MIRON

No News is Bad News

Still no time to write but must help in effort to knock some sense into President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. (Has she gone mad?! ). So will let Neal Cruz do the talking:

Neal Cruz's column today

Let me educate these officials, as simply as possible, about the basic principles of journalism. Let's call it Journalism 101.

Newspapers exist to report news. They were born out of a need by the people to know what is going on in their government and society. And what is news? It is defined as "anything unusual." The classic example is that if a dog bites a man, it is not news; but if a man bites a dog, then that is news. Cases of dogs biting humans are common, so it is not interesting to readers, but humans biting dogs are indeed rare and readers would be eager to know why he did it and how the dog reacted.

So why does the press play down or ignore something good that a public official does and play up anything bad that he does?

Of course. Because public officials are expected to do good -- that's their job; that's nothing unusual. But when they do something bad, that's unusual and they're not supposed to do that. So that is news.

When the time comes when the situation is reversed, when doing good is so rare it becomes news and doing bad so common that it is no longer news, then we would be in a very sorry state indeed. We are already slowly going into that. Stories of honest cab drivers and janitors returning money they found now make the front pages. Is that an indication that honesty has now become so rare that it is now front-page news?

Aren't we all expected to be honest at all times, from the President (and especially the President) down to the janitor? That is why when a president cheats in an election, it is big news. That is why when a president lies, it is big news. That is why when a president steals, it is big news. That is why when presidential relatives accept bribes from gambling lords, it is big news. They are not supposed to do those things.

As for those stories Ate Glue complained about, they were not invented by the press. These are facts-they actually happened. All the press did was report them, which its duty. It was just the messenger. But Ate Glue wants to shoot the messenger for bringing the message.

Ate Glue has nobody to blame but herself for all the bad press she is getting. There is one surefire way to always get a good press: Always do good, and don't do anything bad.

The Bad News about Good News

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 not so innocent bystanders

This excellent question raised by Edwin Lacierda has landed me in quite a few fights in the newsroom, but what's one more, ey? I think any journalist who doesn't put down his or her camera or lay down his mic for a person in dire need of help is a piece of shit human being unfit for journalism and any other trade that require some degree of human decency and love for life. (Now you see why I get into fights?)

Believe it or not, for this I am sometimes called a radical. The traditional role of journalist as detached observer obviously still rules. But try as I might, I truly don't see the dilemma here. I think there is something wrong when you actually have to weigh an "ethical" question like this:

Human being getting bashed in the head by police needs my help now VERSUS Exclusive live frontal shot of human being getting bashed in the head by police. Man could die but maybe just injured. Shot must be seen by public so that they'll know of human being bashed in the head by police.

I'm still haunted by actual video of a reporter interviewing a dying girl as she lay pinned down by tons of cement in the Baguio earthquake. I think we all died a little there.

We should adopt Good Samaritan laws legally requiring citizens to assist people in distress.  The photogs caught shooting away at the scene of Princess Diana's fatal car wreck were investigated for violation of the French good samaritan law. We should have the same laws!

Edwin Lacierda on Role of Media
ANC has brought the rallies to the living room. Watching all the ANC footages, one sees the many montage of policemen dispersing the rallyists. You see them pulling and dragging the rallyists by force, grabbing their shirts, hitting them with truncheons. These are live shots with camera men right there where the violence is occurring.

And so, we ask: What is the role of media? Is its sole role to bring the news to our salas?

In the face of endless violence that happen in front of the cameras, should the camera person continue shooting the scenes and watch haplessly while a human person is being dragged against his will or while being beaten to the pulp? Does the media person have the obligation to stop and help the poor fellow and tell the law enforcement officials to stand down?

This has been the classic dilemma of media. Are they passive observers to an event or can they shape and influence events as they are happening?

I do not know if there is ever going to be a solution to this endless debate about the role of media. I do not even know what hierarchy of values a media person has to wrestle with in the very face of the events.

Maybe, we should ask our media-bloggers and shed light on the role of media in the light of violence and fluvial “cannonization” ceremonies. I am sure there is no dearth of opinion on this matter. But we still await for some enlightenment.