Last week, I wrote that “The law doesn’t protect deceit” in connection with the report on the fake psychiatric evaluation of Liberal Party presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III and the refusal of ABS-CBN to name the source of fraud.
I’m running here two statements from ABS-CBN on the issue because I believe that it benefits us all to listen to all sides in any issue.
The first article “Telling it like it is” is by Maria A. Ressa, head of ANS-CBN News and Current Affairs and managing director of ANC.
The other article “Name Your (Anonymous) Sources! “ is by Glenda Gloria, chief operations officer of ANC and member of the board of the Public Trust Media Group.
Telling it like it is
by Maria Ressa
On the morning of Thursday, April 8, I called a meeting of our top editorial minds to discuss a potentially explosive document given to us by a source from the Nacionalista party. It was a report allegedly done by Ateneo’s Psychology Department on Sen. Benigno Aquino III signed by Fr. Carmelo Caluag.
If true, it could spell the end of Sen. Aquino’s campaign.
If we didn’t pursue the story, we could give our source reason to say we are biased. If we did, we could potentially wade into a morass of ethical issues dealing with the mental health of the frontrunner for the presidency.
“True or false, we decided to do the story and air it in the coming days. We didn’t believe there was any rush because we thought our source had given us a headstart. That proved a wrong assumption.
A short time later, we received the same document from another source connected to the Nacionalista party.
“At 1:45 pm, we received the first of a series of email messages asking us if this document is authentic. This was particularly interesting because it came from a multilateral financial institution. When I scrolled down, it had been forwarded numerous times, already spreading virally on email.
Around 2:30 pm, we received text messages giving potentially damaging details about Sen. Aquino’s mental health under this heading “A1 Info – Psychiatric Evaluation Form of Benigno Aquino III.”
Is it true? Given how fast it was spreading, we rushed to verify. We believed it best to go to the two people named in the document: the subject, Sen Aquino, and the signatory, Fr. Carmelo “Tito” Caluag. (If we had gone to others first, they may alert those involved and trigger an organized reaction).
I called Fr. Caluag, and he denied the report, saying he wasn’t a psychologist or psychiatrist and that his signature was lifted from other documents.
Ces Orena-Drilon, on the campaign trail with Sen. Aquino, showed him the document and his initial reaction, she said, was to laugh. He spoke openly – no PR spin, no consultations – and denied the document’s authenticity.
At that point, TV Patrol World was about to start. It was a stretch to make it to air, but we did – an anchor read followed by a live report from Drilon. We outlined the events of the day, key points of the three-page report circulating on email and text, and – most importantly – the denials of Fr. Caluag and Sen. Aquino.
It was the first public denial of a salacious document masquerading as fact. By disclosing our sources without naming names, we gave our viewers a glimpse of what was going on behind the scenes.
That is why this story is important. Events are never isolated so context defines the story’s value.
Three days earlier, the Nacionalista party used the word “topak” to describe Aquino.
“Ano yung TOPAK ni Noynoy? Ito po yung Trapo, Oportunista at Kamaganak Inc na pumapaligid kay Noynoy Aquino,” said Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, secretary-general of the Nacionalista party. This statement echoed earlier remarks by Villar spokesman Gilbert Remulla on ANC.
The context of this fake document story seems to show an NP campaign to question Sen. Aquino’s mental health, something its standard-bearer, Sen. Manuel Villar publicly did on DZMM on Saturday, April 10.
The Nacionalista party denied they gave the documents to ABS-CBN and challenged us to name our sources. They publicly declared we are biased for Sen. Aquino.
Yet, earlier, party representatives thanked us for airing our exclusive video of Baby James Yap saying ‘Villar’ at a campaign rally of about 15,000 people. That video has since been replayed by another network and spread online by Sen. Villar’s supporters. (Airing that video ruffled feathers within the Liberal party and our own network).
Nacionalista party representatives also thanked us for disclosing two weeks ago that sources from the Liberal party gave ABS-CBN the documents questioning Sen. Villar’s ad campaign. Although the documents are authentic, the intent to demolish is the same. The Liberal party also denied giving those documents to ABS-CBN.
Frankly, it’s shocking to see such blatant distortions of the truth. Oh, how I wish we could disclose our sources, but those are the standards we live by.
In other nations, news organizations routinely report on demolition teams and black ops as part of the election landscape. Negative advertising is part of the game. When candidates use this, they are transparent and accept the risk that it could backfire against them.
In our country, candidates prefer to hide behind – and manipulate – journalists.
To the political parties, we do not write stories because we are for or against you. We aim to tell it like it is. After all, how you run your campaigns gives us an idea of how you will run our nation.
