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REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM Business World, Manila Manila -- The crisis engulfing the presidency has occasioned a parallel crisis in the Philippine press. As the best and the worst of media practice have precipitated, it continues to feed the unfolding drama that is the jueteng payoff scandal involving President Joseph Estrada. Following news reports of the illegal gambling scandal, the local media again has become a subject of public debate, and, in the case of certain media organizations, objects of public derision. Witness the protest rally in front of a major news daily viewed by supporters of the President as favoring their patron's adversaries; likewise the deluge of e-mail and text messages condemning the supposed pro-Estrada bias of a major broadcast network. Among the handful of functions ascribed to the fourth estate, none has become so contested, or so censured, as its role in setting the agenda for public discourse. As the illegal gambling payoff case moves from the bar of public opinion to the courtroom, legal maneuver replaces bombast, thus demanding reportage that is more sophisticated; reportage that guides the public through the maze of what to the Filipino is a novel political process. With that, advocates of press freedom are calling for the promotion of a more fundamental role of the press; that of educating the public on the travails of the constitutional process of impeachment, the first such process to have prospered beyond the Lower House of Congress. In a matter of weeks, all eyes would be on the Senate through the mass media. Thus, the upcoming impeachment trial of President Estrada would be a test of not only the impartiality of the Senate, but also the capacity of media to make up for lost ground and create a well-informed public. As an arena wherein contending political forces try to outdo each other in soliciting the public's approval, the media is essential under Philippine-style democracy, with its stress on show rather than substance, on money rather than performance. Money politics, in particular, has reared its ugly head repeatedly, striking the fourth estate at its weakest rampart. Indeed, the media's agenda-setting function has been very crucial of late in tilting the scales of public opinion so much so that aspersions have been made as to the alleged lack of objectivity of some members of the Philippine press, considered the freest in Asia. Accusations were raised that members of the press favored one or another of the contending parties in the juetengate scandal - for a price. The alleged existence of a list of media men on the government's payroll only boosted suspicions of corruption in the media. That the media is suspected of favoring one or another party in a conflict is nothing new. Throughout the postwar period, the press has served to promote the interests of one or another of the dominant sections of Philippine society, but generally of the propertied class who owned media anyway. In her book The Manipulated Press, scholar Rosalinda Pineda-Ofreneo said the media merely served as adjuncts of other businesses. As adjuncts, media companies served at the pleasure of the owners' main business enterprises, and oftentimes lived off the doleouts extended by the same. Ms. Ofreneo noted that this instrumental regard for the press meant that investing in the media was an afterthought, leaving media workers to fend for themselves. As a consequence, entrepreneurial journalism has gained a double meaning; referring sometimes to original and fresh reportage borne out of honest and hard work, but, oftentimes, to hack writing done for a fee. Protecting vested interests at both levels - media owners and workers - is very insidious since the transactions involved are unrecorded, and only a deep and nuanced knowledge of the media organization concerned and the larger political forces at work would afford a more truthful vantage point against which to evaluate that media outfit's product. While real-time media coverage of events - for example, the Senate Blue Ribbon hearings on the jueteng bribery charges - meant that everyone was in a better position to judge for himself the matter at hand, the public would still be having difficulty sifting through the information given the diverse viewpoints, if not the conflicting coverage, said media watchdog Melinda Quintos-de Jesus. "It's hard to detect the agenda unless you know the (workings from the) inside (of the media outfit)," said Ms. de Jesus, who is executive director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR). "The juetengate list is a confirmation that media is on the take. But it's more difficult to catch the mouthpieces of vested interests because the assumption is it's a free press," she said. In other words, it is anybody's ball game. Nevertheless, no other administration after the EDSA uprising has so flaunted its disregard for a free press as the Estrada government, according to Sheila Coronel, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). And this presents advantages with regard to tracing the connection of interests, as well as disadvantages with regard to the impact on society. Since Estrada assumed the presidency, one of his friends has bought out a hitherto critical newspaper, while a cabal of associates from the movie industry instigated a short-lived advertising boycott of another equally critical broadsheet. These actions reportedly had a chilling effect on other news organizations. The PCIJ, which was responsible for the series of exposes detailing some of the president's impeachable acts, had its fair share of threats and black propaganda coming from perceived presidential friends. But a more worrisome development is the impact of so-called polluted or compromised