The following is a live blog of the 17th National Press Forum of the Philippine Press Forum at the New World Hotel entitled Watching the Watchdog: Re-examining Ourselves.
DAY 2
June 14, 20013
The second day of the annual PPI conference begins with a discussion on how Philippine newspapers are surviving in the digital age. At a time when US newspapers have been closing down with alarming regularity and media workers in the western world are being laid off, it would be good to look at the Philippine experience, and see if there are points of similarity or divergence.
Cebu Daily News publisher Eileen Mangubat, who introduced the first session, spoke of the problem faced by today’s newspapers – rising costs for paper, electricity, and wages, while advertising revenues and circulation remain flat or have started sliding down.
Mangubat said nowhere is this felt more than in the provinces, where radio and television, which reach more people, are getting the lion’s share of the revenues.
“Here lies the paradox: people are consuming more information today than ever before, and are impatient for news,” Mangubat said. “They may not be reading daily or weekly newspapers, but they are finding out more at faster speeds through the internet.”
But rather than seeing this as a death knell for newspapers, Mangubat said media agencies should see this as an opportunity to improve skills and adopt new technologies.
“The demand for news and information and good design and visuals are the biggest opportunity for the news media to do what it does best – story telling with a purpose,” Mangubat said. “In the end, the mission of journalism remains the same: to inform the people and tell the truth.”
Mangubat however stressed the need for media organizations to forge a “deliberate strategy” to make use of these challenges and opportunities. This, because good journalism will always cost money, and it would be up to good journalists and media agencies to find the right formula for doing good journalism – and staying afloat.
The first speaker was Mel Velarde, chief executive officer of Information Capital Technology Ventures, Inc, on diversifying news content and online competitiveness.
Velarde began by emphasizing the importance of trust and diversification in the online world.
“Trust is the monetization engine online,” Velarde said. This, because the online world is, more and more, dependent on the value of trust.
As for diversification, Velarde said media agencies who choose to diversify their content and distribution should keep in mind the four ways by which consumers consume content:
- Focused consumption;
- Time shifting;
- Dual mode;
- Infosnackss, or information sachets.
Velarde also stressed the need for caution in taking in new technologies; some agencies adopt too many platforms for all protocols, thereby losing money in the process.
What is needed, Velarde said, is what he calls “responsive web design,” wherein content is automatically repurposed for all media online platforms, or what he calls a “buy-one-take-four” design.
Rappler editor-at-large Marites Vitug, speaking on the transition from print to online, spoke of the challenges of moving from mainstream to the web.
Vitug related the experience of publishing Newsbreak, an investigative news magazine that at first was published in print, before being forced to move online because of rising publication costs. However, even online, Vitug said Newsbreak had difficulty staying out of the red, since most of the online advertisements still kept going to the bigger established and mainstream news websites.
In order to address these financial issues, Newsbreak entered into a partnership with a giant mainstream media organization in order to stay afloat. While the arrangement proved to be relatively comfortable in terms of finances, many in Newsbreak had difficulty adjusting to both the television and online 24-hour news beast.
In the end, Vitug said that while news on the web still seems to be largely event driven, in that hits go up with big events like disasters, calamities, and elections, online journalists should not be driven by this alone.
“We have to be careful not to be solely influenced by the numbers in our choices of news,” she said. “We should still have the lesser read stuff like science and politics.”
“News is not like American Idol. Our duty is to bear witness,” she said.
“The challenge to the print medium is this: Today, the papers have a tougher job to do, they need to go a step further beyond the breaking news to the in-depth,” Vitug said. This, because the internet “already tells us the news minute by minute, hour by hour.”
“Newspapers should do the service by explaining what this all means to the public,” she said.
Also invited to the panel in order to give the community press some tips on how to engage advertisers and make their newspapers more attractive as an advertising platform, the PPI also invited representatives from Proctor and Gamble and Mead Johnson.
Clint Navales, head of Communications for Proctor and Gamble and corporate secretary of the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA), said the consumers were “hungry for intimacy,” something that community newspapers could tap into.
