Election day coverage: Automation, at last!

Published on May-June 2010 issue of PJR Reports.

Filipinos awaited the first automated elections in the country with understandable doubt and uncertainty, if not widespread and genuine fear. It had taken four years of heated legislative battle to establish the basis in law for automation (Election Modernization Act or Republic Act 8436).  The Commission on Elections’ (COMELEC) implementation was fraught with scandal and controversy at different stages, and up to the eve of election day itself, many Filipinos were not sure whether the new process would work well enough to hold credible elections.

Experts and various groups raised questions central to the integrity of the system. As reported in the media, questions focused concern on, among others, the availability of transmission facilities for the electronic delivery of election results, physical security of the Precinct Count Optical Scanning (PCOS) machines including the Compact Flash (CF) cards, the installation of the source code, the breakdown of the PCOS machines, and not the least, the training, or the lack thereof, that would prepare technical personnel and members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) and Board of Canvassers for the new system of voting.
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Revisiting the Party-List System (and What the Media Missed)

Published on May-June Issue of the PJR Reports
By John Reiner M. Antiquerra and Rupert Francis D. Mangilit

An April 2010 report from Pulse Asia said that nearly half of the Filipino electorate would be going to the polling precincts unaware of the party-list system. But the media still covered the party-list elections least.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR)’s monitor for the periods of April 12 to 16 and April 19 to 23 showed that only 25 of  723 television reports were on the party-list elections. What was worse was that only four of the 187 party-list groups were the subjects of these reports. Radio coverage was not good news, either, as the CMFR monitor for radio showed only 6 of the 77 reports are on the party-list groups.

While the media could have explained the many issues bedeviling the party-list system, they chose to focus only on its controversial aspects instead. One of the most covered party list groups during the period, Ang Ladlad (Out of the Closet), received coverage only after the Supreme Court reversed a Nov. 11 Commission on Elections (COMELEC) decision and granted it accreditation.

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SIDEBAR: Media Technology on Election Day 2010: Showdown or Showtime?

Published on May-June 2010 issue of PJR Reports

Technological tools were on full show on election day, adding more to talk about than just the election itself.  Sure, the display of high-tech gizmos captured audience attention. But did they really help  provide more information to help the public understand what was happening?

ABS-CBN 2 marked a milestone in media history when it reported election updates in real time with the help of new media and featured their reporters from different places using “virtual presence,” a feature of “augmented reality” from ORAD Hi Tec Systems. The network’s 103-inch touch screen monitor showed graphics that accompanied news as well as updates from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter,  Multiply, and Youtube. They also had a “war room” filled with “Boto Mo, Ipatrol Mo” volunteers, staff from ABS-CBN.com, and a team from Systems and Technology Institute (STI) which did a parallel count.

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Cebu’s Bisaya-language Dailies’ Coverage of the 2010 Elections (Sixth Monitoring Period)

(April 25-May 10, 2010)

CEBU’S BISAYA-LANGUAGE DAILIES

The last two weeks leading to election day showed a peak in the election coverage of the Bisaya-language dailies of Cebu with 290 election-related reports or 54 percent of the news hole, from 48 percent in the fifth monitoring period. SuperBalita had more election-related reports than Banat both numerically and proportionally at 59 percent and 48 percent of the news hole, respectively.

Focus of the coverage was still on the local elections which even intensified; 84 percent of the election-related reports involved the local elections. The conduct of the campaign remained the most dominant theme all throughout the monitoring period. Personality and development/policy  issues, however, received relatively more attention in this period compared to the previous weeks as politicians worked double time to be heard and seen. Stories with election-related violence and cockfight/he said she said themes also commanded considerable attention. Read the rest of this entry »

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Election related reports jump to 50% in Cebu’s English-language dailies

Cebu Print Media Coverage of the 2010 Elections
Sixth Monitoring Period
(April 25-May 10, 2010)

The final stretch of the 2010 campaign period saw the number of election-related reports in Cebu’s English-language dailies shoot up to 849 reports (April 25-May 10) from 588 in the fifth monitoring period (April 11-24). The percentage of election-related reports vis-à-vis the news hole also jumped to 52% from 40% DURING the fifth monitoring period.

The Freeman led with the most number of election-related reports at 321 (57% of its news hole), followed by Sun.Star Cebu at 284 (47% of its news hole) and Cebu Daily News at 244 (53% of its news hole). Reports about the local race (363) were still the top election news agenda, followed by elections in general (324) as the news focused on concerns raised regarding the country’s readiness to conduct its first-ever automated polls.

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