Between Advocacy and Impartial Reporting during Elections

In July 2013, in his fourth State of the Nation Address, President Benigno Aquino III cited Niño Aguirre, a person with no feet and hands and who moves around riding a skateboard.

More than two months earlier, Aguirre had pedalled his way without help to a fourth-floor classroom at a public school where he cast his ballot for the midterm elections.

‘How can I not be encouraged, when even the likes of Mr. Niño Aguirre are helping shape our future?’ the President said.

Aguirre caught the President’s attention because he made it to the news on election day. But he was by no means the only person with disabilities (PWD) in the news that day. In fact, never before have the Philippines media given so much play to the right to suffrage of PWDs than in the 13 May 2013 elections.

Television, radio, newspapers and online sites, including social media, were awash with accounts and images of voters who belong to one of society’s oft-called ‘invisible’ and ‘vulnerable’ sectors. The stories were a mixed bag: some highlighting the resolve of PWDs like Aguirre to vote, no matter the barriers; others underscoring how the same barriers had disenfranchised other voters with disabilities.

Increased media awareness of and attention to voters with disabilities were in part due to government’s vow in recent years to make the 2013 elections a better experience for PWDs than previous elections. Then in 2012, a loose coalition of civil society groups unveiled ‘Fully Abled Nation’, an initiative to help make elections disability inclusive. Soon followed an aggressive campaign to get qualified PWDs to first register as voters and then show up at the polls on election day.

Fully Abled Nation counted among its partners the media—the giant broadcasting network ABS-CBN and the non-profit Vera Files in particular. Their involvement brings up clashing values journalists often have to face squarely when they get drawn into what is obviously an advocacy.

The two newsrooms have had to manage a range of issues in walking the tightrope between advocacy and journalism. There are age-old questions. Like, how do journalists remain steadfast to editorial independence while discharging their social responsibility of giving ‘voice to the voiceless’? There are new challenges. Like, how does a newsroom like ABS-CBN vet stories from its citizen journalists? How does a non-profit media institution like Vera Files deal with donors that underwrite a chunk of its project expenses?

To be sure, journalism is not short on guidelines. Its core standards and ethics of more than nine decades have helped journalists in many parts of the world cope with the growing list of dilemmas in a fast-changing media landscape. Journalists in the Philippines are no exception.

ABS-CBN’s participation in Fully Abled Nation was mainly through ‘Bayan Mo, iPatrol Mo’ (Patrol Your Country), a programme that started in 2007 as an election-focused citizen journalism campaign called ‘Boto Mo, iPatrol Mo’ (Patrol Your Vote). As they did in the 2007 and 2010 elections, the network’s ‘Bayan Patrollers’, by then numbering more than 450,000, monitored their votes and campaigned for clean elections using mobile and Web technology in the 2013 polls.

This time, though, a number of its citizen journalists also manned help desks that paid special attention to PWDs, even going as far as mobilizing one community in southern Philippines to organize a car pool that transported these voters to polling places. Stories about voters with disabilities were staple fare in ‘Halalan 2013’, the 60-year-old network’s special election coverage for its TV and radio programs and Website. PWD-related posts also filled Bayan Mo, iPatrol Mo’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Vera Files, on the other hand, deployed ‘disability affairs correspondents’, mostly professional journalists, around the country to report on the nationwide special voter registration for PWDs in 2012 and to track government’s not-so-successful attempt in the 2013 elections to make polling stations PWD-friendly. These correspondents would again be fielded in the October 2013 barangay or village polls.

Stories were fed to the microsite ‘PWD Files’ Vera Files had specially created to advance the right to vote and other rights of PWDs, as well as to its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Most of these stories were likewise published in Yahoo! Philippines, of which Vera Files is a content provider.

In addition, Vera Files produced a 45-minute documentary on the political rights of PWDs that aired on a major network. In 2014 it released a book detailing the experience of PWDs in the 2013 elections.

Truth to tell, it took ABS-CBN and Vera Files little convincing to sign on to Fully Abled Nation.

‘Some advocacies are universal, like peace, social justice, human rights. They don’t really raise conflict of interest issues for journalists,’ says Inday Espina-Varona, who was in charge of Bayan Mo, iPatrol Mo when it joined the coalition.

In Espina-Varona’s book, advocating PWD rights is a ‘no-brainer’. She believes that a considerable number of journalists who support universal advocacies just like her know where to draw to the line: ‘We advocate peace but don’t support the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front), LGBT rights but don’t campaign for same-sex marriage, labor welfare but don’t call on workers to strike.’

Vera Files is no stranger to reporting advocacies either. Since its founding in 2008, it has subscribed to a rights-based and inclusive approach to its reportage. The institution has allocated more space and time to certain human rights issues such as extrajudicial killings and election-related violence than mainstream media normally would. For Vera Files, disability is, without question, a human rights issue that has gone underreported in the Philippines media.

