionsdrawn from their has lessto do with the maliceof individual newspapersas with the events that daily daily reading of the newspapers. LUIS V. TEODORO They define bad news, although not in demand their attention. Kidnappings and Editor

out of five Filipinos, or about L5 million out of an estimated 80 million population - felt that the country was hopeless arid would leave it at the first

opportunity.

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2002 REVIEW Pt|lLlPPlflE J0URllAtlSl'l I August

T
many editors defir-re news on the wingor, as Edmund Lambeth (Committed lournalisnt) puts it, intuitively and on an ad hoc basis: they know news when they see it. I This generafibn- mostly practitioners who made their way through journalism without the curse (or benefit) of too rnuch formal trainingscoffs at tl-re idea of journalism's serving ends other than keeping the public interested in buying newspapers, and making the owners hapPy. They are skeptical to the point of cynicism. They similarly reject any suggestion that the news should keep the public informed for any purpose beyond itself. They reject-correctly, it seerns to this sometime practitioner who lived through the rnartial law periodany notion of the press' serving " developmental" a PurPose.

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The skepticism does help prevent the errant nonsense

implicit in the view that tire news, even before it's written, must serve a purpose predeterrnined

practice.
Thus is news defined with great difficulty even by experienced , practitionersand academics. A ,' quick scanof the usual attemptsat definitiorr, to start with,
reveals fundamental disagreement over' whether it refers to an occurrence in time and space/ or to the account of that occurrence. The disagreement is equaled by disputes over what characteristics define news

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that to serve a

public purpose,thenews must be "good news." But it also reduces the news fur-rctionto the simple expedientof reporting

whatever editors believe will interest the public at any given time- whether

Although there doesappear to be agreementover such factors

as timeliness, reader/viewer interest, and significance, there is at the same time skepticism among certain practitioners and even academics (the late Curtis McDougal of Interpretatiae Reporting fame being among the latter) over either the wisdom or the possibility of ever arriving at an objective definition of it. "News is what the editors say it is," is a virtual mantra arnong the more hardboiled practitioners in the Philippines, among whorn we find that generation glibly described as belonging to the "the old school." Their "definition" suggests that

it be the current Philippine President's terno of choice for her next State of the Nation Address,or Kris Aquino's most recentrornantic involvement. The skepticism notwithstanding, tl-reyw,ould probably reject McDougal's (lnterpre tatiae Reporting,1990)
definition. Yet McDougal is as hardboiled as thev come. focused on the news' seeming undefinability beyond the political and economic interests that drive news in free market

' societies(news, says McDougal, is "anything a newspaper prints for profit").

McDougal's definition, hon,ever, does focus on that aspect of the news function which, while exerting the most influence on it, too many practitioners refuse to

t8 PHILIPPIt{t Rt\tltWI August )002 J0URt.|ALISI'l

discuss, even if they've had first-hand experience with it: that news is often defined as anything that can sell more copies in furtherance of the newspaper organization's goals as a commercial enterprise. r For all this, however, and as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jack Fuller (Nezos Values,1996) suggests, it is possible to approximate a definition of news that's not wholly subjective, and which looks beyond the journalist's (or the owners') personal preferences. News is first of all an account of something recent (timeliness). It is also a report that is of interest to readers, and third, significant to them not only because it can affect their lives, but also because it happened in their immediate community (proximity and relevance).

the NPA to destroy power lines, thus settingoff predictably belligerentreactions from various sources including the Philippine military, senators and congressmen-all of whom assumedthe truth of the Inquirer report.

