‘Politicians main drivers of media criticism’

MANILA, Philippines — The low level of trust in the news in some countries including the Philippines was traced to politicians extremely critical of media, according to the 2023 Digital News Report of Oxford’s Reuters Institute.

Based on the report, 63 percent of Philippine respondents have seen or heard people criticizing journalists or the news media in the country.

The Philippines was ninth among 46 countries surveyed in the report, after Peru (71 percent), Croatia (69 percent), Greece (66 percent), Argentina (66 percent), Brazil (65 percent), Slovakia (64 percent), Bulgaria (64 percent) and Kenya (64 percent).

The report noted the link between the high levels of exposure to news criticism in countries with high levels of distrust in news.

Asked for sources of criticisms, some 46 percent of Filipinos said they heard criticism of journalists or the news media coming mostly from politicians and political activists. The full breakdown of the survey in the Philippines was not released.

But across countries, politicians and political activists also topped the list at 42 percent, closely followed by ordinary people whom they do not know (40 percent), colleagues, families or friends (38 percent), celebrities and social influencers (33 percent) and other journalists (27 percent).

About half or 49 percent of respondents across all markets said they saw news criticism on social media. Others were exposed to discussions with people they know (36 percent) and the news media themselves (35 percent). While most said they saw it on two or more platforms, about 25 percent said they have only seen it on social media.

Craig Robertson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, stressed that “not all criticism is bad, and that a large amount of criticism does not necessarily mean that journalists are doing a poor job.”

“At the same time, there are cases where a large share of criticism is driven by powerful actors systematically trying to undermine independent media, or spread by highly motivated networks of partisans attacking the media for political purposes,” he wrote in the report.

Meanwhile, Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen apologized to Nobel laureate and Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa that their “work has been abused to attack her and her colleagues.”

Ressa earlier called out the annual research, noting how it was misrepresented and weaponized by those who presented Rappler as the “least trusted” media brand in the Philippines.

Nielsen said they took additional steps to mitigate the risk of abuse, such as by adding more prominent disclaimers, methodological detail, and explanation around the brand-level trust data.

But Ressa maintained that the research endangers journalists at risk. “After four years of behind-the-scenes feedback with no substantive changes and no acknowledgement of its harms, you have to ask – what is the purpose of this research? Of the bar graphs that are meant to get attention at our expense?” she said in response to the apology.

She posted excerpts from her previous communication to the institute, where she described the brand trust scores as vanity metrics.

“The way you market the report and its headlines lead to what you call ‘abuse’ but they are natural consequences of this flawed approach,” said Ressa. “When journalists are under attack, it isn’t business as usual for academics studying journalism. This isn’t just bad actors manipulating the study; the flaw is in the study itself.”

Human rights, media groups red-tagged

Civil society groups have expressed alarm over a circulating list of legitimate Cordillera-based organizations, including media human rights groups that were tagged as “sectoral front organizations” of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

The list, allegedly from a resolution issued by the Kalinga Provincial Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, included alternative media outfit Northern Dispatch and the local chapters of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, College Editors Guild of the Philippines and the National Union of People’s Lawyers.

Altermidya – a national network of independent and progressive media outfits, institutions and individuals – described the resolution as “unconstitutional, undemocratic and dangerous.”

“This has the effect of preventing members of these media organizations from conducting their work as journalists and also puts them in grave danger from the military and the police,” it added.

It called for the immediate junking of the resolution, noting that the others in the list are known legitimate organizations in northern Luzon.

It likewise urged the Commission on Human Rights and other government and human rights institutions to look into the resolution and the list.