By Vergel O. Santos (from www.philpressinstitute.com)
BusinessWorld's Vergel Santos (L) and Dean Luis Teodoro (R) of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. |
It’s a rather curious theme:
Media accountability and public engagement.
How could we, the newspapers, have managed to make those two
things a problem for ourselves, given the very nature of our enterprise? How
can we, every time we publish, help not engaging the public and not putting
ourselves as well under its audit?
In fact, we did manage it. And if we finally have realized
that, we can only hope we have done so before it’s too late.
The pre-eminent medium for the longest time, such that no
piece of news or opinion gained full legitimacy and currency until sanctified
in it, the newspapers seem to have become so smug as to presume pre-eminence
some preordained permanent place for them, which, of course, is not the case, a
fact long-enough unmistakable if only we have been looking with the
professional quality we’ve always claimed to possess – objectivity. In this
case, conspicuously and possibly fatally, that precise quality happens to be
absent.
There’s simply no denying, as stark as they are, the radical
changes in the media environment, changes driven mainly by technology and
increasingly working against the newspapers. We do acknowledge them, but,
again, only to a convenient extent, that is, again, to the extent that our
place in the hierarchy of media is preserved – if only in our minds.
Fairly clear-eyed to the virtues of technology for our own
purposes, we’re not at all averse to using the most modern communication devices
and facilities (all manner of computers, the Internet), yet we seem blind to
the inexorable encroachments on our territory – thanks also to technology – by
other media. We don’t seem to notice, for one thing, that more and more readers
are taking to the screen and fewer and fewer to paper – not to mention that
there’s less and less pulp available for producing paper.
The numbers tell the tale: television, favored by technology
itself and able somehow to adapt to the new consumer habits it has created, has
cornered 77-78 percent of the advertising money, and radio, suitable especially
to an increasingly mobile society as well as to the archipelago’s island
dwellers, has bounced back taking 17-18 percent; that leaves a mere 5 percent
for the print media, not just the newspapers, to fight over. True, that 5
percent has held for some time, and still constitutes a fair amount of business
in peso terms. But the writing is on the wall – it’s all a matter of time.
In any case, we continue foolhardily to cling on to the hope
that the numbers would reverse themselves, even as cold reason demonstrates
that any changes in prospect are not likely to favor us, perhaps not even
television or radio, but the online media.
Few businesses in cyberspace (definitely not in our parts),
let alone media businesses, are actually making money, although where money is
made it is apparently made big. Anyway, cyberspace enterprises should be
positioned well to catch the favors of the fast-arriving future.
We ourselves would seem, on the other hand, poorly
positioned, imprisoned as we are in tradition, scarcely able to kick our now
unprofitable habits, fading with our market. And with no public to engage and
account to, what reason is there for being? What reason is there, indeed, for
all this – we coming together to deal with an issue being rendered irrelevant
by our own undoing?
In fact, it can all be made timely and relevant if only we
come clear-eyed and open-minded enough to change with change. With all the
weaponry and wisdom we should have collected through our long and useful years,
how can we not have our own competitive advantage today or at any other time?
Never will news become an irrelevant product, or journalism
an irrelevant skill. Print may fade but not, in their professional sense,
newspapers.
Switch or perish
Indeed, to switch media or not has become a non-issue for
us. It has been decided by arrangements beyond our control: to not switch is to
perish – in time. The debate has now been ultimately narrowed and confined to
when, not if, that time will come.
The anxiety attacking us is perfectly legitimate: the market
is taken with sexy and efficient communication devices, while trees, pulp,
paper, in that consequential order, are vanishing.
But why should the time-tested, indeed timeless, idea of
newspaper vanish as well? However one gets one’s news – whether by reading or
by listening or by watching – is, after all, a mere matter of medium. The trick
lies with content, with news itself, and, having been at the trick longer than
any other news medium, our own medium should have an essential advantage and
therefore simply cannot be counted out in the paperless competition: we only
need to switch media.
A number of us have in fact positioned ourselves, with
separate editions, online, our closest comparable medium, if only because what
it dispenses is similarly meant to be read. But let’s not oversimplify.
Switching media is akin to removal only in the loosest sense: it entails a far
greater expense and effort than packing and moving. Even before the move is
made in earnest, its prospects of sustainability should have been determined.
As happens, such determination can only be approximated.
Cyberspace is one boundless marketplace, one that has only
begun to be explored, although in its mysteries may precisely lie its allure.
It has been sucking in all manner of enterprises, as if to be caught out
constitutes a sentence of doom, which is, of course, an exaggeration except for
the truly courageous – or covetous.
