Palace communication officials have released a trial balloon in the form of a department order that allows bloggers to cover presidential events.
They are open to comments, says Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.
Andanar, who has been busy finding subordinates to blame for his department’s series of blunders but who refuses to acknowledge his own responsibility in them, says the accreditation of bloggers alongside members of the traditional media is just an interim policy that may still change.
According to the order, “social media practitioners” who are at least 18 years old and who have at least 5,000 followers may apply for accreditation. The office of Assistant Secretary Margaux Uson, herself a vociferous pro-Duterte blogger prior to her appointment in government, would decide on the applications.
The order is strange on many counts.
First, why sign and release it if the matter were still open to discussion? Then it is not, per se, an “order” but a “suggestion.” The lack of confidence in their own policy betrays Andanar’s low regard for his team’s own grasp of the situation.
Second, Andanar of all people, given his background in broadcasting, must be the first to maintain the essential difference between traditional media and social media.
It would not be snobbery or inaccuracy to say that journalists come from a more rigid background and have clear accountability to their news organizations and the people they serve.
In contrast, bloggers—or social media practitioners as Andanar prefers to call them—created themselves and are free to say anything they want. Their statements can be based on sound data, diligent research, but they can also be out of pure spite, lazy second-hand information or vested interest.
Bloggers do make the public discourse livelier, but not all of them abide by the same stringent ethical and professional standards that journalists aspire to.
Third, the process of choosing whom to accredit or whom to reject falls solely on the whim of Palace officials who may naturally wish to deal with “sympathetic” writers instead of those who would tend to ask difficult or uncomfortable questions. What if it were Assistant Secretary Margaux Uson, herself a vociferous blogger before she got her plum post, to make the call?
There are many ways to communicate, and traditional media are just one avenue. Certainly we should open ourselves up to the voices of others—but not at the expense of endangering the balance and oversight ideally provided by journalists. Lumping them with Internet personalities who get into the list just because they have thousands of followers or because they make good propaganda would just add to the already long list of gaffes Andanar’s office has committed.