“Section 10. All members of the news media, television, radio, print or online, shall scrupulously report and interpret the news, taking care not to suppress essential facts or distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis. They shall recognize the duty to air the other side and the duty to correct errors promptly without prejudice to the right of said broadcast entities to air accounts of significant news or newsworthy events and views on matters of public interest.”
–Comelec Resolution #9615, implementing Republic Act #9006 or Fair Election Act

Two things first:

[1] The provision on “fair and accurate reporting” restates a basic principle of the press, included in any news outlet’s set of standards and enforced in most newsrooms, election time or not;

[2] Like the right of reply (also included in the Comelec resolution under Section 14), unfairness or inaccuracy is a violation under law and Comelec resolution and yet it is doubtful if or how the poll body can enforce it.

Why include the provision at all: it’s a precept of media that need not be, and cannot be, dictated by legal edict?

Media insists that standards on content are laid down and enforced by the industry and its practitioners. Other than the law’s restraints against libel, contempt, breach of national security, or seditious material, the press is left alone to craft a newspaper report or oversee a broadcast program–and how to deal with criticisms about its performance.

Constitutional issue

Intrusion into the editorial process before publication is prior restraint and sanctions against editorial discretion fetter press freedom. Both violate the Constitution.

Nobody has yet gone to court under Comelec rules on right of reply (RoR) and right against unfairness or inaccuracy (RaUI). But there are sectors of media prepared to question all the way to the Supreme Court any Comelec order that screws up their work.

And there’s a screw-up if reporters and editors are being ordered what to put in a news story or opinion and how to present or display it.

Maybe it’s due to this “C” factor that the Comelec changed the rule on RoR by amending Resolution #9615.

The offended candidate complains to the election officer who asks the newspaper or broadcast station to act on it or give its side. If the complainant isn’t satisfied with the action or explanation, he says so and his complaint is sent to the Comelec clerk. The exchange must all be in writing, assuring a paper trail but not quick resolution before the elections are over.

No procedure

On the RaUI thing, unlike in an RoR case, no procedure is laid down. What does the election officer do with a poll bet’s complaint that a story is unfair or inaccurate? If it takes the RoR route, the rules don’t say.

It may even take tougher time for the Comelec to determine if the complaint has probable cause. Not having any experience as editors, election officers can’t distinguish attributed error from erroneous attribution even if keeping their title depended on it.

Stretching the course of the gripe, the court may face the same problem when confronted with nuances of reporting and editing. But then it may not go that far since by the time the issue is taken to court, winners are proclaimed and the poll aspirant must know media coverage had little to do with why he lost.

Practical option

Still the practical option is for candidates to use the remedies available before the elections and are there long afterwards.

Newspapers and broadcast stations survive and flourish if they are credible. And credibility is earned the hard way, won with thousands of stories as everyday they must show they deserve the trust of their audiences.

Right of reply and right against unfairness and inaccuracy are granted not only as obligation but as mechanisms for a news outlet to win and keep public patronage.

Why do you think broadcast networks trumpet that their only interest is public interest (“Walang kinikilingan” or “Serbisyong Totoo”)?

Recipes for disaster

Taking the side of one party or candidate, refusing the RoR to the other side, and being unfair and inaccurate to the less favored candidate are recipes for publishing/broadcasting disaster.

If built-in mechanisms of a media outlet fail to work, competition will. Even without legislative or Comelec fiat, standards and sense of survival in each news organization help bring about fairness and balance in the election coverage.

(publicandstandards@sunstar.com.ph)

Two complaints on practices of some journalists were aired during the week: one, publicly by Msgr. Achilles Dakay, media liaison officer of the Cebu Archdiocese, and the other, privately in a politician’s conversation with media persons.

“Mons” Dakay griped that broadcasters who interviewed him didn’t raise the questions they weren’t clarified about and yet once he was off the air, they pounced on what he said. “Why didn’t they ask me when I was still with them?”

