Why report bad news?

A top government official, meeting with a group of senior journalists over lunch yesterday, inquired: Since we’re all Filipinos who want what’s good for our country, why can’t media just report the good things that government is doing, instead of always looking for what went wrong and criticizing?

One of the newsmen present had a quick reply to this well-intentioned plea: “Because that’s not our job,” he said. “That is the job of the government media. And if people don’t see the good stuff that’s happening, it’s because government media is not doing its job.”

Because private media lives or dies by the perception of its credibility (or the lack of it) in the free marketplace of reportage and commentary, it cannot be perceived as the mouthpiece of the government. And the mouthpieces of government propaganda are much more numerous and a lot better funded than even the biggest private news organizations.

This administration, in particular, has no right to be onion-skinned about criticism in the press. It was only recently that its leaders were on the side of the critics, after all, leaders who successfully instigated, fomented and abetted anti-government sentiment and translated this into votes that swept them into power.

Besides, if even after the Aquino administration greatly expanded the funding and scope of the government propaganda machinery—appointing three Cabinet secretaries to do media-related work, for instance, when there used to be just one—it still fails to succeed in what it calls “messaging,” then perhaps that is no longer the media’s fault.

At the end of the day, people will believe the media and the government only insofar as either of them are believed to be telling the truth, based on what the people actually see for themselves. To deny that greatly overestimates the power of media and insults the ability of the citizens to form their own opinions according to their own observations.

Blaming the press for the government’s credibility woes is ultimately untenable because the media do not run the government nor its propaganda machine. That’s the Aquino administration’s job. –Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today