COVER STORY
Call for Leadership
LIKE A cry in the wilderness, it was not heard. At the time, it was a probably more a prayer said in desperate silence.
Two weeks into the lockdown, journalists were still in a fog of quarantine and the strangeness of physical isolation. Working with limited reach to sources, journalists fixed on the trail of words of a president who had yet to wrap his head around the form or shape of the disaster that had struck the nation. His declaration oversimplified, without knowing how little he knew, he said, a virus goes away by itself…[READ MORE]
CRISIS OF INFORMATION
THE DUTERTE campaign in 2015 harnessed the power of social media to coordinate unified messages in a continuing flow, using social media influencers to paint an image of the mayor running for president in the most favorable light.
MUDDLING THROUGH
The public went blind into life under lockdown, with little guidance about how they were
supposed to manage with loss of daily wages on which so many Filipinos were
dependent for their survival.
Covering despair from a distance
One Saturday in April, I fell asleep with my phone on my face, Viber open, waiting for a source to respond. It was my day off, but every little bit of information was important.
I received documents showing names of prisoners of the New Bilibid Prison who died.
Duterte, not the pandemic, is biggest threat to PH journalists today
THE BIGGEST threat to journalists in the Philippines today is not the unseen virus quietly spreading across international borders with devastating impact; it’s the familiar figure we see on TV addressing the nation weekly.
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested populist regimes worldwide and President Rodrigo Duterte’s has been no exception.
This pandemic could be journalism’s pivotal moment
No one saw coming a single event that could change journalism literally overnight.
In mid-March last year, the first local signs of what would become a global pandemic forced us to move out of the newsroom into our bedrooms with a laptop, a desk, a lamp and fluctuating wifi signal.
Pandemic blues
Covering the coronavirus pandemic is not a joke.
As the pandemic pushed media reporting to digital platforms, the challenges posed by social media have doubled, even tripled in difficulty and number. Journalists now have to compete in the race against with ordinary citizens who are spreading the news they heard or clicked forward on social media platforms.
Media Times is an annual digital microsite which contains the findings of the Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility’s (CMFR) journalism review on media and press performance.
MEDIA TIMES 2019
MEDIA TIMES 2018
MEDIATIMES 2017
