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Sunday, December 14, 2003
Rivera: On the Record
By Rod Rivera
Public officials deserve the benefit of the doubt
EVER wondered how councilors in Dagupan feel as they are often portrayed as rubberstamps out to make a fast buck from every project proposed by Mayor Benjie Lim?
How come they have scarcely reacted to the speculative accusations of a local weekly publisher that their approval of proposed projects is always prompted by the promise of kickbacks?
Would not their silence amount to an admission of guilt? Or do they simply refuse to give rumors the dignity of facts?
Perhaps a verbal war arising from mere gossip stuff would only degenerate into the likes of a fishwives' quarrel that is certainly unbecoming of the protagonists.
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Downright tendentious, the opinion articles of Ermin Garcia Jr. on Mayor Lim and the councilors blatantly ignore the norms of fair and responsible journalism.
His articles thus diminish the hard-earned reputation of his paper as a standout in the community press.
As a defeated mayoral aspirant in the last elections, Ermin's unmitigated display of extreme prejudice also gives him the forlorn image of a sore loser with an ax to grind.
It's as if his luckless involvement in politics has shorn him of the journalist's indispensable capacity to remain stoutly dispassionate and objective as a recorder and interpreter of events.
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When he was president of the Manila Bulletin, the late Neptali Gonzales told the 2002 National Press Congress that:
"Being a representative democracy, our government is headed by duly elected officials in its political departments, the legislative and the executive. They are therefore entitled to the respect and support of the people who have the right to look up to them for policies and acts that promote the public welfare and better their lives.
"Every reasonable presumption of good faith should be indulged for such policies and acts that will redound to the best interests of the nation. Media is therefore called upon to recognize, encourage and support them."
Gonzales, who served as Senate president with distinction, also said that the press "reeks with prejudice and bias" when it sees nothing right but everything wrong in government.
He admonished that the press "must exert effort to assure that the news is accurate, truthful, free from bias and in context, and that all sides are presented fairly."
"It must, in the exercise of its journalistic task, respect the rights of people involved in the news, observe the common standards of decency, and stand accountable to the public for the fairness and accuracy of its news reports," he said.
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In an article on media "errors, excesses and lapses in fairness," former Time magazine associate editor Lawrence I. Barrett wrote:
"Any serious discussion of American journalism eventually elicits the complaint that no institution scrutinizes the press the way the press scrutinizes the institutions. Some journalists and publishers doubtless prefer it that way. They are perhaps in the minority, however. Within the profession and outside it, there is growing sentiment favoring varying forms of self-examination and accountability."
One part of Barret's article quoted well-known editor Norman Isaacs as saying that when he was a young reporter, "we burned up a lot of energy and space covering up the fact that we had made a mistake." Isaacs later become chairman of the National News
Council that was meant to check on shortcomings of the American press.
According to Barret, a number of major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, were hostile to the News Council.
"The New York Times, in fact, refuses to cooperate in investigations of complaints against it," he says.
But there were journalists who took it upon themselves to criticize the errors of their own newspapers and sister publications.
The best example might have been transplanted Australian Alexander Cockburn of Village Voice who took pleasure in needling fellow Australian native Rupert Murdoch, one of the world's richest and most powerful media moguls who owns the Village Voice and several other newspapers.
A newspaper may avail itself of the services of an ombudsman but its publisher could insist on having the final say.
(December 14, 2003 issue)
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