Name Your (Anonymous) Sources!
by Glenda Gloria
If an anonymous source gives you a fraudulent document, you are under no obligation to protect him. Burn him if you must.
That’s what my peers and seniors in the industry are asking ABS-CBN to do, in light of what they say the media giant is guilty of: using a spurious document, airing it in haste, and refusing to name its sources from the ranks of the Nacionalista Party.
I sit back and rewind this in my head. And I don’t get it.
As a young reporter I’ve had my bad days in the trenches. The days I got false information from confidential sources and reported it, thinking it was reliable. The days I lapped up “intelligence documents” churned out by fictionists in Camp Crame at the height of the counter-insurgency campaign in the 1990s. The days I sat down with unnamed rebel officers, who mesmerized me with fantastic tales about what they are, hoping I was too charmed to be able to see through their lies. The days a political operator from the Office of the President leaked a doctored document to reporters that eventually doomed the presidential ambitions of a young, ambitious former executive secretary.
I recall the days my anonymous sources failed me. I remember the many moments that my peers’ sources failed them.But I don’t recall a day, not even a moment, when I was tempted to betray these sources.
Don’t get me wrong. I did try to publicly identify them as best as I could, as any reporter would.
Covering the military and political beats, for instance, we reporters would describe them as sources from the intelligence community or sources from the mutinous Young Officers Union or senior defense officials or a political operator from Lakas.
Which is no different from the way ABS-CBN described the source of that fake psychiatric report on Noynoy Aquino: sources in the Villar camp.
Now why is it important to refer to an anonymous source this way? Simply to provide a premise and to alert the viewer/reader to what could be the motives behind such information.
So let’s be clear on one thing: ABS-CBN has already identified the source of the report: the NP camp.
But well-meaning and partisan voices are asking for blood.
Since ABS-CBN named the source in general, they say, why shouldn’t it name him or her in particular? The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) pushed the argument further by freeing ABS-CBN of any obligation to protect these sources, “unless revealing their names will endanger them.”
I wonder what gave these voices confidence to assume that naming these sources would do them no harm. Did they mean danger only in the physical sense? Or danger in an academic sense?
Frankly, I am tempted to believe that the dare springs largely from two partisan wells: on one hand a suspicion that ABS-CBN is trying to protect its “real” source, which in their minds is probably not the NP but the yellow one. You get the drift: this bad, arrogant media network being part of an elaborate campaign to make one candidate president by making the NP look bad.
On the other hand, some harbor this theory about ABS-CBN protecting its NP source because NP had paid hacks in the newsroom.
“A lawyer-friend tells me, if the source knowingly leaked to you a fake document, all bets are off, confidentiality is broken.
He’s a lawyer, and I do get his point.
But I’m not a lawyer. I’m a journalist.
And as far as I know, an anonymous source is not obliged to be truthful or to even care for my profession. I don’t expect him to uphold public interest in the same way that I was taught to uphold it. Hell, I don’t even expect him to be real. For why else would he prefer anonymity?
In instances when these anonymous sources prove to be true, reliable, and serve the public good, we don’t only hound them we keep them for life.
But no anonymous source is obliged to play by the rules, simply because he is not covered by them.He does not sign off on any ‘confidentiality agreement.’He has no public accountability. He is accountable only to the interests that he serves—unless he’s holding a bomb or a child at gunpoint.
The rules in this case apply only to the journalist. And if the journalist finds out that he’s dealing with sources who don’t play by the rules, then he simply seeks other ways to complete his story. It’s nothing personal.
Think about it: what would naming the NP source achieve for ABS-CBN? It would actually serve as a way out for the network. The viewers and the chattering elite could then train their guns on this source, barely three weeks into the presidential election. The online mob could then have someone else to blast other than—or aside from—ABS-CBN.
Yet it wouldn’t make sense, and it wouldn’t feel right.
Because any reporter who’s been in the trenches knows that this is between him and his public, to which he is accountable. He has no one else to blame, or for that matter, to name.”
And if the journalist finds out that he’s dealing with sources who don’t play by the rules, then he simply seeks other ways to complete his story. It’s nothing personal.
Agree!
Can’t make any further comment — I’m still out of the loop on this one and don’t exactly know what the whole issue is about (was away for a while and purposely did not access the net during my “furlough”.)
I agree on GLENDA’s point there are no involved of life,it was only a joke for media to play along,it is the carreer of media outfit is on the line if they don’t bring out the culprit.TESTING,ang nangyari kaya para walang sabit ginamit ang media para sirain ang inyong reputation.Hayaan na ang korte ang magpasiya kung protektado ang singaw ng pekeng documents.Sabagay mahilig kasi ang ating mga kababayan sa PEKE,MULTI MILLION pesos suit ang aabutin ng ANC,pag di inilabas ang JOKER ng media,mula sa dalawang partido.
