A culture of negativity.

Funny how one TV network operates, they are claiming to be unbiased, neutral and that they are not favoring or protecting anybody and yet they are hitting on their rival network on every opportunity that they get. This is very typical of second-rates. Their negative reporting belies all of their claims of credibility and neutrality. They are not any better than their rival news organization after all. At least, the other one doesn’t’ have any false claims.

Recently, this TV station gave us one good example on how they operate: Just because they did not get the exclusive video of the arrest (and the last few moments) of the leader of a notorious carjacking syndicate, they highlighted in their news reports the statement of a police officer blaming the news team of their rival network for the delay in bringing the suspect to a hospital which could have prevented his death. And they released the news report even after they failed to get the side of the other news team or the real story behind it. What is it for? To discredit the other news team for getting the exclusive video thereby creating doubts on the credibility of the other TV station? This doesn’t sound fair to me.

The other TV station later answered this accusation on their own news program showing the full exclusive video of what happened showing the same police officer asking the cameraman to take footages of the wounded suspect. And the video was not even close to one minute! A higher ranking police official was even interviewed and apologized for the tactless words of his subordinate. I wonder if the rival TV station also showed a similar news report or an interview on their news program.

There seems to be a culture of negativity in this TV network. Let's also look at how they market their news organization. They are claiming that they are neutral, that they are not favoring or protecting anybody and yet these attributes are all subjective. Why not let the people decide if you’re doing a great job or not? Is this some kind of deliberate brainwashing, auto-suggestion or something? Why the need for their anchors to repeatedly utter these words when these are expected of a big news organization like them? Unless they are insinuating that they have a monopoly of these and their rivals are doing the opposite then these words are just a waste of air time.

Just a couple of minutes ago, I chanced upon a news report in Yahoo from the same media outfit. It is entitled “Another journalist may join ranks of Aquino spokespersons” and yet there’s a statement at the end of the news item that caught my attention. It reads: “Lacierda had also skirmished with the Malacañang Press Corps twice in July for preempting major announcements to a private media network perceived to have supported Aquino’s presidential bid.” Whose perception was it? It didn't mention. I watched the other TV station the whole campaign period and I didn’t get a hint that they were favoring Noynoy Aquino. In fact, it was their news team who exposed the bogus psychiatric report of Aquino. It was even in their news program where it was shown and reported the son of Kris Aquino, Baby James blurting out the name of his uncle’s rival in a campaign sortie which caught the ire of the popular actress and sister of then presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino. It was even reported that Kris called this news team as “evil” or “devil” of some sort due to this incident. So I’m clueless on where this TV station got the notion that their rival network favored Aquino. Was it because the sister of Aquino is an employee of the rival network? How superficial!

The Philippines is in a new historical chapter. Everybody is talking about change. I guess media should follow suit especially. It doesn’t help that they are hitting on each other. There's what we call as healthy competition and what they are doing is not part of it.It is not even a good example to their viewers. Our children who watch TV most of the time should not be exposed to a culture of vindictiveness being played by these media organizations.