Getting media mileage

An on-going study being done by the media advocacy group, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) have so far found that there have been quite an extensive coverage of the campaign of the 12-man senatorial candidates from the Team Unity (TU) of President Arroyo more than their counterpart bets from the Genuine Opposition (GO). This was based on their monitoring of the media exposure of each of these candidates during the first three weeks of the campaign period that have come out in the six leading television news programs and in the three largest broadsheets in the country.

But before the GO candidates decry getting the short end of media coverage of the senatorial campaign, CMFR deputy director and University of the Philippines (UP) journalism professor Luis V. Teodoro noted they have not detected any evident bias in the media coverage of the two camps. "The TU’s getting more coverage was driven by the conventions of newsworthiness," Teodoro pointed out in the CMFR March 12 report.

The CMFR monitored the media exposure of the TU and GO candidates based on the coverage by both television and the broadsheets from Feb. 13 to March 2. For the print media, the CMFR is monitoring the election coverage of The Manila Bulletin, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star, in alphabetical order. For broadcast, the CMFR monitors the TV news programs of the following: 24 Oras (GMA-7), Saksi (GMA-7), TV Patrol World (ABS-CBN 2), Bandila (ABS-CBN 2), Sentro (ABC-5), and Primetime Teledyaryo (NBN-4). It has trained 30 journalism student-volunteers from the UP College of Mass Communication (UPCMC) to generate the data for the duration of the campaign period up to the May 14 elections. The group will issue reports on its findings every two weeks, to culminate in a final report by June.

The CMFR came up with very interesting observations during their first monitoring of the campaign period. The CMFR monitors counted 158 newspaper reports about TU candidates, while GO candidates were the subjects of 128 reports. The CMFR study revealed that the reports were mostly about the controversies involving the individual candidate. Of the 20 senatorial candidates most covered by the TV news programs during the period, 11 were from TU, eight from GO, and one independent.

The six monitored television news programs’ coverage of the senatorial and party-list elections ranged from 8.74 percent to 41.90 percent of total airtime during the first three weeks of the senatorial campaign, according to the CMFR study. There were only 26 reports on independent candidates.

Among the TU senatorial bets, the CMFR monitored that the most covered by the broadsheets were Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay, re-electionist Sen.Ralph Recto, and actor Cesar Montano. Out of 101 reports on TU bets, Pichay had 20 stories on him; 18 for Recto; and 13 on Montano. From the GO camp, the CMFR monitored that the most covered opposition candidates were re-electionist Senate President Manuel Villar (20); Sorsogon Rep. Francis Escudero III; (12), and Taguig Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano (12). It should be worth mentioning that Pichay, Recto and Villar, from the recent study made by the Nielsen Media Research Philippines were, so far, the biggest television advertisement spenders in the first two weeks of the campaign period.

The CMFR monitored Montano who had the most combined airtime coverage by the six television news programs at 79.32 minutes during that monitoring period. Being an entertainment celebrity, naturally, he got much media mileage from the time he took over as substitute candidate for Leyte Gov. Jericho Petilla in the TU ticket last Feb. 16. Recto came a far second with 58.57 minutes and this was largely during the period that his popular wife, actress and outgoing Lipa City Mayor Vilma Santos was in the center of controversy, whether she would run for a higher elective post. The subsequent Recto family feud was spawned by Mayor Vi’s plans to contest the governorship in Batangas against her brother-in-law, incumbent Vice Gov.Ricky Recto. It was a running story that naturally got much reportage for quite a number of days. The other candidates who got most of the broadcast coverage included Cayetano, re-electionist Sen. Francis Pangilinan (Independent) and Pichay in that order. Most of the stories focused on the decision by Pangilinan, husband of popular actress/singer Sharon Cuneta, to run as an independent despite a previous GO announcement that it was adopting him as guest candidate. The media interest on stories involving Cayetano circled around his controversial running feud with presidential spouse, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.

So it pays to be controversial. This could be one of the simplistic but logical conclusions that could be drawn out of the results from this study. Good or bad publicity, it is still publicity that can create awareness among voters but not necessarily their votes on election day.

I just don’t know how the CMFR computed the scores of the frequency of appearances of the candidates in terms of, perhaps the number of times their names appeared in stories, photos and video clips. But I would suggest that they should also include in their monitoring the press and photo releases and video footages sent out to various media entities by these individual and party media bureaus of these senatorial candidates in order to have a total picture and context to best determine why some have wider press coverage than the others.

From my own experience since the campaign period started, I’ve collected already a tall pile of PRs from these candidates. As to who have the most number of PRs, please see the CMFR results. Most of these end up in the pile of papers for recycling. For those e-mailed PRs, they are now at the trash.

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