Accuracy democratization for

If inaccuratereporting canescalate war rhetoric, endanger peace processes and even set off a chain of eventsthat can lead to actual conflict, on the other hand, accuracycan help a community acquirethe understanding of events and their contextualization critical to democratization.A report that gets the names, placesand dates right, and at the same time provides backgroundand explanation, can do wonders in empowering a community towards making it awarenot only of the dimensions of its problems, alsoof the possibilities but for its solution. Many journalists, however, will frown at the suggestionthat part of their work is that of suggesting, implying, or even reporting possible solutions to the problems they report, sometimeswith studied exaggeration. They limit themselvesto uncovering and describing problems in the belief that their public responsibilityendswith the last paragraph in an exposeon say, the destruction of the environment in a particular locality. i But asthe lateeditor JenkinLloyd Jones said more than forty years ago ("The InexactScience TruthTelling," ThePrbss of and the Public Interest, '1968), "the newspaper's obligation to the welfare of the community is...fundamental." The practitioner, in the first place, is a citizen who only happensto be a joumalist, either out of choiceor happenstance, who does not turn in his citizenship at the newsroomdoor.Thejournalist"should be equally the citizen, participating to the fullest in the life and aspirations of his (community)." (Hodding Carter, "The Editor as Citizen," Ibid.) No authenticjournalist can claim without lying that he or sheis unconcemed with the issues that confront his community, whether itbe the entire nation or the municipality of his birth andf or residence. or her concem- or at least His his/her interest- is usually evident in the way he/she chooses which eventsto report on, in the emphasis he/she gives certain aspectsof that event, and in the way he/ she exercisesthe selectivitv inherent in

reporting. Despite what should be a self-evident fact, many reporters and editors shun any engagement with their respective communities beyond reporting its problems. Instead of' meaningful engagement, the result is distance, from where the journalist-into whose head both the schools as well as older practitioners have drummed the idea of neutrality and objectivity in the senseof non-involvement- reports on events observed without being part of them. And yet both engagementin the affairs of the community and neutrality are possible,if we define neutrality asit should be defined: as signifying that respectfor the facts and the responsibility of truthtelling inherent in the primary responsibility of the joumalistic enterprise.

[arger truths
Even more critically, news must be accurate,and not only in the sensethat it getsthe names,datesand placesright, but also in terms of presenting "the larger truths" in a given issue and in society in general. Is the head of the Moro Islamic LiberationFront (MILF) Hashim Salamat orSalamatHashim?Getting the nameright is important, but of equal importance are the demands of the MILF as a key to understanding the "larger truth" about the " B a n g s aM o r o p r o b l e m " ( t h e M I L F ' s preferred term to describe what it wants to address), Though a seemingly simple i4junction, being accurate has provn to be problematic, seems it speciallyfor Filipino journalists, many of whom not only have the usual vices of certain journalists everywhere (incompetence, inability to an Iisten, malice), but who also compound thoseviceswith the difficulties of wrestling rvith a foreign language. In the Philippine setting the results can be dismaying if not disastrous, specially n'hen the inaccuracies committed by a are newspaperpowerful enough to determine -Jre subjectof national discoursemerely :hrough the expedientof putling it in large n'pe onthe ftontpage. The Philippine Daily for "-.iuirer, example,misreada statement :'; the National DemocraticFront's Jose l'Ia. Sison, in which he suggested that lnong the New People's Army's possible ::sponses to a "total war" policy by : :r'ernment could be its destroying power -res. For some reason the reporter said Json had "call(ed)on" and even"ordered"

Thetest of facts
A conflict between respectingthe facts, and reporting the truth and community advocacy and engagement,arises only when the reporter distorts the news, or withholds essential information for the sakeof proving his or her advocacycorrect. One's advocacy or engagementin the community, rather than an excusefor false reporting,should on the contrarybe valid enough to stand the test of the facts; it is otherwisea causeun\ rorthy of anyone. What this means is that the joumalist commib no violence to the responsibility of trutfFtelling il, after exposinga bad situation, or identifying and describinga problem as a newsworthy subject he or she proceedsto suggestoptions to address it which the community can discuss This approachis in fact validated by the need,increasingly urgent in the Philippines, for its citizens to gain a better appreciation of the state of their country and community, and what can be done about rt. On an almost daily basis,however, the news is in practice limited to the gleeful presentation of the country's problems, w h i c h o n e s u s p e c t sh a s c o n t r i b u t e d immensely to the near universal despair and helplessnessregnant in Philippine society. Instead of empowering citizens this approachdoesexactlythe oppositewhereas, as has been demonstrated in countries in far worse situations than the Philippines, no citizenry is so powerlessthat it cannot oncearmed with the information vital to decision making, exercisethe. sovereignpower to make choices.g,

Pt|lLlPPlllE REVItW 2002 | 9 J0URllALlSl'l I August

TCOIVI MENT RY
ByVergel Santos O.

