Cebu Citizens Press Council

Elections 2010
Training for media monitors starts
By Cherry Ann T. Lim
Sun.Star Cebu, January 13, 2010

• They’ll watch and record local press coverage of the 2010 elections

STUDENTS tapped by the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) to monitor the election coverage of local print media received training last Friday from a Manila-based press freedom watchdog.

Ten students from the University of the Philippines Visayas Cebu College (UPVCC) and St. Theresa’s College, along with their team leaders, attended a workshop by Luis Teodoro, deputy director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and Hector Bryant Macale, senior staff writer of CMFR, at the UPVCC multimedia newsroom.

As part of its mandate to improve the media craft, the CCPC is working with the CMFR to monitor the Cebu media’s coverage of the May 2010 elections.

The Cebu monitoring team, led by Ian Manticajon, local coordinator of the United Nations University-Regional Center of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development; Belinda Espiritu, UPVCC professor; and Mia Embalzado-Mateo, coordinator of STC’s mass communications program, will monitor the election coverage of the three English and two Bisaya daily newspapers in Cebu—Sun.Star Cebu, The Freeman, Cebu Daily News, Sun.Star SuperBalita [Cebu] and Banat News—from Feb. 10 to May 10.

They will be assisted by CCPC members Mayette Tabada, a masscom instructor, and Fr. Aloysius Cartagenas, a professor at the Seminario Mayor de San Carlos.

3-month

During the three-month period of the monitoring, the team will give the newspapers a copy of its findings and an assessment of their performance every two weeks. This is to encourage the newspapers to improve their coverage within the election period.

In 2007, the CCPC had also monitored the coverage of the elections by the five newspapers, forming the team led by Manticajon, Mateo and Tabada for this purpose.

This year, the CMFR lends its election monitoring methodology to the council, leaving room for the Cebu team to go into areas where analysis would help the local journalists better serve their community.

The CMFR had done its own election coverage monitoring in 2004 and 2007, covering Manila-based broadsheets and television networks.

The CMFR is a non-stock, non-profit foundation that works to protect the press and promote professional and ethical values in journalistic practice.

The CCPC is a Securities and Exchange Commission-registered foundation that helps to protect press freedom, enhance the sense of accountability of journalists, and shape public opinion on media issues.

This year’s election monitoring is a project of the Cebu Citizens-Press Council with partners CMFR, Smart Communications and Cebu’s five daily newspapers.

Along with the media coverage monitoring are the consultations being conducted by the CCPC with the Commission on Elections, Philippine National Police, C-Cimpel and other election stakeholders.