Back to posting again

Yes, I know my last post in this blog was last week's, and I have yet to post something on my recent Davao trip which I have promised to do earlier. My apologies. As soon as I am finished monitoring media coverage of various issues (such as the recent decision of the Supreme Court to junk the people's initiative) for the November 2006 issue of the PJR Reports, I'll be busy posting again. Or, as my friends from PulpCommunity would have said to me, back to my old "post-whoring" days.

Speaking of PJR Reports, the October issue has just been released this week. Expect the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) website to post the issue online soon. While waiting for it, you can read the September issue of the magazine.

"The main story in the September 2006 issue of the PJR Reports focuses on a very timely issue," the CMFR blog wrote. "How the government itself has continued in violating the people's right to information."

Veteran journalist Yvonne T. Chua wrote the main story"Keeping Secrets" in the said issue. "At the start of the Arroyo presidency," Chua wrote, "the Philippines was being held up as among the most open democracies in Southeast Asia."

"Apparently," she noted, "Not anymore."

Saying that Filipinos "has suffered major setbacks in obtaining state-held information in the past five years," Chua wrote Malacañang no less leads the government institutions that have put up barriers.

Read more of Chua's article here.

My story for the September issue reviews Bandila, the latest late-night news program of ABS-CBN. My story, "ABS-CBN performs 'act of leadership' -- but who's following?: Rallying behind Bandila, reviewed Bandila's strengths and lapses in its initial weeks of telecast.

Other articles are:
On building credible media
Lessons from the Frontlines
Eugenia D. Apostol

A columnist bashes homosexuals and gets a backlash
Not a Gay Affair
Venus L. Elumbre and Don Gil K. Carreon

How gov't routinely violates the public's right to information
Keeping Secrets
Yvonne T. Chua

TV current affairs program under the glare of the MTRCB
Censoring Documentaries
Nathan Lee

Covering conflict in Mindanao
Terror and the Press
Crysta Imperial Rara

Review
The Lebanon-Israeli war through the eyes of
CNN and BBC
Demonizing the 'Enemy'
Jamal Ashley Abbas

Why I left Puerto Princesa
Yasmin Arquiza

You can also check other sections of PJR Reports posted online -- the Speaking of Media, Monitor, Chronicle, Crisis, and Obit sections.