A politician who didn’t wish to be identified separately deplored the practice of some media outlets in reporting a big story and leaving it unresolved, with the issue left to hang or the culprit not identified. He suspected selfish motive of journalists: for personal gain or just to sell more papers.

Guests, hosts

News sources need to check the format of the radio talk show. Before jumping into hostile waters or taking the hot seat (a metaphor mix that applies aptly to broadcast interviews), the news source must know not just who’re asking and how they’ll be asking but also how the program is run.

An interview segment of a news program is limited to seeking out facts and doesn’t include comments on what the news source just said in the Q&A part. Tight on time, it won’t allow argument or analysis.

But a commentary program, with doses of news reports and interviews, feeds on stories phoned in and information given by sources on air. At times, in the frenzy, opinion and news collide.

That could be the format of the talk show “Mons” Dakay complained about. What he said on Q&A was fair game for subsequent comments. As to why he wasn’t allowed to explain before he put the phone down, he could’ve rung back and joined the scrimmage if the broadcasters still have time or asked to be heard in the next broadcast.

Guests, like the hosts, are dictated by format and time although it can be said that hosts have more time and usually have the last word: a familiar lament of news sources interviewed. (Reverse interview, a feature in past Cebu Press Freedom Week celebrations, had been shelved because commentators grilled by news sources have all the time after Press Week to hit back at them.)

Option to refuse

But are radio commentators always tough on their guests? It depends on individual style (influenced by “marketing thrust”) and, though not every commentator admits it, their attitude towards the news source. And they’re not always adversarial. One or two opinion makers are so friendly with some guests they even help in arguing for the news sources’ position.

“Mons,” like other news sources, has the option to refuse an interview. Those who wish to avoid risk and discomfort of hostile questioning issue a press statement instead.

Access to news sources isn’t guaranteed even among public officials and employees, who have the right to clam up. Right to information involves public documents, not public personnel dragged to an interview they loathe.

The interview is only one way to release information. Press releases, inscribed on paper or recorded in email or text message, are speedier–and safer from misquotation or loss of context.

Scandal or controversy

An interview can’t be exacted by force or threat, by media or by news source. Media cannot compel a news source to talk. Neither can news source demand an interview.

Often the news source welcomes, even seeks, the interview when he has good news to share, and shuns it, dodging or hiding from media, when under the glare of a scandal or controversy.

Usually, the reporter or commentator perceived as friendly by the news source gets the interview. The news source avoids the hostile journalist and may even pull a prank. A commentator who asked for an interview with a senator he’d often bash on the air got a number from him: a funeral home’s phone.

‘Fickle’ media

Not all stories are resolved; not all questions raised by stories are answered. But fickleness of media is a common complaint: a news outlet drops a story it has pursued for days with no explanation to its public.

Audience interest constantly shifts: readers and listeners turn to the new crime, gorier or more violent, or the new scandal, steamier and more jaw-dropping.

Most media outlets lack reporters. With new stories breaking, old cases, interesting to a person or group, are set aside–temporarily or indefinitely, until a new twist makes it interesting again. Media sometimes has the memory of an elephant, with some help from archives and other research tools. Recent examples: the Perdido Lex scam and the cover-up of a priest’s sexual abuse.

Competition

That a reporter or editor may shelve a story for personal gain can’t be ruled out. Competition though provides not only an outlet for a wrongly discarded story. It also prompts the stray journalist and his news outlet to be brought back to the “straight path.”

And Cebu has so many newspapers and broadcast stations it’s doubtful if a conspiracy to suppress a major story can succeed. One media sector can expose what another media sector may hide.

(publicandstandards@sunstar.com.ph)

It’s now known that Pope Francis shunned staying at the archbishop’s palace for a modest apartment, a chauffeur-driven car for a bus or subway, and press-cons for an uncomplicated life without media.

He may have to revise attitudes and habits.

Obviously, the new pope has to rest and work at the Pontifical Palace in the Vatican compound, with no more reason to commute. But just after he was elected pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to whom a private car was assigned, took instead one of three buses that ferried the cardinals back to their hotel.