Navales pointed out that community newspapers would presumably be more in touch with the culture, social networks, and habits of their own communities. If the community papers could tap into this knowledge, then they would be more attractive to advertisers than the mainstream national media.
“The consumers want the brands to talk to them as individuals,” Navales said.
“The community papers can create a look and feel that is premium and costumized to the unique culture of a community,” he said. “Iba dapat ang Panay News sa Davao, iba ang Visayan Daily Star sa Baguio Midland Courier.”
Wally Panganiban, corporate affairs head of Mead Johnson Nutrition, stressed the need for journalists and media agencies to “develop new readers.”
“Do not rely on how they access the media on their own, because chances are they will miss out,” Panganiban said.
In addition, Panganiban said media agencies should also make an effort to “grow talents in the newsroom,” and not just harvest good journalists from outside.
“We have to inspire future professional journalists, we have to find a way to excite people to take up journalism as a career, as a profession,” he said.
Panganiban also stressed the need for what he called media development. For example, Panganiban pointed out that while the PPI has the annual conference every year to talk about issues in the industry, the major newspapers almost never cover these events.
“So these issues do not get communicated outside, they do not go out into the mainstream discussion, and that is sad,” he said.
In the open forum, some PPI members pointed out that while an online presence may be necessary for Manila media, advertisers should not shut out provincial media agencies which do not have an online presence.
Adrian Amatong, a publisher from Mindanao, pointed out that many of their readers don’t have online access to begin with; in fact, Amatong said, many of their readers are not even internet literate. Amatong said it would not be fair for advertisers to expect provincial papers to show technological innovations online when they do not need it on the ground to begin with.
Carla Gomez of the Visayan Daily Star for her part threw back the challenge to advertisers. “You guys need to explore our markets in the provinces,” she said. “We have more hits than the actual sales of newspapers, and we are much cheaper.”
Gomez said advertisers should stop being so engrossed with the national news media, and start looking at the potentials in the countryside.
Gomez says her media agency services a large community of people abroad, as well as a niche market. “There is a large Negros community who do not read the national newspapers,” she said.
“We are the future for advertising as well,” Gomez said, drawing applause from PPI members.
Panganiban of Mead Johnson asked the controversial question that got everybody’s attention.
After several community newspapers made a pitch to the advertising community to place ads in the community press, Panganiban said: “The question is, does everybody need to survive?”
To this, several PPI members were heard saying “Yes, of course!”
However, Panganiban pointed out that the question needed to be asked because not all newspapers hew closely to the standards that even the PPI holds dear. Panganiban also indicated that for good newspapers to survive in the digital age, newspapers that don’t deserve to survive also have to fold up.
“Are all newspapers complying with the standards for paying their reporters?” Panganiban asked. “Are all these papers holding to the good and the true?”
“Surviving means getting rid of those who don’t deserve to survive,” he added.
10:45 a.m.
Session 2
For the second session of the last day of the PPI annual conference, Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan of the Right to Know Right Now Coalition gave an update on the long-stalled Freedom of Information bill.
Malaluan said the FOI bill will again have to start from scratch when the 16th Congress begins with the President’s State of the Nation Address.
“We felt the FOI bill was more than ripe already after all those years,” Malaluan said. Malaluan said that FOI advocates are making adjustments with the lessons from the failure of the FOI to pass through the 15th Congress.
For instance, Malaluan said they relied mainly on a core of FOI champions in the lower chamber to push the bill through “on the belief that this could be done with the backing from the President.”
However, since Malacanang appeared cool to the FOI, the measure languished in the lower chamber, barely squeezing through the House committee on public information, and wallowing in the plenary. On the other hand, the FOI bill in the Senate had already been passed on third reading.
Malaluan said FOI advocates plan to “hit the ground running” with a press conference on the 24th of June, 2013.
Malaluan said the version that the coalition will push with the 16th Congress is an “embodiment of the consensus” of various advocacy groups that have consistently pushed the FOI.
The major points of the latest version of the FOI bill include:
- A clear definition of Freedom of Information that also clearly lists the exceptions to the FOI
- The removal of a wide discretion on the part of government to deny FOI
- Speedy procedure for the access of documents
- Enumeration of specific acts that are violative of the right to information, constituting administrative or criminal offenses.
