Too much trivialities in Corona trial coverage?

CEBU, Philippines - While live coverage of the ongoing impeachment trial against Chief Justice Renato Corona is most welcome, a Journalism professor of the University of the Philippines-Diliman said the trivial often gets mixed in with the serious.

Prof. Danilo Arao said that in journalism, live coverage does not necessarily mean continuous coverage but it can be continual.

“You don’t need to show what’s happening inside the Senate Hall all the time, pwede naman mag-commentary muna during lull moments.

That seems to be absent right now,” said Arao who spoke about citizen journalism before the UP Cebu Mass Communication students yesterday.

Examples of the irrelevant trivialities he cited are the segments that highlight grammatical errors and mispronunciations by key trial individuals.

On how the citizen journalism works in the impeachment trial against Corona, Arao said it is necessary for citizens to demand better media coverage.

“If you are misinformed, if you are media consumers and you don’t know the ethics you may be making demands that are unreasonable,” Arao said.

He explained that sometimes the audience demands for only “good news” or some would demand they just want to hear only the prosecution.

Another issue, Arao noted, is there should be careful use of words.

One example he said is the use of “Senator-Judges” when they are acting as a jury, thus they should be appropriately called “Senator-Jurors”.

Arao said that certain terms should be referred to experts otherwise these will contribute to disinformation. 

Arao also warned about experts criticizing the strategies and “foreseeing” what will be done in the next few days in the trial.

“Court reporting is factual narration. Your responsibility is to able to give a proper narration of what happened during the day,” he said.

Arao stressed that in future scenario, reports should be confined to the schedules and who are expected to appear, what evidence is set to be presented and no more speculations.

“My recommendation would be to really just provide factual narration because that’s what reporting in court is all about,” Arao added.  (FREEMAN)