Cebu Citizens-Press Council

Election training of journalists pushed
CCPC issues initial recommendations to improve media poll coverage
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Cebu, December 4, 2009

THE Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) last Wednesday passed a resolution asking news outfits to secure training for their journalists who will be sent to cover the May elections.

“These are things that cannot wait,” said Atty. Pachico Seares, CCPC executive director, during the council’s 17th quarterly en-banc meeting at the MBF Cebu Press Center.

The training should focus on election laws, procedures and ethics and can either be carried in-house, meaning by the news outfits themselves, or via joint seminars.

It should also provide the news reporters and photo-journalists a sense of familiarity with the area of the coverage, the people they cover, the political situation in the area and the customs and habits of the community.

“We have to do this now, before the election campaign period starts,” Seares said.

Moreover, news outfits are also urged to “help educate voters through news and features on the procedures of voting, especially with the shift to automation.”

They are also urged to run stories discussing the qualifications of candidates and the issues on competence and integrity, thus enabling readers to make informed choices.

News outfits are also called upon to come up with stories urging for safeguards against fraud and those that inspire people to help protect the voting and its results.

During the quarterly en-banc meeting yesterday, the CCPC’s board also resolved to enter into a partnership with the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) for a study which aims to assess how media covers the polls.

“We will improve on what we did in 2007,” Seares said, referring to a similar project implemented during the last elections and whose inputs are now part of coverage guidelines for 2010.

Ian Manticajon, local coordinator for the United Nations University-Regional Center of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development, said the research will assess actual media election coverage via content analysis.

The study, though, will be limited to Cebu’s print media—currently three English dailies and two Bisaya tabloids—and will exclude radio and television.

“That (including them in the study) would be very interesting to do.

But we can’t handle it for now. That is such a tedious process, and we simply don’t have the manpower,” Manticajon said in Cebuano.

Students from the University of the Philippines’ (UP) College of Mass Communication, as well as their counterparts at the St. Theresa’s College (STC), will carry out the study.

Manticajon, UP professor Belinda Espiritu and STC mass communications coordinator Mia Embalzado-Mateo will conduct the analysis and pen the consolidated findings and recommendations. CCPC member Mayette Tabada is also part of the team.