by Melinda Quintos de Jesus
A crisis of leadership
The political crisis in the Philippines is a crisis of leadership, provoked initially by the initial controversy over the president’s interference to manipulate election results in 2004.
The crisis has been heightened by serial charges of corruption with a resulting loss of public trust and confidence in her leadership and her capacity to put public interest as the central value of her government. While these have all failed, the number of impeachment complaints (13) and attempts (three) filed in Congress— a strong indication of the depth of the crisis—are unprecedented in Philippine history.
But as has been pointed out by many critics of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, it is not only the public officials currently in power who are failing. The entire political system, culture, and conduct of the ruling class are all in need of reform. Because weaknesses seem embedded in the system, the public seems at a loss about how best to resolve the crisis.
The public has not been able to unite on a strategy. The continuing challenge to the president has weakened the authority of government and the state, along with its agencies and instrumentalities. The profound polarization has eroded public support for government itself as leaders resort to a tactical approach to insure the president’s political survival.
The press community itself is divided. News reports and commentary reflect the opposing views of the factions among political groups and organizations, as well as those of civil society.
Basic principles
A review of basic principles may help clarify the role of the press during the present crisis. What is journalism for? What is its function and purpose in society? What are its obligations and responsibilities?
The revolutionary advance of communication technology and the explosion of news and other media formats, the rise of blogging and the emergence of citizen reporters and commentators have all created radical changes in how we think of media and news. Precisely because of the blurring of activity lines and the resulting confusion about what makes journalism, journalists need to establish a common or shared understanding of what they do as journalists. Only when we clarify this understanding can we take the necessary step of accepting the obligations and responsibilities incorporated in this activity.
Journalism as a process involves editing, the review and revision of reports, analysis and commentary. While eyewitness reports in the blogs may be highly valuable in terms of finding out about events and related information, such on-line reports are not always reviewed for authentication or verification.
Controlled or free
We often think of the different purposes assigned to journalism in different political systems. But there is a common ground.
Whether in a free or controlled system, the press can provide society a common fund of shared knowledge and understanding about itself, reflecting shared ideals and aspirations as well as the consensus on how these goals are to be achieved. That has always been one of the purposes assigned to journalism—that it provide people the means for carrying on a conversation. The American scholar James Carey has described journalism as primarily a medium for the conversation of a community.
Where is the difference in the way the two systems produce this conversation? In principle, though perhaps not always in practice, the free press opens the conversation to all. The purpose of a free press is to provide the kind of news and information that will help members of society to become free citizens who will engage one another in discussion and debate about public issues, and who can express their preferences on policy choices and their ideas about the laws and regulations that govern their lives.
In a controlled regime, government sets limits on the scope of the conversation and selects the participants in the public forum. The controlled system sees the press as the government’s communication arm. It is a handmaid to government, which has paramount authority over policies and the implementation of laws, policies, and programs. It is the government’s view of the citizens’ needs that becomes paramount.
Singapore’s national development, for example, has seen profound changes in the guidelines given to the press according to government’s view of society’s current needs.
Mega media
The mega-media companies operating in the global free market system today have also radically changed our thinking about news and its purpose. These companies are involved in producing a commodity, a product that needs to be packaged, perhaps buffed and shined a bit so it can compete for a larger share of the market.
News then becomes all of the above, but as defined by two leading American journalists, Bill Kovach and Bob Rosenstiel, “the primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.” (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2007). This definition was articulated only after one of the broadest efforts conducted by the American press to define for its members the function of the press in American society.
The group project was organized by what would be later called the Committee of Concerned Journalists. Using various methods, including content analysis of news, as well as public forums, conferences, interviews, and surveys, the project describes the theory and the culture of American journalism. From that description, the authors assert the purpose of journalism and enumerate its obligations and its responsibilities. The output is documented in a book, The Elements of Journalism, that has already gone into a third edition.
We turn to this American effort and its findings because the Philippine press is modeled on the American press system. Our constitution provides for freedom of speech and the press in almost exactly the same terms, the most libertarian to be found in the world: “No law shall be passed that shall abridge the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press...”
Despite alarming signs to the contrary, we have not yet moved away from this model. In fact, the leadership provided by Chief Justice Reynato Puno has significantly asserted and highlighted the value of freedom of speech and press to our way of life, the values for observance by government, and the people.
The journalistic community typically avoids this kind of discussion and most members of the press think neither of the theory nor purpose of what they do. Journalism is work and a job. And the conventions have been laid out for so long that they ceased to worry about the problems that arise in the course of the practice. Most journalists do not think of the information they provide as having such an enlarged purpose. They think simply of providing something that the public wants and will buy; they are giving them a category of information or knowledge that has been called “news.”
Older generations of journalists have proudly said there is no need to define the news, we know it when we see it. Today, when the ordinary man in the street has the means to report the news, perhaps ahead of the radio or TV news teams trawling the streets, the credentialed press has become more curious about what sets them apart as a community of journalists.
Because of the current crisis, however, more and more groups and organizations have learned the virtues of self-examination and evaluation. It seems appropriate for members of the press to do the same: to examine the practice and understand the demands of the role assigned to them, as well as the standards of conduct of journalism.
Increasingly, however, the media are being seen as part of the problem. It is important that they see themselves as also part of the solution.
