Media and the Manila Pen siege

Oh God, I can't believe it's now 2008 and the holiday break is over. I guess some of the books I got last Christmas have to wait a bit, including:

• Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper from Lara
  
• The Last Editor: How I Saved the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times from Dullness and Complacency by Jim Bellows from Don
  
• Magyk (Septimus Heap Book 1) by Angie Sage from Ate Carol
• Flyte (Septimus Heap Book 2) by Angie Sage from Ate Carol

And oh, in case you haven't read it, the main story in the December 2007 issue of the PJR Reports is how media covered the Manila Pen siege last Nov. 29 and how the journalists felt it was they and their profession that were under attack by the end of the day.

A confrontation on basic issues
The Siege of the Pen
PJR Reports December 2007
by Booma Cruz, Junette B. Galagala and Hector Bryant L. Macale

Reviewing the video footage that she took while talking to a Magdalo soldier on the balcony in the Manila Peninsula during the siege, Probe producer Zanneth Tafalla froze for a few seconds and gasped. She called her colleagues to look at the tape.

On the television screen, the soldier—who was wearing the red and white armband that was the symbol of the Magdalo group—was calmly telling Tafalla, “Umiwas na kayo (Save yourselves).” Until the producer reviewed the tape, she did not notice that a red dot from the gunsight of a sniper stationed somewhere was being aimed between the eyes of the soldier who was asking her to leave.

If the sniper had pulled the trigger, Tafalla knew that she would never get over the horror of seeing a man killed right in front of her.

Tafalla and about a hundred members of media were inside the Manila Peninsula when former Navy Lieutenant Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV, now an elected senator, and Army Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim led a few dozen soldiers in calling for the withdrawal of public support from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Many other journalists covered from outside the hotel.

“It seemed like a regular coverage… until the intermittent gunshots (were fired) and the tear gas (was lobbed). You didn’t fear for your life when you were holding your camera. But there was tension all throughout,” said Hera Sanchez, senior producer-reporter of Probe.

Sanchez was stationed at the hallway of the second floor where Trillanes, Lim, and their supporters were holed up in a room monitoring the situation.

Read more here.

Guidebook on how to monitor media coverage of elections out

Technically speaking, I am now officially finished with our media coverage project of the 2007 senate and party-list elections, with its final component already completed.

From Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR):

Guidebook for media monitoring out

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), which has been monitoring election coverage since 1992, recently published a manual on monitoring media coverage of elections in the Philippine setting.

The manual, Monitoring Media Coverage of Elections: A Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) Guidebook, is the final component of CMFR’s media monitor of news media coverage of the 2007 elections. Last August, CMFR released its findings on the media coverage of this year’s elections, The CMFR Monitor: News Media Coverage of the 2007 National Elections.

The publication contains principles, guidelines, and methods for understanding the news media and the importance of media monitoring.

CMFR Deputy Director Luis V. Teodoro, Prof. Danilo A. Arao of the University of the Philippines Mass Communication, and PJR Reports Assistant Editor Hector Bryant L. Macale prepared the manual.

For more information about the project, click here. Thanks to Prof. Arao for posting about the book. He even made a writing contest on who can give the best answer to a hypothetical ethical situation concerning a journalist. The winner gets a copy of the election manual. If only I could join the contest. Haha.

And thanks to Malaya reporter Anthony Ian Cruz for writing an entry on it. "(G) iven the track record of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility in producing well-written and amply-researched books... (the election manual) will be a worthy addition to its growing list of bestsellers among journalists and media watchers," he wrote. Thank you for the kind words, Tonyo.

Harry Potter dies

With the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling, out in a few hours, below is a short take on the media coverage of the much-awaited book by the US-based CBS News's "Public Eye" and posted a week ago. The headline above came from the article and not from me. Kill the writer Brian Montopoli for such a head-turning and highly emotional headline. Haha.

Harry Potter dies
Source: CBS News's Public Eye
Posted by Brian Montopoli

Just kidding.

Or maybe not. I really have no idea. My best guess is he meets up with the kid from High School Musical and they go off to dance and fight dragons.

Anyway, here's a question: How will media outlets report on the last Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which comes out next week? As a colleague's wife (sort of) said: "If they tell me the ending before I've finished the book, I'll never watch them again."

But it's NEWS, people! NEWS! So how do you cover it? That decision is somewhat simplified by the fact that almost no one has read the book – media outlets couldn't spoil it even if they wanted to. "We're trying to find out as much as we can, but there's really only so much we can find out," says producer Erica Zolberg, who is doing a story on Pottermania for tomorrow night's "Evening News." (For the record, Zolberg says she wouldn't spoil the end even if she knew it.)

The angle of tomorrow's story, then, isn't going to be what's in the book, but how the publishers and their partners are keeping that information quiet. Zolberg spoke to Jim Dale, the voice of the Potter audiobooks and one of the few people who has gotten his hands on the book, as well as the webmasters of two of the big Harry Potter Web sites. Everyone, it turns out, is following the "no spoilers" policy to the letter.

Read more here.

Unleashing the media geek in me

Last week, we instructed our batch of interns this year to read and study, among other publications and documents, two recent publications of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. Now I just remembered that I haven't posted something about these goodies. With the elections fast coming and the continued attacks against the press, these books sure come in handy.

AS A contribution to the efforts to further professionalize journalism practice in the Philippines, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) has released an ethics manual for journalists and media practitioners in the country last March.

The CMFR Ethics Manual: A values approach to news media ethics

Based on American journalism scholar Edmund Lambeth’s values approach to media ethics, The CMFR Ethics Manual: A values approach to news media ethics demonstrates the link between principle and practice, giving reason and meaning to both prescription and prohibition.

Written by CMFR executive director Melinda Quintos de Jesus and deputy director Luis V. Teodoro, the manual reflects CMFR’s stand that ethical journalism cannot be divorced from competent journalism. The standards of competence and ethics are not in conflict but support each other. Ethics promotes all basic human values. The requirement of speed has to be balanced by the more important need for accuracy, for example: ethical practice means journalists need to get it right and on time.

The manual is designed for those in practice —journalists who find themselves confronted by problematic situations during coverage and on the beat. Questionable practice has become the norm, unquestioned for its commonness.

Limited Protection: Press Freedom and Philippine Law
The 1987 Constitution clearly protects freedom of speech and expression in the Bill of Rights. But the terms of this protection are vague, even in the interpretation of the courts, where those in power can file libel charges against journalists with the greatest of ease.

To provide journalist a better understanding of their rights and the protections they can seek from law, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) published Limited Protection: Press Freedom and Philippine Law last December.

Read here for more information about these books and other CMFR publications.