^,

PROACHED BY the
media on the day

resident Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo delivered her state of the nation report, Monday, for leaving her party and switching to the oppositiory Ted Failoru the congressionalrepresentative from Leyte, said he had done so for his own political independence.In Mrs. Arroyo's party, he said, he could not so much as open his mouth to question, let alone go against the party's position on whatever issue.
Let us leave it at that for the moment, and reshain ourselvesfrom leaping to all sortsof conclusions from putting our cart beforeour horse,as it were. Let us first set the perspectivein which to put Mr. Failon and his thinking as revealed by his party switch. Failon has not left the news rnedia He despitehis electionas congressman. has kept one foot there as have Senators Loren Legardaand Noli de Castro.In fact,all three of them were once full-time colleagueson the same radio-television network, have owed their electionto their daily exposure to the massaudiences, and now straddle two institutions of which one is supposed to watchthe other in arguably the most critical arrangementin a democracy. As politics-mediastraddlers,they are in
effect watching thernselves and theit fellow officials and politicians. How can they keep themselves rnutually honest? Ah, but mutuallyhappy. Apparently to go around that critical anomaly, Failon affects to bring us the good rews. He comes on at 4 p.m. every Saturday on a show called - but what else! - "Good \ews". No, it is not one of those shows rntended for Christian believers, in which 'the good news" refers to what their Good Book says, and which therefore goes

of asnot to engenderany falsesense security (asin thecase "good news") or alarm (as of with "bad news").Thus, if it happensthat the news brings more unhappiness than happinessit is not journalisrn'sfault. But shouldn't Failon have knowrl that? After all, wasn't he once one of the most dominantvoiceson the airwaves, carrying the news and bringing proper unhappiness (I would assume)acrossthe nation night after nigl-rt? then, again,other than selfBut promotion disguisedas journalism, what can you expect of Failon now that he has unquestionedasgood indeed.It is, rather,a joined the ranks of slraddlers and begun secular show telling secular stories about living the two ethically irreconcilablelives seculargood peopleand their seculargood o f m e d i a m a n a n d c o n g r e s s r n a nwork. And by not discriminatingagainst watchdogand watched? c o p s a n d p o l i t i c i a n s a s i n c a p a b l eo f As I said on the first occasionI got to goodness, it gives the appearance of commenton the subject,I could alreadysee his carnpaign poster for the next election: faimess. The whole thing is in facta mockery of "Ted 'The Good News' Failon, tl-re who made you happy." Or the sense faimessmeant for news. News congressman of is supposedto be neither good nor bad,but "With Ted 'The Good News' Failon, fuloy (thefun continues). neutral. It is for the customer, not the angligaya" messenger, say whether a pieceof news to Now, to go back to Failon's partyis good or bad. And he canjudge that only switching. Is it good news or bad? I mean for himself - good if the news makeshim does it make you happy or unhappy? To huppy, bad if it makeshim unl..appy. me, it's neither good news nor bad, because With his " goodnews," Failc r hasdecided it makes me neither happy r-rorunhappy. to makethat judgment for the rustomerand What it makesme is laugh. not By some odd senseof deductior-r, to give him what he thinks ryill make him which he appliesin distinguishing huppy. He reckons that, rr edia being too unlike tl-rat heavy with news that nakes people between good news and bad, Ted Failon unhappy, a doseof the oppositesurely will thinks that by switching sides, instead of not hurt. Taken exclusivelyin that contexf staying out of either, he gains his political the good news according to Failon may independence.And by some equally odd seemnot without virfue at all. But passed senseof physiology, he thinks that the off asjoumalism, and by someonelike him mouth - properly connectedto the brairy in particular, it lays itself open to suspicion. of course - is ir-rcapable producing free of Journalism requires that the news be speechby itself. presented uninfluenced by whatever Isn't that silly news?01

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2002 Pt|ltlPPlliE Rtl|lEW J0URllALlsl'l I August 2 3