Perhaps we can add to the media’s list of needs that of evaluating the various styles of journalistic conduct. We need to acknowledge that circumstances can affect the manner by which they gather and report the news. Like the American press, the Philippine stance is adversarial toward government.
This submits to modification when the country is at war or is under attack. But the shift has been harshly critiqued as the American press failed to more critically look at the American military engagement in Iraq, the detention of suspects in Guantanamo, or even the scandals which rocked American corporations. It would seem then that the adversarial style is not as important as the vigilant coverage of all public issues as these arise. Adversarial reporting need not be seen as a hostile challenge, but as the performance of an institutional check on the exercise of power.
Polarization
In a divided society, different groups will compete to use the press to publicize their side or their view so as to gain public support. Getting the press on one’s side has also involved the practice of paying off its members to assure favorable coverage. The press can also be won over by selectively consulting only those sources that can tell the desired story. Journalism’s purpose (of providing news and information for citizens) is more difficult to fulfill when conflicting and opposing views all claim to have the truth on their side.
Kovach and Rosenstiel make three points that are relevant to this discussion.
First, “The essence of journalism is (that it is a) discipline of verification.” Among the many forms of mass communication, journalism alone focuses on getting right the relevant facts of what happened.
In a situation where as many versions of what happened can be heard or reported, the journalist must commit to investigate and detect the lies, expose them, and assert the facts and the truthful conclusions that may be drawn from them.
Unfortunately, the conventional news report that records simply what the different proponents are saying has become an inadequate format for this purpose. The press must employ more means than simply recording the statements made in an official investigation. The press must sift the verified and corroborated facts from the gossip and the propaganda.
When it fails to do this, it holds back the public’s ability to make a judgment about where the truth lies in a scandal and controversy. Rather than making things clear, press reports that are limited to “he said, she said” accounts can only lead to greater confusion. Without background and context, such reports are almost without meaning.
Second, journalistic objectivity is not the absence of opinion. Journalists are like everyone else who have personal backgrounds and histories which necessarily give them an outlook and a perspective. Are they not allowed these views and opinions as journalists?
Obviously, journalistic reporting deals with the one’s views and opinions in a different way than those assigned to write commentary and opinion pieces. But journalists on any page of the newspaper must commit to the method of verification.
Kovach and Rosenstiel remind us that the concept of objectivity has been misunderstood as an aim or a purpose. A journalist has to be objective. The earliest forms of the press in the US and in the Philippines were produced for a cause. Objectivity, they point out, is not an aim, but a method employed in producing journalism. It includes collecting data and validating the evidence; and from these, formulating a perspective or truthful conclusion based on verified facts.
Often, claiming editorial balance and objectivity, reporters will limit their work to the citation of statements made. Kovach and Rosenstiel call the result a “journalism of assertion,” as the quoted statements are not verified. Given the neutral narrative voice, the reports cover up what the journalist has failed to do.
It is true however, that cultural blinders will keep even a trained reporter to see only what he or she can or wants to see. Walter Lippman has prescribed the development of the “scientific spirit” as a remedy to such human tendencies. The “scientific spirit” involves a method that includes, the citation of as many sources as necessary, the careful observation of the reality reported, and reference to documentary evidence.
In times of crisis, this “scientific spirit” requires also that journalists do what scholars and academics practice, which is to describe the method and manner by which the reporter or commentator found out about the facts and the measures taken to check the accuracy of these facts. They must force themselves to tell the public how they came to know what they know. This transparency exposes the process through which a newsroom determines the reliability of the “truths” that it reports.
When the public is so advised, it learns more about the process and develops a stronger public ability to sense mis- or disinformation. Newsrooms should use a general checklist for accuracy culled from the different institutes that have studied the journalistic process in seeking to improve it and to make it rise to the challenge of complex stories.
Objectivity, neutrality and impartiality are all part of the same cloth of practice and method. The finding of truth shows a bias for truth as a value, reflecting on the natural advocacy that journalism must carry. The “news” that provides more truth about an official transaction may be seen as biased against one side as it exposes the claims of one or another as lies. Some may see the effort to expose lies and deception as partisan journalism. In times of political crisis, it is important that the press take this role, or it shall be party to the deception.
Third, in confronting the multiple factions that claim their respective truths, the journalists must make sure of their “independence from those they cover.” It is natural for journalists assigned to beats to develop a working relationship with the subjects of their news reports. The mutual need can sometimes drive journalists into a relationship of dependency on sources, or to lose the detachment that is necessary to verify what these sources reveal to them.
In producing commentary, in interpreting the meaning of events, a journalist who writes opinion columns has more freedom to develop his or her voice and his or her point of view. But these journalists are still bound by the principles of accuracy and truthfulness as their opinions still need to be based on verified facts.
In a time of political crisis, can we expect journalists to keep themselves disinterested in political outcomes and to stay clear of the currents of political turmoil?
Press practice in behalf of public interest involves a level of commitment to country and society. Kovach and Rosenstiel argue that the model is “not disinterested. It is not cynical. It is not disengaged.”
Rather, they see the “journalist’s role as predicated on a special kind of engagement—being dedicated to informing the public, but not playing a direct role as an activist. It might be called ‘engaged independence.’” |