Message, damage control

He’s quicker though to accept that he has to face the media. An audience with the press was among his early activities (set for Saturday, March 16). That means the pope, known in his archdiocese for dodging journalists, has decided to tackle the bull by the horn soonest.

Not likely that he has shed off overnight a distaste for facing the press. Pope Francis though must have agreed with Vatican advisers that, after the heads of state and kings and princes whom he must receive, he should meet with the media.

It’s not new insight for Pope Francis. In his Bueno Aires years, maybe he just didn’t want to talk directly with journalists.

And it’s not unfamiliar instrument of Vatican bureaucracy. Church leaders and Curia administrators know only too well that the the church needs media for propaganda and damage control on alleged scandals or leaks of private documents.

Ready to converse

The five million times the new pope was mentioned in Facebook and Twitter (130,000 tweets per minute) after he was elected must have impressed even media unbelievers.

Pope Francis’s predecessor, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, embraced social media last December with his Twitter account @pontifex. Wiped clean after Benedict’s exit, the account resumed with “Habemus Papam Franciscum” as the first tweet under the new pope, with more expected to follow once he adjusts to the routine of being spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics.

With a website and high-tech facilities for interacting, Vatican must be ready to converse with the world.

Audience, not press-con

Before media and others who deal with cardinals and Vatican leap with joy, however, some self-restraint may help.

First on that media meeting with the Pope.

It’s an audience, not a press-con, surely not a full-blown one, in which he can be asked about, say, what he’ll do with a panel report on Vatican abuses and excesses.

Most likely, he’ll just read a statement, expressing gratitude for covering the important church event and hope for media to continue spreading its message.

Even if it would come close to a press-con, it would be the only one. Vatican is not exactly like Malacañang where PNoy frequently drops in at press briefings and surely not like the Cebu City Hall press-cons where reporters only see and hear the mayor.

Fewer secrets

Winds of change may be felt with the coming of the new pope but the 2,000-year-old church isn’t expected to abandon secrecy for transparency in the next decade or so.

In the transition of popes, Vatican used various means and techniques to communicate–and to disrupt communication. Vatican has kept control over what information to share with media.

But with leaks and many other news sources plus more publication platforms, secrets are fewer and more difficult for Vatican to keep within its walls.

(publicandstandards@sunstar.com.ph)

Kill the thought that the Comelec procedure for election candidates to complain against violation of right of reply (RoR) will unleash a flood of complaints from them–not likely.

The procedure, laid down by Resolution #9615 as amended by Resolution #9631, is tedious and doesn’t promise quick relief.

See how it must be done:

48 HOURS

• The candidate files a complaint with the regional election director (RED) within 48 hours after first publication.

The complaint, under oath, must detail “circumstances and occurrences” of the violation, and supporting evidence (news clips and audio/video records).

Prior to filing with Comelec, he must give the “offending” media outlet a copy of the same complaint with its attachments.

• Within 48 hours from receipt, RED reviews the complaint and, “if circumstances warrant,” notify media outlet to comment, answer, or respond.

• The media outlet’s explanation or action must be given to Comelec and complainant also within 48 hours.

• The complainant may appeal to RED if he’s not satisfied with the media outlets’ action and the complaint will be forwarded to the Comelec clerk.

‘GRAVEYARD’

Note how Comelec has made things difficult for the complainant:

–Requiring verified complaint;

–Imposing a “non-extendible” 48-hour prescriptive period;

–Barring, impliedly, a complaint on second and subsequent publication or broadcast (no more RoR complaint if the story seeking RoR has already been published);

–Providing a “resting place or grave yard” for a complainant’s appeal, virtually immobilizing it until after the elections.

Those provisions were added because of the howl of broadcasters over RoR and the required approval for guest interviews in news programs and, more loudly, over the limit on hours for commercials. Comelec changed “prior approval” to “notice,” which may not even be prior, and tacked in the RoR procedure changes.

The procedure doesn’t assure the complainant will get his RoR grievance resolved during the campaign period.

