CMFR: Cebu dailies cover mostly local elections (7:39 p.m.)

MANILA -- As expected, Cebu’s English language papers covered the developments in the local elections, an initial assessment from media watchdog Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) said.

Based on CMFR’s “Media Coverage of the 2010 elections,” the newspaper outfits Sun.Star Cebu, Cebu Daily News, and The Freeman focused on the local rather than the national elections, although the local races are set to start only on March 26.

“Although the presidential elections did receive attention, these still came in second in terms of number of reports. Some reports were also on the presidential, vice presidential, senatorial and party-list elections, but in general these reports were fewer and far between compared to those on Cebu’s local elections,” CMFR said in a statement.

Local election reports totaled 161, where “elections in general” was covered in 145 reports and the presidential elections in 92 reports. Senatorial, vice-presidential and party-list elections coverage followed respectively. Twenty eight reports meanwhile are classified as “Local (non-Cebu)” or political developments in other areas with national interest (i.e. Pampanga, Maguindanao).

“Significantly, the Cebu press also reported on local elections in other provinces, indicating an understandable preferential bias for the proximate and the more immediately relevant,” it added.

Sun.Star led the coverage of Cebu politics with 68 reports, followed by The Freeman with 56, and Cebu Daily News with 37. The 27-year-old paper also topped the list in presidential, party-list and elections in general stories.

As to the number of news reports, The Freeman had the most number of election-related reports (145), followed by Sun.Star (144) and Cebu Daily News (100).

In relation however to their respective news holes, Cebu Daily News led with 20 percent election-related reports, followed by Sun.Star and The Freeman with 19 percent each.

The CMFR monitoring also found the reports to be generally neutral at 86 percent, or equivalent to 333 out of 389 election-related reports filed during the monitoring period.

“Sun.Star Cebu had the most number of neutral reports both numerically (135 neutral articles) and proportionally (94 percent), followed by Cebu Daily News (83 neutral articles, 83 percent), and The Freeman (115 neutral articles, 79 percent). Most of the reports had adequate background at 86 percent,” CMFR said.

CMFR partnered with the Cebu Citizens Press Council (CCPC) for the project. The journalist watchdog has been monitoring the coverage of the Philippine elections since 1992. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)