The chismis was published on the worn-out excuse that the people have the right to know, because it affects their potential leader, blah blah blah.
Don’t the people have the right to know as well, who foisted a lie upon them?
If a second anonymous source outs the first, will Glenda Gloria then publish it?
Assuming the truth of the report, the psychiatrist in fact violated his code of ethics; of keeping confidential medical info about his patients. Those are the inviolable confidences – penitent to priest, client to lawyer, patient to physician. So is ABS-CBN saying they are willing to be a party to ethical violations for as long as the “source” is anonymous.
If you invoke journalistic ethics in order to be a party to a physician’s ethics violation, are you really being ethical?
Mukhang kandarapa silang mag-damage control because a libel suit is looming. And since Noynoy has a more than fair chance of winning, history will repeat itself. First, there was Cory v. Louie Beltran. Now there will be Noynoy v. Maria Ressa.
Matalo man, I would love to defend the ABS-CBN; in order to equal Antonio Coronel’s singular boast of having cross-examined a sitting president.
I can almost see the defense lawyer employing every dirty trick, to score points, to annoy, or just browbeat the witness. Just like every rape-defense lawyer who asks the victim, “Did you have an orgasm?”
How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke Mr. President?
Do you drink to excess Mr. President?
Is it true that you are a mama’s boy Mr. President?
Sorry, I withdraw that.
Is it true that you are an Ate’s boy Mr. President?
Is it true that you are tulo laway Mr. President?
Labas litid naman ang Plaintiff’s lawyer (I presume it will be civil libel), objection Your Honor, what is the relevance?
The judge will need a fairly strong gavel, because he will frequently use it.
To make the spectacle complete, sana ma-raffle to (hopefully promoted to the RTC) Judge Emmanuel Loredo.
Si Willie Revillame daw ang nag-abot ng disc o whatever at sabi “Kuwarta o Kahon”. Siyempre kuwalta … ano fi.
Kita niyo napag-uusapan na at siyempre kasiraan ni Noynoy …. epektib di ba? Kung manok ko lang si Noynoy ay putak na ako ng putak …. buti na lang ….. lol
Siyempre ABS-CBN yata yan … namamangka sa dalawang dagat …. Wllie o Kris.
“In our country, candidates prefer to hide behind – and manipulate – journalists.” – Maria Ressa
Or is it the other way around, in this case?
Not naming the specific source and instead, issuing a blanket accusation against the NP in the guise of protecting the source is most unfair to the other members of NP who are innocent.
It is a shotgun assault on the persons not even involved and could possibly hurt them more than it did to Noynoy.
What then is more damaging, ABS-CBN’s propagating an impotent, obviously-bogus black prop or the coddling of a fabricator of lies?
Tedanz, tama ka, namamagka ang ABS-CBN sa dalawang ilog. Pero hindi dahil kina Willie at Kris.
Dahil yan sa milyun-milyong pisong ibinubuhos araw-araw ni Villar sa ABS, TFC, Skycable Channels, DZMM sa isang banda at ang utang na loob nila sa mga Aquino sa kabila.
Mahirap balansehin lalo’t parehong pera ang kapalit at motibasyon.
Ang pagkakamali lang nila ay hindi na dapat nilang binanggit yung “NP” sa simula’t simula.
Dami pang kaeck-eckan etong si Maria Ressa at si Glenda Gloria.
Reveal your source, you owe to the public, to your readers.
Niloko kayo, niloko kami. Kung okay lang sa inyo na lokohin kayo di sige. Pero hindi okey sa amin. Gusto namin malaman kung sino ang nanloko sa amin.
Do not protect those who tried to deceive us. Mahirap bang intindihin yun?
Mahirap intindihin yan kung ang pinoproteksyunan nila ay ang perang dumadaloy sa network.
Ano bang 2 explanations na iyan? Wala namang pinagkaibahan. Ang totoo diyan e pansarili ang layunin ni Ressa at hindi sa kapakanan ng publiko. Kunwari pa, e halata naman.
Kahit na itong paliwanag ni Glenda e self serving. Pabida ang dating.
explanation from Maria Ressa is sufficient , it is now time to move on and not allow issues like this to distract our attention from far more important concern like preventing the automated election from turning into automated garci…..
