Not just the facts when reporting on media

Sometimes feelings are necessary background

A stock photo of a Japanese woman doing an “excuse me” gesture

It has been a week of us sniping at each other on Filipino journalist Twitter, a space as populated by the impulsive and hot-headed as the actual profession is.

One difference being disagreements in the real world are more easily settled, or at the very least, quietly forgotten.

The biggest, market moving even, was over a Rappler report into ABS-CBN News Channel airing Chinese News TV (later renamed Chinatown News TV and a little later scrapped altogether.)

In light of tension over the West Philippine Sea that saw ABS-CBN journalist Chiara Zambrano being tailed by Chinese naval boats off Palawan and general attempts by China to influence media across the globe, the news was shocking and, to many, felt like a betrayal.

CNTV is produced by a Chinese Filipino company but its social media accounts share content from Chinese state-owned media (which, to be honest, Philippine News Agency and many corporate media newsrooms also do.)

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Within media circles, the reporting of it was felt as a betrayal as well, and colleagues cannot be faulted for feeling that way.

Rappler and ABS-CBN have a lot in common — both have been targeted by the government and have been hurt by it — and their staff have often supported each other through those attacks.

If I were in ABS-CBN and read the report, it would be difficult, if not impossible, not to see it as an attack.

Which prompts the question: Should there be a media beat? I think so, and some newsrooms have been doing reporting on media issues for a while — Inquirer does it, and we started doing it too last year.

It can help bring media workers’ issues, like the need for access to COVID-19 testing or political pressure, to light. At the very least, it helps operationalize our being a self-regulated industry.

My thing is it would be better for us to report on each other instead of having some government body checking on us.

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW: After dancing on ABS-CBN’s grave, Rappler wants media orgs to snitch on one another

But those are abstract ideals that offer little comfort when confronted with a report questioning a business decision you had nothing to do with.

And even less comfort to colleagues who lost their jobs in the aftermath of ABS-CBN going off the air last year.

All of these are necessary background to the story and are of as much concern as potential influence operations in Philippine media.

As things stand, the network seems to have lost a potential revenue stream after months of losing money by the millions. That could mean pay cuts or worse.

I don’t have enough experience in news to question the editorial decisions behind the story but feel it could have waited for comment from ABS-CBN.

I mean that not as a thought experiment, but as someone from a newsroom that Rappler has also reported on in the aftermath of a story takedown in 2019.

It was a terrible experience, reading about it while trying to comfort officemates also reading about it. The pillorying on social media that came after was even worse.

It can certainly be argued that reporting it was necessary and most people have forgotten about it years later anyway.

But the thought that nobody reached out to ask us about the takedown — we had put out a statement on it, and they ran with that, which is sound — lingers and has changed our relationship with them.

In the debate over whether and why media should be reporting on each other, I hope we also consider the how.