Why the Philippine Press Is Too Careful in Handling Brian Gorrell Case

ARAO: The more fundamental issue is what good publishing these stories would do for the shaping of public opinion. Were the stories handled in a way that protects the privacy of individuals and at the same time warns against people like the alleged lover of Gorrell? Were there efforts to be objective by getting all sides of the story, not accepting hook, line and sinker Gorrell’s very serious accusations against the so-called Gucci Gang? Or were the stories published or aired in a manner that is no different from telenovelas with the usual “abangan ang susunod na kabanata?”

Increasingly, the mainstream press is picking up Brian Gorrell’s story. Is this proof yet again, to your mind, that whatever happens in the public domain — i.e. the Internet — will find a way to seep into the mainstream press, whether mainstream journalists like it or not? If so, wouldn’t that depict mainstream journalists as always, by default, on denial? If stories like Gorrell’s — which has been categorized as gossip, mainly — seeps into the mainstream inevitably, why can’t the mainstream press take the story from Day One and perhaps shape the debate according to its rules and parameters?

RUFINO: It will find a way to “seep into” the mainstream press just as murder, rape and other crimes seep into the mainstream press. They are a part of life and need to be reflected.

There’s certainly merit in tackling it from Day One but would that not also imply that we were making a mountain out of what was then a molehill instead of reporting on a molehill that had by then become a mountain?

That’s a long-debated issue: Do we report the news or “make” the news and does reporting the news in some way “make” it?

Had we covered the issue ab initio we might have been accused of having “made” the news. The fact that we covered it afterwards leaves us open to accusations that we were “in denial.” In a case like that, as with so many other cases in journalism, you make your own call on the matter and you hold yourself accountable to both your own conscience and to your readers.

ARAO: Mainstream journalists have a choice to join in the bandwagon or be true to their calling in running stories that can truly shape public opinion. I think there are more important issues to tackle than one person’s claim of being duped $70,000. Plunder of the nation is by the billions of dollars and yet corruption stories are not being exhaustively written about. The NBN scandal may have hogged the headlines, but one would notice that these are mainly running accounts of what transpired and have the (dangerous) tendency to digress on other insignificant angles like the private lives of protagonists like Jun Lozada. (CC Hidalgo/PinoyPress.net)