“If an anonymous source gives you a fraudulent document, you are under no obligation to protect him. Burn him if you must”. – Glenda Gloria
Very straightforward, simple and exactly the best way to deal with the problem. No ifs and no buts. Spit it out already. Generalizing the source as the NP is unacceptable. It’s not fair to the other NP candidates unless the motive is to destroy all of them in this election.
Refusing to reveal fuels one’s suspicion that there might be other source outside the NP.
Who will benefit most anyway if this thing is left unresolved?
we must not dwell on minor issues at the expense of major issues …….
wow! nice to hear the 2nd story!
obviously this is something contrived by Villar’s group, whether he is aware of it or not, it looks very much like a piece of the “TOPAK” campaign of Cayetano, unfortunately it backfired, as all obvious black propaganda does when smashing into the truth. It fits the puzzle perfectly…
What makes it even worst was Villar’s reaction to it and even insisted on focusing at the contents regardless of its authenticity, is he that petty or he’s really that idiotic?
Villar, who must have been dreaming of this election (with mouth watering) since the time he banged on the gavel triggering Estrada’s impeachment trial must be out of his mind already, it goes to show how well laid plans can go awry, even if they are long term ones…
…it really seems pathetic why these people also demanded psychological tests, when they are amongst the most delusional people already, delusions of grandeur, messianic complex, megalomania, foaming in the mouth, whatever…
Villar’s is an unholy coalition, composed of people who’s arrogance is obvious as they behave they are above the law…
If Noynoy loses in this election, ABS CBN will face the same problem again after Erap resigned. Credibility issue.
it goes to show how well laid plans can go awry, even if they are long term ones…
Hah! Confirms “Murphy’s law.”
Glenda, Thank you for being brave enough to admit of not having grasp the significance of ABS-CBN booboo and its subsequent incorrigible refusal to name its source(s)as against public outcry—- in the name of fair play and responsible reporting.
Merong malaking problema ang proseso ng iyong pangatwiran, pero naintindihan ko kung bakit ka umabot sa antas ng “…and i don’t get it”.
Sa sobrang haba ng panahon na pagsisinungaling ng ibat-ibang sangay ng pamaahalaan saiyo tulad ng iyong mga halimbawa: ‘manunulat’ ng Crame, kagawad ng Palasyo, atbp. umabot na marahil sa sukdulan ang iyong pasensya.
Ano ang pinagkaiba? Ano ang bago? Maaring naitanong mo sa iyong sarili.
Kung sa palagay mo na ang inyong daigdig ng media’t pagbabalita ay binubuo ng kasinungalingan at maniobrahan at ito ang iyong realidad…, mungkahi ko (bagama’t di mo hinihingi) na bumiyahe kahit saan man lalawigan at silipin ang kalagayan ng buhay ng mga naninirahan duon.
At balitaan mo kami. O ako. Salamat muli.
Life really holds so many surprises, Villar could have been a shoe-in for President with his grass roots, rags-to-riches, and anti GMA stance a lot earlier…blame it on Lacson and his exposes…
Whats interesting is that more credible personalities like Riza Hontiveros (one’s who really work) are speaking out even against fellow leftists in Villar’s camp.
Can anyone please explain who the real left is? Is the left subdivided into left A and left B?
Transactional Politics, links with nondemocratic Left hurting Villar
http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/benigno-noynoy-s-aquino-iii/transactional-politics-links-with-nondemocratic-left-hurting-villar/398065851296
@ ABS-CBNoyoy / Maria Ressa / Glenda.
You know what is missing in the way you handled that fake story it is called ‘DUE DILIGENCE’
You’re like an amateur reporter MS/Ressa. Very lame excuse. The motive behind is very obvious. You know that the fake report if not addressed directly and immediately will have a telling negative impact on Noynoy’s chances. So it is damage control you did for and in behalf of Noynoy, gratis et amore.
Isn’t it obvious that you have newsdesk policy to repeat the negatives of Villar and highlight the positives of Noynoy.
Di kami tanga or mangmang tulad ng akala mo M/S ressa.
To Ms. Ressa, et. al.,
Actually, if you don’t want to reveal the source of the report, maybe you can tell the public that you are not categorically sure that the report came from the NP camp.
Otherwise, if no apology is forthcoming, you must reveal the source at least to the NP camp so it can police its ranks by then.
Your excuse is self-serving and is perceived to favor only yourself and probably another group.
Nakakaloka talaga ang issue na yan sa psyche report ni Noynoy. Ang daming napaniwala. Well, lahat naman ng tao may kanya-kanyang peculiarities. Pero ang maglabas ng false information esp. on this matter is considered as unethical and below the belt.
Mas siraulo pa ang nagpakalat nung report na yun.