With the aim to combat disinformation, young Filipino artists explored for their thesis the concepts of media framing and red-tagging into a digital documentary series and educational zine entitled Framing Red.
An informative website to educate viewers on news portrayal, the novel creation was made by Miguel Dacillo, Willem Dimas, and Coleen Lugtu, homegrown talents from the Multimedia Arts (MMA) Program of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) School of New Media Arts (SNMA).
Dacillo shared that their project intends to tackle how media organizations delivered news reports which accuse individuals of being left-leaning or communists.
“It is a delicate subject. We want to start the conversation on how they use this topic for their audiences by conducting thorough research and analysis,” he added.
Lugtu, on the other hand, underscored that misinformation has been rampant over the past few years in the Philippines. She stressed that among its many forms is red-baiting, dubbed as the leading cause of unnecessary violence and effective violation of human rights.
“The goal of this output was to inform Filipinos on these dangers,” Dimas explained. “How prone all of us are to that kind of disinformation, and what steps we must take in the field of journalism to combat these scenarios,” he furthered.
Framing Red is made up of three videos called Inside the Newsroom, plus an explanatory journal entitled BYLINE: The Journalistic Elements in Red-tagging Coverage.
Inside the Newsroom provides glimpses of the story coverage, production process, and the current state of the Philippine press. It also features interviews with professionals from various broadsheets, online platforms, and radio outlets.
Among these personalities are Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility Deputy Director Luis Teodoro and Probe Productions Managing Director Jen Aquino.
The video includes talks with news and desk editors Lourdes Escaros of 558 RMN News, Paterno Esmaquel II of Rappler, and DJ Yap of Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Completing the roster are CNN Philippines Senior News Correspondent Anjo Alimario, and Vera Files Researchers Blanch Ancla and Enrico Berdos.
BYLINE: The Journalistic Elements in Red-tagging Coverage, on the other hand, contains topics on the essential elements of the fourth estate, agenda-setting, and news writing.
The creators highlighted that the journalists’ wealth of expertise and knowledge served as the cornerstone of their idea.
Framing Red was named Best Thesis for the Second Term of the Academic Year 2022 to 2023.
For more information, visit https://framingred.000webhostapp.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/framingred.