Coverage

How should the Philippine media cover this electoral campaign?

That was the tough question the top guns of the media tried to grapple with last weekend. The opportunity to get together and grapple with that question was offered by MediaNation 4, an annual conference of journalists and owners of media convened by the advocacy movement Pagbabago@Pilipinas.

In the three previous years, this "Davos" of Philippine journalism boldly tackled the tension between commercial viability and good journalism, the role advertisers play in determining the media agenda and the extent to which corporate owners of the media influence content.

These are tough questions that were tackled, to the credit of MediaNation, without much shyness. The discussions over the past four years have produced significant reforms in the procedures and practices of our media. ANC, in reaction to the demand for greater self-examination among our media practitioners, put out a program called "Media Focus" precisely as a forum to deal transparently with issues attending our media organizations.

We hope to see some impact of last weekend’s deliberations on the quality of coverage of this on-going electoral campaign. That impact will have to be in the direction of more analytical reporting — not just of the candidates but, more important, of this process that is so vital to the life and credibility of our democracy.

Our media is pretty hemmed in this political season.

We are facing an electoral battle that is almost totally devoid of debate. Instead, we are facing celebrity-driven politics to the extreme.

Journalists covering the campaign cannot go too deeply into policy concerns — or else face a blank stare from many of the candidates. They cannot make editorial judgments on whether one statement is important and the other not — or be criticized for being unbalanced. They cannot scratch the surface too deeply and explore, for instance, the dynamics of campaign financing — because beneath the surface, so much is undocumented and unsaid.

There is strong pressure for political reporting to be merely descriptive: repeating the often senseless daily tit-for-tat and the redundant campaign sorties. It is not just that showbiz has invaded our politics. Political reporting has begun to resemble showbiz coverage.

All the media are deluged with press releases from the spin-masters of the contending camps. A lot of these releases are mass produced by backroom elves working for the campaigns and very often highly contrived.

The media cannot use highly contrived statements uncritically or risk reproducing junk. But if they exercise discretion and selectiveness, they are vulnerable to being accused of partisanship.

Candidates, we know, are prone to making scandalous statements for the sole purpose of capturing media attention for themselves. Unless the media restrains itself from covering scandalous statements intended solely for the effect of grabbing media space, it could fall into the moral hazard of encouraging mindless rabble-rousing.

In the interim, before the chaos that is local politics breaks loose, media must dutifully cover the senatorial campaign. That, we realize by now, could be a drudgery.

The opposition, unable to mount large public meetings, has so far confined its campaign to the cheaper mode of motorcades where the candidates wave to the crowds without addressing them in any intelligent way. The pro-administration candidates are preparing dozens of town hall meetings where the programs of government will be explained in detail — often without the bombast that makes for more colorful news material.

Then there are the ads.

Although political advertising might appear expensive, it is actually the most cost-effective way of selling a product. That is why people who sell us shampoo or laundry soap do television spots and buy space in the newspapers rather then send out people to the streets to buttonhole pedestrians.

To be even more cost-effective, the television spots (the most lethal way of selling political products) must hit prime time audiences — a crowd much larger than those who watch newscasts and late night public affairs program.

Political ads are "controlled" means for delivering a prepackaged image of the candidate — and image that may or may not be fair. They hit the mass audiences with superficial quips, catchy jingles and well composed visuals. For most of the voters, these ads, not the work of journalists, will define the "products."

And so what is the point of reporters working too hard? Why do enterprise journalism or investigative reporting? Why dig too deeply beneath the surface and unmask what the paid ads have tried so hard to mask?

Whatever serious reporting they do, however sharp their analytical work might be, the likelihood is that they will be snowed under by an avalanche of political ads prepared by the best talents in the advertising world.

We debated that predicament long and hard during the sessions of MediaNation 4. We shared plans and insights.

But the conclusion was always clear: journalists cannot abdicate the responsibilities of their craft. They must scratch the surface, make their reports more analytical and educate our voters on processes and contexts, not just flash celebrities and repeat political inanity.

If journalists fail to do their jobs, even at the risk of appearing partisan or at least of being an inconvenience with the truth they bring, then our electoral democracy will slide into absolute idiocy.