DORMANT LAW

Incumbent RED, Regional Election Director Temie Lambino, confirmed during the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) forum last Feb. 7 that the RoR provision has been dormant in the past four elections.

Provided in Fair Election Act (R.A. 9006) and Comelec Res. #3636, both promulgated in 2001, the RoR law hasn’t been used by candidates in 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2010 polls.

Comelec activated it for this year’s elections by setting up a procedure but there may be few takers.

The reasons that may still be lost to lawmakers and election law regulators:

>> The RoR law isn’t what the Constitution provides as it would compel media to publish a reply in the same space or hour of the news or opinion he’s replying to. It’s prior restraint which the Constitution abhors.

>> Right of reply is being practiced voluntarily by the press and most candidates see no reason to complain; with the bureaucratic layer Comelec has added, they’d rather appeal directly to the media outlet.

MEDIA OPTION

While Comelec procedures for RoR tend to work more against the complainant, media opposition to legislated RoR remains.

A candidate doesn’t have to take the Comelec route to seek RoR. Voluntary RoR is quicker and easer for the aggrieved bet. But just as the candidate has the option to litigate, so has the press the option to resist compulsory RoR all the way to the high court.

As I said before, submitting to an unconstitutional law would be as terribly wrong as enforcing an unconstitutional law.

(publicandstandards@sunstar.com.ph)

Among the questions, issues, and case studies the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) is compiling for its forum on election coverage (Thursday, March 7, 2013, MBF Cebu Press Center) is that raised by Mildred Galarpe, a Sun.Star Online editor: Why does it take long for Comelec to determine if a violent or controversial incident is election-related?

The press wants immediate answers. Even if it knows an incident still has to be investigated, reporters have deadlines to meet and, with more media platforms, more news cycles to chase.

They need something now and what reporters ask, often persistently to the point of annoyance is, “Is it election-related?”

A barangay leader is gunned down. A jeepload of armed men is stopped at a checkpoint. Stallholders are evicted from their market spaces. To all that, media’s inevitable question: “Is it election-related?”

What faze them

These faze Comelec officials: when (a) they’re clueless about the incident, (b) they still have to sort out conflicting claims, (c) they’re tied by internal rules that specify the person who can speak for the Comelec on explosive issues, or (d) they wait for a complaint to be filed.

Mildred G. asks why the lack of a complaint is used by Comelec to justify not making the call. Can they not tell how they see the incident without a formal allegation of political motive?

Comelec in turn may ask why the rush when it’s not a matter-of-life-or-death, it’s not like whether a tsunami would hit Pasil and the public the press serves must know at once. Can media not wait until facts are in?

Another reason for the caution, an election supervisor once told me, is that a rash opinion could fuel political rivalry or alarm residents about public safety. This is an extremely suspicious town during election season, he said, and a shooting laced with political color might set off demands for Comelec control.

Inclusive definition

The extreme caution that election officers adopt can be unnerving to a media that feeds on information to function.

Not listed among the reasons for the slow response (because Comelec doesn’t want to admit it) is lack of an inclusive definition of “election-related.”

Almost anything disruptive during the election campaign and election day can be linked to something political. Almost nothing is not election-related. Each camp is quick to find political motive in the rival’s camp’s move, no matter how innocent it would be in other times.

When a political leader’s house is strafed, his allies scream, “Political harassment!” Media routinely gets the side of both camps but still must ask Comelec’s independent opinion, “Is it election-related?”

Media’s own call

Can’t media–as independent as, or even more so than, Comelec–make its own call? If it has the facts, why not make its assessment?

Media can but often doesn’t. The reason is the fear of reporters and editors being seen as taking sides, when its finding tends to favor one over the other.

A safer stance would be not to make definite conclusions and instead just present the stories for the public to decide.

A police finding, in that example of a shooting, that the gunman was a spurned lover who got drunk would be weightier than a Comelec second-hand disclosure.

Other sources

Media needs to make its own inquiries from sources, official or unofficial, other than the Comelec.

