ABS-CBN wins Quill award for Boto Mo, i-Patrol Mo

MANILA, Philippines - For being the first to break the biggest election-related story on the Maguindanao massacre, helping drive young voters to register and vote, and creating an army of change to make the 2010 elections work, ABS-CBN Corporation bagged an international Gold Quill Award in recognition of its election advocacy campaign Boto Mo, i-Patrol Mo (BMPM).

It was through ABS-CBN’s Boto Mo, i-Patrol Mo that the world learned about the single deadliest act against journalists when a Boto Patroller first sent a picture from the crime scene to ABS-CBN. And ANC, the ABS-CBN News Channel, was the first to break the news.

His bravery in exposing the gruesome crime that left 58 dead showed what BMPM is all about — the ordinary Filipino, making a difference by letting the public know about the realities in his community and the government to do something about it.

Boto Mo, i-Patrol Mo: Ako ang Simula was launched a year before the 2010 national elections by ABS-CBN, which pioneered citizen journalism in the country. It not only empowered Filipinos to use technology to patrol their votes but also challenged them to become the start of the change they want for the country.

ABS-CBN was the only Philippine broadcast network to win an international Gold Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for its election advocacy and coverage via the BMPM campaign, which also won awards from the 2010 Philippine Quill Awards and the Anvil Awards.

The multi-platform campaign received 500 reports a day by e-mail, 103 calls a day, and 3,058 texts a day during election season. And on election day, citizens’ reports grew to four per minute as compared to one per minute in 2007 when it was first launched.

During the campaign last year, BMPM has 87,419 registered Boto Patrollers in its central database, 125,487 fans on Facebook, 23,111 followers on Twitter, 6,960 members on its microsite and 3,701 members on Multiply.

It organized vice-presidential and senatorial debates and pioneered the use of a Wireless Audience Response System (WARS), which allowed randomly selected citizens to indicate they believe the candidate’s answers or not during the televised debates, which became among the highest trending topics on Twitter.

This resulted to making ABS-CBN being cited by most Filipinos as the most credible TV station based on a Pulse Asia national opinion polls in 2010 with 72 percent of Filipinos saying the TV network gave a credible coverage of the elections.