- Standards for record keeping and disclosure by the government
- And finally, an affirmation that any move to include a Right of Reply proviso would be rejected outright, and would in fact be the line that divides true FOI champions and those who only pretend to push the measure.
“We have seen in the past five Congresses that the full application of our right to information is strongly resisted by bureaucrats. We will never get the FOI easily. It is clear that determined political action is necessary, and we are hoping to work with you as soon as the 16th Congress opens,” Malaluan said.
Asked to comment on the approval by the Supreme Court of a petition by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) for the release of the statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth of the Supreme Court Justices, Malaluan said the decision by the tribunal was a victory for FOI advocates. However, Malaluan stressed that there were more battles ahead, especially on the issue of getting the SC to revise its rules and guidelines for the release of the SALNs.
Malou Mangahas, Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, pointed out that the PCIJ petition was with the court for a total of ten months before the petition was acted upon.
Mangahas added that the tribunal had imposed too many conditions for the court to even consider the petition, including notarized affidavits and articles of incorporation, as well as lengthy justifications for the request and what interest the request was supposed to serve.
This, even though Republic Act 6713, the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public OFficials and Employees, merely states that SALNs should be made accessible to anyone within 15 working days after these are filed.
Mangahas also spoke on how the media covered the 2013 midterm elections, and the importance of learning from the recent poll experience in order to apply these lessons for 2016.
Managahas said the coverage of the midterm elections was a mixed bag of sorts, with some media agencies going beyond the spot breaking reports and the usual general profiles of candidates, while others were content to report uncritically what the campaign spins of the candidates.
For example, she said it was clear that many media organizations gave inordinate focus on “better known and more moneyed candidates” of the administration and the opposition. On the other hand, many media agencies merely gave “negligible and token coverage of independent candidates.”
Mangahas said reporters and editors would do well to remember that political coverage does not end with the May 2013 elections, and that media should now shift to collecting on the promises that candidates made should, and prepare to cover the May 2016 elections better.
“More than sending candidates to power, it is about holding them to account for abusing that power,” she said. “It is wrong to think that the coverage ends on May 13, 2013, when in fact, we should expand, continue, and sustain it even today, in preparation for 2016.”
“More than the usual coverage of elections, we should be happy that somehow we have done more than the usual coverage,” Mangahas said. “But is doing better than usual good enough for our audience?”
“I think the focus should be how can we cover the elections better in 2016. After all, everyone says the 2013 elections is just the front act for 2016,”she said
Mangahas also revealed some details of a PCIJ study on the living and working conditions of journalists, especially in the Visayas, and how economic circumstances may be one element that could affect how a journalist behaves. Mangahas said the study would be released later this month.
At the same time, Managahas sought to place corruption in media in the proper context, saying corruption is a complex issue that should not be painted in broad strokes of black and white. Minor and grave omissions or violations of the journalism’s code of ethics may all be what some people mean when they talk about “corruption” in the media, she said.
Likewise, the issue of “corruption” is better addressed by media organizations, not by finger-pointing or by declaring one to be holier than the rest, but by a combined and concerted effort at self-regulation. At the same time, she said the media should even more vigorously rail against “the supply side” of corruption, notably sources “who seem to think that everyone in media has a price.”
Journalism codes of ethics, she spelled out, cluster possible violations between “black and white” issues such as accepting cash or gifts or favors, in exchange for favorable stories, but also the “grey domain” of conflict of interest situations, deceptive methods of getting stories, and even sloppy reporting or failure to get all sides to a story, she said.
“The challenge is to live it (ethics) out every day in the field and in the newsroom, to take the issues as they come, to disclose conflicts of interests, to decide with the welfare of the audience as primary concern,” Mangahas said. “Mas maganda aralin kung ano ang gagawin step by step, as individuals, as newsrooms, and as a community.”
She said any discussions of supposed “corruption” in the media should not be seen as occasion for the government to crack down on the citizen’s freedom of speech, of the press, and to assemble peaceably that are inalienable rights of all the citizens under the Constitution.