Inclusive journalism is hardly a new concept. As early as the 1940’s, in its report A Free and Responsible Press, the US Commission on Freedom of the Press (1947) or Hutchins Commission stressed the need for journalism to present ‘all the important viewpoints and interests’ as well as project ‘a representative picture of constituent groups’ in society. It explained:

People make decisions in large part in terms of favorable or unfavorable images. They relate fact and opinion to stereotypes…When the images they portray fail to present the social group truly, they tend to pervert judgment…The Commission holds to the faith that if people are exposed to the inner truth of the life of a particular group, they will gradually build up respect for and understanding of it. (Commission on Freedom of the Press 1947)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities itself guarantees PWDs a full spectrum of rights, including the right to participate in political and public life. In the Philippines this very right in enshrined in the 1987 Constitution and the 1992 Magna Carta for Persons with Disabilities, which predates the UN convention by a good 14 years.

The UN convention also explicitly states the role and responsibility of the media in promoting the rights of PWDs. It encourages the media, ‘including providers of information through the Internet, to make their services accessible to persons with disabilities’. It further calls on the media to portray PWDs ‘in a manner consistent with the purpose’ of the convention.

In connection with this, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has produced a nine-item checklist to check media’s compliance with provisions of the convention (see Box 1).

At the time ABS-CBN and Vera Files came onboard Fully Abled Nation, qualified PWDs in the Philippines were clearly not fully enjoying their right to vote.

A survey by a leading research organization (Social Weather Stations 2012) showed a sizable number of them had failed to register as voters. Of those who did register, one in five was unable to vote in the previous elections for the following reasons: They were ashamed to vote because of their disability. They had mobility problems. No special lanes were set aside for PWDs. Nobody would accompany them, or shade or read the ballot for them. Of those who got to vote, less than half received help at the voting centres.

A majority of Filipinos with disabilities who are of voting age had ‘almost no knowledge’ about the Magna Carta, the survey found. Only 6 per cent had ‘extensive knowledge’. The rest either reported ‘a little knowledge’ or ‘partial but sufficient knowledge’.

No doubt, the Philippines media can make a huge difference in raising the awareness of PWDs of their political rights. Television and radio are the top sources of information on elections for PWDs, according to the survey, outranking even family and friends. Newspapers came in seventh.

Box 1.

UN Guidelines for Assessing Media Adherence to the Convention on the Rights of PWDs

Monitoring the media

Do the media report on persons with disabilities?

If so, which media do that, in which sections of their products?

Are persons with disabilities portrayed as victims or rights-holders?

Do the media represent the point of view of persons with disabilities?

Are language and images appropriate?

Does the media’s message reinforce or counter stereotypes?

Has there been a change in media reporting on persons with disabilities over time? If so, in which way (for example, more or less reporting, different approach)? Which factors contributed to the change?

Is it an accurate representation of real life?

Are the media accessible to persons with disabilities?

Source: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2010).

It goes without saying that the Fully Abled Nation partnership put ABS-CBN and Vera Files in potential conflict of interest situations. Both resorted to disclosure as one of the remedies.

The network announced the partnership in its news releases and teasers about Halalan 2013. VERA Files’ Website and social media accounts prominently mentioned Fully Abled Nation, and identified the donor and civil society partners. Stories about PWDs it posted in Yahoo! or syndicates to mainstream media always bore a boilerplate disclosing the disability-inclusive initiative.

Disclosure by journalists of real or perceived conflict of interest is what American media ethicist Louis Day (1997) calls the ‘moral minimum’—or alerting the public ‘to otherwise hidden loyalties or obligations’ that might influence how it evaluates the news (Wasserman 2010). The public has the right to know a journalist’s involvement with the issue or people he or she is covering.

Not that disclosure is enough.

‘Sure, transparency helps…But my fear is that its advent represents a retreat from something that’s close to being a defining value of journalism, which is independence,’ says Ed Wasserman (2011) of The Miami Herald. ‘Independence doesn’t demand that journalists approach a topic without predisposition or beliefs. But it does insist on a distinction between fair-minded reporting and conclusions honestly arrived at, and work that is produced with one eye on some outside interest.’

The presence of media partners in Fully Abled Nation certainly puts in question their editorial independence, more so in the case of Vera Files.

The six-year-old media non-profit has, to a considerable extent, relied on donors to help it carry out its mission to engage in in-depth reporting and mentor journalists and non-journalists to do good journalism. Since getting its first funding support in late 2009, Vera Files has received more than a dozen grants from mostly development agencies and foreign embassies. A two-year grant from The Asia Foundation supported its editorial work for Fully Abled Nation.

