Media are part of the problem
That former TV broadcaster who’s running for senator under Sara Duterte’s Hugpong ng Pagbabago party isn’t alone in denying that the Duterte regime is a threat to press freedom.
There are other former and still practicing broadcast, print and online media people who have never quite understood that the most fundamental values in journalism are independence, accuracy, and truth-telling.
They’re not even running for any office, although some have been rewarded with government posts. But not only do they make it a point to say the same thing at every opportunity; they also support what the regime is doing to online news site Rappler, and approve of its threats against the Philippine Daily Inquirer
The media’s being part of the problem in developing the informed public vital to the democratization of Philippine society doesn’t end there. Much of print, broadcast and online reporting has also helped legitimize the regime’s “drug war” narrative.
By citing primarily, and often solely, official sources such as the police, Mr. Duterte’s spokespersons, and Mr. Duterte himself, many reporters have helped make acceptable the regime tale that those killed were only a few and had to be put down because they fought back media practice. In certain beats such as Congress, police and defense, some reporters’ being in the pay of the officials they cover is so well-established it is hardly remarked upon. Practitioner corruption is manifest in the selective presentation of his or her patrons’ views and claims as authoritative and beyond question, by, among other devices, quoting them extensively and citing contrary views perfunctorily and only at the end of news reports. In many instances, they don’t even write them but simply attach their bylines to the press releases churned out by the government disinformation system.
In addition are the political and business interests that in most media organizations take precedence over the public’s right to accurate and reliable information. The editorial policies of the two broadsheets earlier referred to, for example, make reporting favorably on government to the exclusion of critics mandatory for reporters, who have so internalized those policies they have become second nature.
A reexamination of the conventions of journalism is in order in these times, when the need for accurate information has never been more urgent. It is not enough — it has never been — for journalists to simply quote what this source or that said without analysis and explanation.
Journalists need to explain what the news means as well as report it. The more responsible sectors of the US press have emphasized this as equally necessary as fact-checking in combating false information. They don’t just report what politicians and government officials say; they put them in context and explain what they mean, and hold the powerful to account for the consequences of what they say and do on people’s lives.
Citing only official sources in reporting events and issues has to yield to accessing a multiplicity of sources to include those who’re credible and who have something of more value to say than the bureaucrats whose biases and lies should by now be so self-evident the press should either ignore them altogether or else point out their failings.
Equally important, the media advocacy, journalists’ groups and civil society formations should make the development of a medialiterate public part of their programs. Those programs should make primary the need for public understanding of the political economy of the media as a crucial factor in the way they report and interpret events and issues.
As in the search for solutions to this country’s legions of problems, these efforts will take some time to bear fruit. Hopefully they will eventually help make much of the media part of the solution to the crisis of information instead of being part of the problem.
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