Tuesday, August 05, 2008 Malig: Journalism standards By Jun A. Malig Cognition
WE'RE proud to learn that the eldest member of the Sun.Star Publications Network once again received an award for excellence in journalism from Asia's oldest Rotary Club.
Sun.Star Cebu received the Regional Newspaper of the Year Award recently from the Rotary Club of Manila for its "excellent reportage of big events and issues that affect the nation, along with extensive, in-depth coverage of regional and community news that seek to inform, involve and inspire its readers."
The prestigious Rotary Club of Manila credited the paper for its contributions in "uplifting journalism standards and encouraging positive community involvement among its readers."
Judges cited Sun.Star Cebu's news, features, and opinion articles about women and children's welfare, injustice, press freedom, and other relevant issues and concerns.
Managing editor for news Isolde Amante accepted the awards from the Rotary Club of Manila as a challenge "to live up to (their) commitment to serve the communities (they) cover."
The paper received the same award in 1992, 2004, and 2006.
In 2005, the Sun.Star Publications Network bagged the National Newspaper of the Year Award. This year's recipient of the award is Business World.
But I believe that Sun.Star Cebu does not publish high standard articles just to win awards. It merely performs its duty to provide the public with relevant and accurate information. This is what we, in Sun.Star Pampanga's editorial department, are also trying to do.
We regard the paper as our role model. In fact, Sun.Star Pampanga's editorial department is under the direct supervision of Cebu-based Sun.Star Publishing and we are guided by the Sun.Star Code of Standards and Ethics and its News Operations Manual.
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The report about the P234.8 billion profit made by Smart Communications, Inc. and Globe Telecoms in the past 10 years says it all. The cellular phone firms, which popularized short message service or texting in the country, are really making very huge amount of money from Filipinos.
Can we blame some legislators like Marikina Representative Marcelino Teodoro from asking Smart and Globe to somehow return to their subscribers a small percentage of the billions and billions of pesos the two companies have been earning each year?
Filipinos -- well-to-do, middle-class, and the poor -- have made the cellular phone companies filthy rich within a single decade.
It was learned that PLDT-Smart's net profit from 1998 to 2007 was about P164 billion while Globe's net profit during the same period was about P70.8 billion.
The PR ploys and advertisements of Smart and Globe make people believe that their text and call promotions are beneficial to their respective subscribers. But this is not the real case. The fact remains that the telecom companies have found goldmines in the Filipinos' fondness for cellular voice calls and "texting."
The net profits of Smart and Globe evidently show that they can offer much lower rate for their short messaging services.
"If we could remember, initially texting was free of charge during the initial stage of telecoms establishment. The Filipino telecommunication subscribers are prey to the spiteful tactics of these major carriers while they are enjoying their billions of peso earnings, this must be put to stop," Teodoro was quoted as saying.
