The Philippine Online Chronicles

Is payola still a prevalent practice in Philippine elections?  Why does someone assume that the site owner is under a payola just because of a link that is unfavorable to  a popular candidate? It is  true that reporters in traditional media were offered money from candidates in the past elections.

The Philippine Press Institute (PPI), an association of newspaper publishers, established guidelines to its 97 member organizations on covering the 1998 presidential elections.The guidelines were explicit.

• Newsrooms were to pay their way. That meant, shouldering the cost of coverage during the election campaign and count, including dining out sources for stories, airfare, hotel accommodation, per diems, and operation expenses of staff members.
• Journalists were prohibited from accepting cash or gifts in kind from politicians and political parties and from moonlighting with political parties.
• The institute also issued a stern warning to journalists to beware of surveys.

In the 2004 elections , the PPI failed to reissue the guidelines on the need to remain ethical and incorruptible during the election season.

The Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) polled 59 reporters from leading Metro Manila-based national newspapers and radio and television stations that covered the five presidential candidates.  In the course of their coverage, 20 or half of the campaign reporters said they were offered money by candidates, political parties and other sources, from once to as many as 20 times.  The offer of money was made mostly to radio and broadsheet reporters and less often to television. Out of the 29 reporters who were offered money, 10 often or slightly more than a third said they took the money. By medium, more tabloid reporters (50%) took the money than radio reporters (43%), television reporters (40%) and broadsheet reporters (25%).

Nine of the 10 reporters who took the money said  they did so even when their newsrooms set aside budget for covering the elections. All but one of the 10 reporters insisted that taking the money did not affect the way they wrote the story because they said they did not ask the money, no conditions were attached to the gift of money, they stuck to their principles and they always got the other side to balance the story.

Most reporters who refused to take money cited ethical principles as their reason, fearing that acceptance of the money would mar their reputation and independence.

The candidate’s or party’s PR or staff often offered the money to these reporters while sometimes it was the candidate himself or herself who offered the money.

PCIJ reported in its The Showbiz Press get into politics:

Some of the more senior reporters received between P5,000 to P10,000. “The reporters remember me because I was generous,” Martin says.

Another media handler says that in this election, they keep on retainer select political reporters and desk persons. Money is given in cash. Some reporters — both print and broadcast — get a minimum P5,000-monthly retainer, the handler says. But a desk editor from a major daily gets P20,000 a month.

Some of the reporters on payroll did not ask for the money, the handler clarifies. But he adds, “They were offered and they agreed.” Without preconditions, these reporters are merely expected to get their patron’s side when a negative story runs and oblige when requested to print “press release stories.”

It appears that the payola was indeed a prevalent practice in the past elections.  This year’s election coverage is different from 2004. Bloggers are now invited to press conference of candidates. We, in Blog Watch organize our own interviews with the presidential candidates. The first presidential candidate who accepted our invitation was Manny Villar last December 17 while we interviewed Nick Perlas on December 22.  Gibo Teodoro and Dick Gordon were contacted but preferred to move the interview this month.

Our interview is around two hours and we write   articles based on  various issues raised and naturally most of our articles were centered on these interviews. In the Blog Watch Facebook Fan page, I shared these articles as well as entries of other bloggers to balance the coverage of all the candidates. It then surprised me when I saw two comments on a link I posted “Noynoy Aquino Handlers desperately protecting his lead” from antipinoy.com

Is blogwatch a partisan blog? It seems you are in favor of someone else. :D

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From what I read here and the Anti-Pinoy blog, I think both site owners are under the payola VILLAR or Erap...

 

If these facebook users just read the About us page and About Staff page, they would have read that:

Blog Watch and thepoc.net are not affiliated with any political party. Ideally, bloggers in Blog Watch should be non-partisan so that they can serve as reliable and credible sources of information. However, realistically, this is not possible because bloggers are also voters with their own political views and biases. Bloggers will thus disclose in their profiles any affiliations with a politician or a political party.

Just because I posted a link that is unfavorable to Noynoy already qualifies Blog Watch as under the payola of Manny Villar or Erap? What kind of logic is that?

Did they see the diverse opinions posted about Manny Villar?  I didn’t see any accusations that we were under the payola of Noynoy or another presidential candidate?

Let me make it clear.

1. The site owner of Blog Watch is Philippine Online Chronicles under the Vibal Foundation. They can very well afford to pay their way to host the interviews of presidential candidates and pay the staff for their articles. Our articles are shared under  our Creative Commons License – BY-NC-SA-3.0 Philippines (Attribution, Noncommercial, Share-Alike) under the following conditions :http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ph/
2. The bloggers writing for Blog Watch have their own business or are employed and  do not rely on blogging or writing to earn their keep.

Is it hard to fathom that Blog Watch contributors  are principled citizens who love their country and just want to do their share to make these elections credible?  Bloggers play an important role in the election coverage because they have an existing community that can virally disseminate information among their readers as well as to other internet users, especially on the social networks which comprise 51 percent of Internet users in the Philippines

While Jose and Eduardo or their likes love to speculate  about who is on who's payroll reflects our sad society.  They can’t seem to envision people standing up for their principles under no other motivation than the simple fact that they believe in said principles.

While payola was a prevalent practice in the past elections, that’s not happening with the 2010 election most especially in Blog Watch.

Source of survey results:“Why Elections are Covered as Sport” by Sheila Coronel.

Photos by author. Some Rights Reserved.

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