GMA moves to thaw relations with media

President Arroyo made an effort yesterday to mend fences with the media, which she had earlier criticized for sensationalist reporting and for allowing reporters to be used by her political critics.

The President met more than 50 executives, station managers and reporters of the Radio Mindanao Network (RMN), one of the country’s largest news radio stations, for lunch at Malacañang’s Rizal Room.

Ely Saludar, RMN-Manila station manager, said there was mostly light banter and talk between Mrs. Arroyo and the media executives but she also asked how people in the countryside were reacting to issues being discussed in Metro Manila.

"There was just light talk but she did ask how the people in the provinces were taking the news here in Metro Manila," Saludar said. "We told her that the people are concerned but they are going on with their lives."

The President, he said, has indicated that she might also be meeting with other media outfits in the coming days.

The last time Mrs. Arroyo faced the media in a press conference was last July 27 in Malacañang.

The meeting with RMN executives came after Mrs. Arroyo slammed the media twice this month for allowing itself to be used in destabilization moves against her.

She also tagged a television journalist as instrumental in bailing out a suspected terrorist based on military intelligence reports, which officials later admitted were based on circumstantial evidence.

Last Nov. 10, the President told a gathering of top radio and television executives that the media should shed its "bad boy" image and refuse to be used in "power games and destabilization schemes."

She complained before foreign and local business groups that the media had been focusing too much time and space on negative issues while overlooking all the positive developments in the economy.

She warned the media not to become part of the "national malaise and a hindrance to development rather than an important solution to our problems."

Trumpeting her administration’s achievements in investigating the slayings of crusading journalists, Mrs. Arroyo stressed that many of the cases are now going to trial.

However, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) president Jose Torres pointed out that Mrs. Arroyo cannot instruct the media to report only good news.

Torres also noted that 35 journalists had been killed in the country since Mrs. Arroyo assumed office in 2001.