Anyway, while news online is generally conceded to be the
emergent logical successor to news on paper, the product and the consuming
public to engage and account to remain the same in the succeeding arrangement.
A journalist’s compass
Something ought to be said about “media accountability,” in
the meantime, given the misunderstanding that may have been created by our
pairing of that phrase with “public engagement.”
Accountability is not something the public needs yet to
demand of the media. It’s a sense so fundamental to our profession it requires
no provoking in order to make it work. It’s a self-working initiative that
operates on the burden of responsibility that every journalist bears with every
word he sets down. It’s a sort of compass that sets him right – right by his
sworn professional duty to publicize the truth in the public interest with
fairness.
Accountability, in other words, has little if at all to do
with public engagement: the former is professional sense, the latter market
sense.
As in the case of a sense of ethics, itself close cousin to
a sense of accountability, those who possess it likely don’t need to be
reminded, and those who don’t possess it likely don’t care to be reminded.
President Aquino appeals for balanced media reporting in PPI
annual forum
April 23, 2012 admin
Believing that the Philippine media tended to dwell mainly
on bad news, President Benigno S. Aquino III made an indirect appeal in an
annual press forum held Monday for a more balanced reporting.
Speaking in the opening ceremonies marking the 48th founding
year of the Philippine Press Institute (PPI), President Aquino, who was the
keynote speaker, wondered out loud if the media was still adhering to the core
values of journalism.
Since the restoration of press freedom after People Power
Revolt in 1986, he asked in Filipino, “have we stayed true to the
(journalistic) values of credibility and integrity, balanced reporting,
judicious weighing of the relevant facts, and faithfulness to data and
details?”
The event organized by the PPI coincided with the PPI’s 16th
National Press Forum, the theme of which is “Media Accountability and Public
Engagement.” Reporters and editors, alongside other editorial staff comprising
the PPI’s 72 member publications in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, are
participating in the two-day forum, which opened today, at the Trader’s Hotel
in Pasay city.
The national forum also marks the PPI’s 25th anniversary
since its reactivation in 1987 – or a year after the People Power Revolution
that catapulted President Corazon C. Aquino to power.
The President clearly took the occasion to vent his strong
concerns about the quality of media reporting in the country.
Time was when “we hardly saw misspelled words, let alone
wrong information” in newspapers, said the President, who talked entirely in
Filipino, as he recalled the pre-martial law days, when he grew up reading the
news. Back then, he said, there was a clear distinction between opinion and
news.
“Nandiyan pa po kaya ang prinsipyo ng get it first and get
it right?” he asked.
In late March, a Tweeter message by actor Edu Manzano,
saying the President was spotted dating Korean radio and TV personality Grace
lee at Promenade in Greenhills, a popular shopping mall in San Juan, Metro
Manila, was immediately picked up by the press.
Recounting this incident in his speech, the President
reiterated his previous statement, in reaction to what soon turned out to be
false news, that he was in MalacaƱang
Palace at the time,
presiding over a meeting with the National Economic and Development Authority.
A total of 12 projects, with a total cost of P13 billion,
were approved in that meeting, he said. He expressed dismay that such “good
news” was buried amid the media frenzy on the purported dating incident.
The president also scored the media for highlighting too
much travel advisories issued by foreign embassies to warn their citizens to
exercise when traveling to the Philippines .
Aside from the President’s speech, the opening of the
two-day PPI conference was also highlighted by discussions revolving around the
theme.
PPI vice chairperson Vergel Santos gave a brief talk
expounding on this year’s theme of the PPI’s annual conference. Alexandra
‘Sandy’ Prieto-Romualdez, president of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a PPI
member newspaper, read a speech prepared by the late Isagani Yambot, a former
PPI trustee and PDI publisher, even before he passed away on March 2.
The ensuing sessions revolved around specific issues dealing
with the conference theme such as engaging the public to protect press freedom,
media self-regulation and journalist safety.
On hand to share their perspectives and thoughts on these
contentious issues were some of the country’s veteran broadcast and print
journalists and other noted media personalities, including Malou Mangahas,
executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism; Luis
Teodoro, deputy Director, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, PDI
columnist Juan Mercado, and Rowena Paraan, secretary-general of the National
Union of Journalists of the Philippines.
The second and final day of the forum, April 24, will be
highlighted by the announcement of the winners of the 2011 Civic Journalism
Community Press Awards.
Seven community newspapers are vying for recognition in six
major categories, namely, best in photojournalism, best in culture and arts
reporting, best in science and environmental reporting, best in business and
economic reporting, best editorial page, and best edited community newspaper.
A national association of newspapers, the PPI began in 1964
and is composed of major national and provincial daily/weekly newspapers across
the country.
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