I HAVE always given mainstream media the benefit of the doubt. In the face of criticisms, there is always that hope that while there are bad and rotten eggs in its midst, there are also those professional journalists who just really want the truth to come out in an unbiased, non-partisan way.
There is no denying that there are many practices that simply make it difficult to believe that media can ever be non-partisan and unbiased. In an age when journalists have become news personalities, we also see the blurring of the distinction between editorializing and news reporting. It is discomfiting enough that those we see as reporting or anchoring the regular newscast are also the same people who anchor political commentary programs. It is even much worse to see them unabashedly showing their political biases, posting critical commentaries in Facebook and Twitter aimed at political personalities.
Recently, the last remaining bit of trust and faith I had in mainstream media suffered an intense assault after witnessing a series of patently partisan biased reporting.
One example is the manner in which the results of recent surveys were reported. Indeed, the President’s ratings went down by double digits. It is fair to report this in the way it happened, but not to cast it as if it is already a harbinger of doom for the President. While it is important to point to the steep fall as an indication of eroding support, it is also fair to point out that the President remains the most trusted public official, and he still enjoys the support of a substantial majority in the country. But many in mainstream media ignored this angle and simply hammered on the decline as if it is the only facet of the reality that was captured by the surveys.
The media is supposed to be performing an important and critical role in a democracy not as critic, but as a shaper of critical thinking. However, the way most journalists have interpreted this is simply to pump up the contentious optics, and not to deepen the understanding of people about issues. There is a tendency to sensationalize, and to isolate events and facts from their contexts. Thus, while it is already fairly established that it is in the nature of politics that political leaders always suffer a decline in their ratings as their terms progress, this important lesson in understanding politics not as spectacle but as process is conveniently rendered invisible by the fixation on screaming headlines rendered by print journalism and sing-song, dramatic, as if in a perpetual state of heightened alarm, intonation by broadcast journalists.
And when there is an effort to expand context, most journalists would prefer focusing on the negative, or on the side of the political contest that suits their biases. Hence, there is the readiness to cite the President’s falling numbers as the reason why the polling numbers of those political personalities identified with him who are listed as potential senatorial candidates are also suffering. There is an effort to link to the drop in the President’s ratings the decline in the ratings of Sara Duterte and Ronald ‘Bato’ de la Rosa, the inability of Harry Roque Jr. and Bong Go to enter the magic 12, and the poor performance of Mocha Uson with her 1.3 percent voter preference despite her much vaunted 5.7 million social media followers. There is a palpable effort to make it appear that presidential allies are suffering because of him.
Yet, there is not much focus given to the fact that the polling numbers of opposition figures are not improving as well. This fails to paint the picture of a shifting political landscape gradually moving towards the political opposition. Leni Robredo’s numbers remain stagnant. And in the senatorial contest, Bam Aquino is now out of the magic 12 and, except for Mar Roxas who landed at the tail end of the winning circle, almost all potential candidates of the political opposition are miserably languishing at the bottom of the pile with their much lower numbers.
And if there is one glaring evidence of entrenched bias, it is in how Imee Marcos’ performance is being downplayed. News 5 did not even mention her in its first report, thereby revealing a not-so-subtle Freudian slip. And what is hyped is the angle that Imee Marcos’ numbers are in fact not improving, but are simply stable, and that her rise in ranking was due to the falling numbers of others like Koko Pimentel, Bato de la Rosa and JV Ejercito, as if being stable in the face of others’ declining numbers is not a sign of viability as a candidate.
But an anti-Marcos sentiment is really a palpable trait that infects media, and which many of them do not even try to hide. When Juan Ponce Enrile made a controversial statement about martial law, several noted journalists jumped into the fray and posted their criticisms not only of Enrile but also of Bongbong Marcos. It should be noted that these are journalists, and not writers of opinion columns like me. Op-ed columnists are entitled to their biases, but journalists who are doing regular beats are expected to try as much as possible to control their partisan political hormones.
This anti-Marcos sentiment went into full gear in the reportage on the recent resolution released by the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) on the election protest of Bongbong Marcos against Leni Robredo. Almost all news networks, including even the Philippine News Agency, bannered that PET had upheld the 25 percent minimum shading threshold as demanded by Robredo. A close perusal of the actual resolution in fact reveals that the PET did not. On the contrary, it reiterated its finding that there is no legal basis to change the threshold. In addition, the PET even took note of the fact that Comelec, even without a promulgated resolution providing such legal basis, changed the threshold of 50 percent not just to 25 percent but to a range of 20 percent to 25 percent.
Any thinking journalist worth his or her mettle would have simply realized the idiocy of any claim that would make PET uphold the 25 percent threshold in the face of such findings. A thinking journalist would even have zeroed in on the anomaly of having a range as a threshold in an automated election.
But apparently, many journalists in mainstream media appear to be no longer concerned about the thinking part. They probably hate fakers in social media because the latter are simply better in the art of peddling lies.
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