While it still asked Comelec what it knew about organizers busing crowds to recent UNA and LP rallies in Cebu, some journalists went directly to bus drivers and passengers. A few respondents lied, obviously coaxed by “hakot” managers, but the truth came out.

About those “umbrella boys,” cops in civilian clothes carrying Pagcor-donated umbrellas: Comelec wasn’t the source but the reporters themselves who saw the spectacle of police serving as ushers.

Journalists are reminding themselves that the official word is not sacred: while it must still be sought, it must be verified against what others say.

So, is it incident-election related? Ask the Comelec but don’t rely solely on its answer. There are other independent sources, including the journalists themselves.

(publicandstandards@sunstar.com.ph)

This story goes around every election season but it hasn’t been discussed in public forums about media coverage: Philippine broadcast networks, or some of them, prohibit their announcers, anchorpersons, and reporters to talk on air about any politician or political party during the campaign period.

Specifics of the ban must interest us outsiders. Does that mean during a fixed period there’s no news story or commentary at all about any politician or political party?

We still see and hear news stories about political events in TV and radio news programs. It must be the commentators who are totally banned from mentioning politicians and political parties.

If applied to print media — and I know it has not been applied to print — that would mean the reader not reading about any discussion of political issues and personalities during the election period.

From within

Perhaps listeners just haven’t noticed it and nobody, especially broadcasters concerned, has complained. A radio or TV person, so voluble when pressured from outside, is usually quiet when the pressure comes from within.

How have broadcasters been taking the gag? A practitioner said they like it as they’re freed of any suspicion by management they are bribed or bought.

Anyway, he said, it’s only during the campaign season and only once every three years. Besides, one argument runs, it’s being fair to all competing politicians; the playing field is really being, ha ha, leveled.

Yet, media watchers ask, doesn’t that abandon media duty to help shape an informed public opinion and deprive media consumers of what they need to understand election issues and make intelligent choices?

It survives

And where does that leave the broadcast audience but to block-time commentators contracted for or leased by politicians?

Maybe, but with media so varied and pervasive, and information and opinion available in several platforms, the vacuum created by the ban is easily filled. It’s worse than gagging one columnist — after all, it’s the entire network opinion apparatus — but the audience will survive the temporary hiatus.

Journalists are under control of management rules and policies purportedly aimed to produce better journalism and sell their product more.

The election-period silence about political persons and topics must not have been adopted to fetter journalists freedom. Have you heard any complaint, the same cry they make when they see a journalist outside their sphere being stifled?

Independence

Most news organization pride in their stance of independence (“serbisyong totoo,” “walang kinikilangan,” “truly independent”), the mantra of being free. Broadcast stations, with the built-in instruments of trumpeting, are more noisy in product branding.

But local newspapers have been at it since the post-politics era in Cebu publishing. After those embarrassing 50s and 60s when every newspaper in Cebu was used to defend a political boss (“Republic News” of the Cuencos and “Cebu Daily News” of the Osmeñas, defunct for decades now), print media managers in Cebu have designed policy and content for a public that scorns use of newspapers for partisan politics. Like their broadcast counterparts, local print media have hewn to, or made diligent attempts at, fairness and balance.

We’ve been talking of independence of the news outlet as a product and as a brand. How about individual journalists?

Except for a few who are thoroughly apolitical, most journalists each has a political belief. After all, they’ve heard and seen these politicians up close, they’ve known who’re authentic and who’re jerks, who pay lip service to public good but really just want to hoodwink the public.

But it is tricky: Journalists can defend ideas or assail moves but they cannot support the person, the politician or his party. Journalists’ stand must be buttressed with facts and logic.

Failing to do so and using blind defense or offense of a person or group tend to make the journalist a propagandist, a drumbeater, even worse since the journalist is imbedded and perceived to be independent.

True colors

In this town, a journalist easily gets a label if he wears yellow in his column or sounds black (as in Binay?) in his broadcast. His color becomes even more recognizable if he, or his spouse or kin, is working at City Hall or Capitol.

Even those who take the straight path and cheer for no politician is excoriated by politician who can tolerate only hosanna from media.