information on the public. Results of surveys done by professional polling institutions showed that the majority of the public has not made up their minds with regard to the unfolding juetengate scandal. What had accounted for this indecision was the finding that those who have yet to form an opinion on the matter were insufficiently aware of the said scandal. In a survey done during the last week of October, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) found out that 50% of those polled were unsure about the innocence or guilt of the President with regard to the bribery charges. Almost one-fifth of those polled were unaware of the issue up until the time of the polling. One-half of those polled did not favor the President's resignation, while more than one-fourth admitted that they knew too little to enable them to form an opinion on the matter. Of those who have not decided as to the truth of the bribery charges against President Estrada, 50% did not favor his resignation. Among the people aware of the bribery charges against the President, one-third claimed they were closely following the news, while one-fifth admitted they were not following the news at all. But not everyone following the news could form an opinion on the matter. Only a quarter of those polled considered the news generally accurate, while a third thought the news was inaccurate. Meanwhile, another third of those polled never bothered with the news at all. The SWS survey was done almost a month after Ilocos Sur Governor Luis Singson exposed the bribery charges against President Estrada. A more recent survey done by another professional polling institution showed that a growing number of Filipinos have become more cynical of the contending political leaders. If the presidential crisis were resolved today, neither side with a claim to the presidency would have the full support of the public, based on the said survey results. This apparently says much about how well the media has been serving its function. "The problem now is we're reaping the (consequences) of the past two years of a timid media," said Ms. Coronel. Contrary to the Estrada administration's claims that the media did not cut some slack during its honeymoon period, or its first six months in office, Ms. Coronel said media men covering the Malacanang beat chose to look the other way in the face of the President's failure to meet the normal demands of the presidency. For one, she said, the media opted not to remark on the President's failure to show up on time during scheduled appointments; that is, during the few occasions he actually showed up. But it goes farther back than the last two years, said another observer of local media developments. "The problem is a failure of cultural institutions, such as the education system and the media," said Luis Teodoro, editor of the Philippine Journalism Review. He said the few newspapers that combined sharpness, depth and analysis in their reportage and yet have large circulations suffer from a big communication barrier: they are mostly written in English, a language not so well understood by the masses who supported the President. Add to that incompetence in presenting the news and corruption. So, all past sins seemingly have come to a head. "Take away the barriers to free flow of information (and you have a more critical mass)," said Mr. Teodoro, a former dean of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communications. At a time when most people get their share of the news from broadcast networks, specifically television, the few broadcast media with a wide enough reach reportedly are not so critical in their reportage either. That is, until lately, when the ratings game has begun disturbing comfortable leads over competitors. Another mass communications professor at the UP said that the broadcast media, the technology presents limitations with regard to providing depth to reportage. "There is an inherent imbalance," said UP professor Reynaldo Guioguio, contrasting broadcast to print, which could afford more space for expounding on an issue. "TV is the battle of sound bytes. So, if you have a 30-minute broadcast, and you spend 25 seconds on one issue, you could only put in as much as two sources," he said. But all is not lost in the past month or so since the juetengate blew up. PCIJ's Ms. Coronel is thankful for a slowly growing public interest in media exposes on the President's failings, as manifested in the rising circulation of a relatively new tabloid deemed critical of the presidency, and in the openness of more news dailies to the exposes that PCIJ comes out with. "There have been big changes in the media for the past one and a half months," she told an audience of mostly students and members of the Far Eastern University faculty during a forum held at the Manila campus a few days ago. "Previously, (newspapers) were mostly controlled by Estrada. But with the present crisis, there has been a healthy competition based not on pornography and gore, but on exposing misgovernance," she said. The veteran journalist sees market demand for that kind of reportage pushing newspapers previously intimidated by Malacanang to put out critical yet meaningful news and opinion. "The crisis liberated us from our fears," she said. But it is a long way from here to a well-informed public. When the Senate begins hearing the impeachment case against President Estrada two weeks from now, it is not only the President nor the 22 senators whose fates would be determined by the impeachment proceedings. Depending on whether the press puts out an objective and thorough coverage of the case, the impeachment proceedings would likewise determine the viability of a free press under the present political order. |
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PHILIPPINES: The Press and The President