In more ways than one, Vera Files is no different from a host of other non-profit, donor-driven reporting centres that make up what American investigative journalist Charles Lewis (2010) describes as the ‘new journalism ecosystem’. Like them, the institution is in constant search of new approaches to journalism, especially ethics.

It helps that Vera Files founders had drawn up elaborate editorial policies before setting up the institution. Editorial independence lies at the heart of these policies, and this is candidly relayed to donors.

The institution also strives to diversify its sources of revenue in a bid to reduce funder dependency. Contributions from the founding trustees and proceeds from the sale of syndicated stories bankroll investigative reports to shield its journalists from undue external influence and pressure, including donors.

Getting money from the Philippine government is a big no-no. Like many non-profit newsrooms in North America, Vera Files regards government as among the unacceptable or ‘creepy’ donors (Center for Journalism Ethics 2010). It also pointedly refuses offers of funding assistance from entities whose conditions are not aligned with its institutional mission, no matter the amount.

Setting the terms of engagement with funders is crucial when Vera Files negotiates grants. Donors learn at the outset about the institution’s fidelity to truth and the public interest even as it undertakes engaged journalism. This is non-negotiable.

The institution has never ceded editorial control. Donors do not get to dictate to Vera Files stories they should write or how to cover them. Nor can they require pre-publication approval of stories, especially controversial ones. Agenda-setting firmly remains with Vera Files.

There are occasions, though, when donors forget the editorial distance journalists need to maintain from news sources and subjects, donors included. At times, donors and civil society partners confuse public relations for journalism, and try to enlist the journalists in their midst to draft and implement the advocacy’s communication campaign, including the writing of press releases. Fully Abled Nation solved the problem by getting a communication strategist to do the job.

On other occasions, funders and partners would ask news organizations that are part of the advocacy to join promotional activities or sign position papers and statements, an anathema to journalists. Often, they have had to be reminded of the ‘wall’ that should separate journalists from donors and advocates, which should be as solid as the wall that should separate the church from the state.

What can be considered as one of the biggest challenges to ABS-CBN and Vera Files as Fully Abled Nation partners is providing meaningful and fair portrayal of persons with disabilities who rarely receive news coverage.

ABS-CBN’s task was doubly difficult because it was making citizens become part of the reporting process. Its Bayan Patrollers needed a crash course not only on news reporting but also on specialized reporting required for Fully Abled Nation. ABS-CBN ran disability sensitivity workshops not only for its own reportorial staff, but also for thousands of citizen journalists mostly in Mindanao.

Bayan Mo, iPatrol Mo has undergone a sea change in the last four years, says Espina-Varona. The network, she explains, no longer runs unvetted stories from Bayan Patrollers accompanied by disclaimers. ABS-CBN has instead trained aggregators in different points of the country to do the job of an editor. One of the network’s biggest fears is ‘kuryente’—misinformation and disinformation in journalism parlance—from its Bayan Patrollers.

Bayan Mo, iPatrol Mo training has also been modified to make citizen journalists solutions-oriented. ‘It’s about what they can do. Citizens need to be empowered to engage government and society and help solve problems in the community,’ Espina-Varona says.

The network also formulated guidelines for social media, especially Facebook, which serves as one of the main outlets of stories of Bayan Patrollers.

As a result, the quality of reports from Bayan Patrollers has remarkably improved, good enough to be carried by the network’s news programs, according to Espina-Varona.

Vera Files started its engagement in Fully Abled Nation with a three-day seminar-workshop on Reporting on PWDs to ensure that the coverage of its disability affairs correspondents would be PWD-sensitive and inclusive.

Not that this was easy. As ABS-CBN and Vera Files would find out, their journalists constantly fought personal biases so as not to fall into the trap of stereotyping PWDs, especially as victims or helpless objects of pity, sympathy, even ridicule.

Getting the language in reporting on disabilities right was another constant struggle for the two newsrooms. It took some time for journalists to get used to the People First Language—putting the person before the disability (‘person with autism’, for example)—and avoiding turning adjectives like ‘disabled’ and ‘autistic’ into nouns. Editors wrung their hands in frustration because the rules resulted in longer phrases that defy an important writing convention: brevity.

Because its reports are mostly in Filipino, finding the appropriate Filipino equivalent for disability terms required editors and producers of ABS-CBN at least two lengthy meetings to agree on words that would be acceptable to both the network and the PWD sector.

A post-election survey would find that many PWDs who got to vote in the midterm elections believe that voting was easier compared to 2010, notwithstanding the myriad problems they ran into. But there are no available data to tell how much Philippine media contributed to improved voting experience of PWDs. Journalists can only hope that they had given voters with disabilities the ethical and responsible reporting they so rightly deserve.