Let’s face it: the community journalist can be politically independent only if he keeps his true colors to himself or drops out from journalism.

[publicandstandards@sunstar.com.ph]

Columns are different from news. In most newspapers, there are separate labels for one and the other. The purpose is not to mislead readers and to enable them to make an informed judgment, knowing what is news and what is opinion.

While there are cases, especially in broadcast, when a radio commentator gives the news and at the same time comments on it, segregating opinion from news is still one tested hallmark of good journalism.

The boundary has been set up for centuries. Yet these situations tell us that some readers don’t understand what columns are:

• When they complain about a column being “biased” or opinionated”;
• When they think the column reflects the opinion of the paper and its owners.
• When they criticize a column for not being “balanced and fair.”

Like a debater

A columnist may sit on the fence and not take sides in a dispute or controversy but usually he defends a position or attacks it.

When he does adopt a stand, necessarily he’s opinionated. He’s biased for the view he has taken and biased against the view he has assailed.

What are the requirements of balance and fairness on the columnist? He’s required not to invent or distort the facts and not to argue falsely and illogically. Beyond that, nothing else. Unlike a news reporter, the columnist has no duty to present data or arguments that don’t support his view.

He’s just like a debater defending his position. He’s not required to tell the reader what can demolish that position.

A one-sided battle? Not if those who oppose the idea present their views, in a news release or press-con, through another column in the paper, or in a right-of-reply comment in the same opinion pages–or in the shoot-’em-quick responses online.

Columnist’s risks

A columnist has to think through what he puts on hard copy and in the web, knowing the risk of being pelted tomatoes on face and other body parts.

Aside from being rebuffed on mail or over the phone, there’s the mostly unregulated, unidentified, and wild world of social media, not all of whom will express in civil prose and cold logic his dissent with the columnist.

Insults are very much part of the danger now for columnists who didn’t consider the web when they signed up with newspapers. It used to be only armed men barging into the newsrooms or threats phoned by powerful people.

There’s also the risk of being called the publisher’s lapdog, if his opinion jibes with the view of the owner, or the ungrateful mongrel if it does not.

Varied fare

The columnist’s opinion is his alone. That’s why his name and photo appear with the column. It’s only the editorial that reflects the owner’s opinion, which isn’t even totally accurate because editorial policies are crafted on the basis of the paper’s mission and thrusts, by a committee, not just the bosses.

Usually, as in Sun.Star’s case, columnists are picked for their varied appeal: on principles and advocacies they’ve been known for, their writing style, and their capacity to draw an audience.

Most readers don’t read every column; they just scan heads or titles and pick one or two they’ll read from start to finish. That’s the reason for a hodge-podge menu. And columnists don’t think or write the same way. They’re not led by a piper or editor who tells them where to go.

Recasting opinion

May management recast the face of the opinion pages by changing columnists and putting only those whose views coincide with its views?

Yes, which is what the “Daily Tribune” in Manila and “Washington Times” and, as example for broadcast, Fox News in the U.S. do. It’s a matter of principle–and business strategy when the news outlet aims for a niche in the market, the audience that likes their set of beliefs.

Cebu media consumers are used to an offering of different opinions, which is what local papers provide. But if you ask whether managers can overhaul the existing makeup, yes they very well can and try to see if the new mold works better.

No such thing as an independent newsroom. At most a newsroom is given autonomy, based on specific policies and guidelines. Columnists are on their own but management has the right to revise strategy of survival and growth.

Conversations

Except a few who also work as sub-editors, most columnists are theoretically contractors who write columns weekly or twice to four times a week, earning their major income elsewhere as broadcast journalists, lawyers, technocrats, or nannies.

They can quit by giving short notice or simply leaving (as two professionals in recent memory did). Most have stayed on though for most of the paper’s 30 years. They must be content with the air they breathe or they would’ve long fled.

Understanding what columnists do and how they work might enable readers to appreciate their columns better and maybe encourage them to join conversations on different issues that matter.

(publicandstandards @sunstar.com.ph)