There's been a lot of pressure on news organizations to come up with more positive news and highlight the good over the bad and the ugly. In ABS CBN, the search for at least one good news a day is practically mandatory. Inquirer makes it a point to publish a positive Sunday story. Great, I say, for as long as they are newsworthy and for as long as there is no attempt to perfume reality.
Nothing should get in the way of our job of telling the truth. And the need for more truth telling has never been greater.
Inquirer's editorial serves as a reminder to all journalists:
To understand why more bad news than good news is published in the papers, we have to know the nature of news. A popular definition of news is this: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news. When a man bites a dog, that is news." This definition stresses the "oddity" aspect of the news.
Another definition says that news is a story about an aberration or a sensational exception to the norm. Thus, journalists like to point out that every day all over the world, tens of thousands of airplanes land safely at airports, but that is not news because it is normal--a safe landing is always expected. But when an airplane crashes, that is not normal and that is news.
Second, when it comes to political, social and economic news, in a liberal democracy like ours, the media are expected to be adversarial. They act as watchdogs, exposing irregularities in government and in society as a whole. And the media expose these irregularities not only for the sake of digging up dirt. They expose wrongdoings and wrong practices so that they will not be repeated, the erring people punished and the wrong procedures corrected.
Jose Rizal, in dedicating "Noli Me Tangere" to his "Motherland," said: "Desiring your well-being, which is our own, and searching for the best cure, I will do with you as the ancients of old did with their afflicted: expose them on the steps of the temple so that each one who would come to invoke the Divine, would propose a cure for them.
"And to this end, I will attempt to faithfully reproduce your condition without much ado. I will lift part of the shroud that conceals your illness, sacrificing to the truth everything."
We would like to think that present-day Filipino journalists are spiritual and moral heirs of Rizal and the Propagandists who exposed what was wrong in Philippine society during their time so that these wrongs could be remedied.
Third, the negative stories being written by journalists are not products of their imagination; they are based on facts, on observation, on records and reports, on statistics and interviews. In reporting negative news, journalists are, like the actors who received an exhortation from Hamlet, only holding "the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
But journalists all over the world are becoming more concerned about the media's "negative bias." And they are doing something to correct the imbalance. To cite our own practice, the Inquirer has long been publishing "positive Sunday issues" where most of the stories on the front page are positive, heart-warming and inspiring. Everyday, Inquirer editors try to include at least one positive story on Page 1. ABS-CBN and GMA 7 always have at least one positive story in their newscasts.
Geneva Oberholser, former ombudsman of The Washington Post, has a good piece of advice for her colleagues: "[P]resenting an accurate picture means showing the courage and joy and victory that surrounds us, too. Avoid framing everything as conflict. Emphasize substance over process. Don't exaggerate problems and pathologies. Behave as a citizen and a journalist: Report, write and edit as if you care about where you live.''
This is good advice that all socially responsible journalists should take to heart and practice.
The bad news is really that the media has controlled the psyche of common folks. Media has dictated how one "should think" and even "must think" in some instances. When the media try to pour those "bad news" or the negative reports, the common folks would merely succumb to the idea. Hence, the chain reaction of negative vibe would flow from the way they think and the way they act. This is what is happening in the Philippines right now. Filipinos are so attached to the media. Everything the newscasters say, they will believe. Worse, nowadays, whatever big brother say, everyone will reply with a very respectful "po" or "opo" no matter how silly that dude is. The point is, Filipinos have became slaves of the media.
There are so many great news out there. And that's only in the range of Mandaluyong and Pasig. What more if we search the entire country? There are so many great things happening to this godforsaken country of ours. Would you like to hear a few? Well, my friend just arrived from foriegn shores with gigantic dreams of ours now a reality. Other friends of mine got great grades from a very challenging semester at school. Those simple things won't get into the news. But so freaking what right? I'm just trying to say that we don't have to look for solice or consolation from the media we have now in the Philippines.
Given, the Philippine media is a load of crap nowadays. Adding "positive news" might be a great idea but that's just a band aid to a gushing wound. The cure is the education of the Filipinos once again with the focus of on media appreciation. Funny, education is once again the suggested remedy for any woe. Damn, I sound like Rizal!
Posted by: Chuck Gutierrez | November 01, 2005 at 09:49 AM