And the press says: "What party-list elections are you talking about?"

Thanks to GMANews.TV (for this and this), Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism's Avigail Olarte (for this) and Lala Ordenes-Cascolan (here), Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) consultant and Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists coordinator Ma'am Rachel Khan (here), and The Philippine Star's Marichu Villanueva (sorry, I couldn't find any online version of her recent column). I hope more journalists and media organizations write about the latest CMFR project, "Monitoring the news media coverage of the 2007 national elections."

The latest CMFR study showed that the media coverage of the first three weeks of the national campaign barely reported on and discussed the party-list elections, despite these elections' being national in scope. Like in 2004 when CMFR did its a citizens’ monitor of the national elections -- a first in Philippine electoral experience -- there was the usual emphasis on celebrity and celebrity-related news.

As I have posted earlier, CMFR held a round table discussion last March 5 discussing its 2004 study findings and recommendations before coming out with the first analysis of the coverage of this year's elections.

Click here for a short report about the March 5 event. The discussion that followed afterwards was very interesting, I tell you.

I also posted video clips of the round table discussion in my Youtube account. Sorry if they are quite grainy -- Ate Carol (our office finance manager and overall rah-rah girl), I think we need to buy that new videocam I saw the other day. And Venus, Don, Bimbo, and Junette, I think we need to practice more on how to shoot videos (lol).



Click on the clip and this will lead you to my account, containing the rest of the videos.

Speaking of my dear colleagues, Nathan, dude, I'm sorry If I and Venus did not join the chat session with the staff earlier. Toxic PJR Reports work.