Friday, January 26, 2018

Reporting Dengvaxia-linked deaths and responsible journalism

I've been watching reports and I am particularly writing this to the people behind TV Patrol. And I urge them to please be responsible.

How does a journalist treat speculative news? Do these people still publish news items which quoted a source or sources telling the reporter that his findings are "inconclusive" and it includes the word or term "possible" or "there is a possibility"?

The New York Times call it speculative journalism. And it creates dire results especially to members of society. NYT says it is absurd and should be avoided because:

"In response to an event that caught everyone off guard and left the nation steeped in residual trauma, premediation allows for the sustainment of a constant, baseline fear by keeping catastrophe always within peripheral view. This is accomplished in part by creating a media apparatus into which any future event might be plugged, offering us the illusion of preparedness. Hurricanes, nuclear wars, stock market plunges, epidemics, terror attacks, earthquakes and currency collapses: The headlines prepare us for all of these by rehearsing them in advance."

Take the case of how TV patrol and specifically Ted Failon and Noli de Castro are "reporting" about the so-called Dengvaxia-linked deaths of children.

For more than a month now, producers of TV Patrol has fixated themselves on dengue and dengvaxia.  They have given ample media space to the Public Attorney's Office (PAO) and letting Dr. Erfe, the forensic consultant, get away with statements like "there is a pattern" or "possibly caused by dengvaxia."

Dr. Erfe had repeatedly told media that his findings are "inconclusive" meaning not yet final, or at best, speculative. Aside from Erfe, which is the only one claiming that there is a pattern, there is no other entity or institution that backs Erfe's "claims."

The cause of these kids' deaths is still unknown. IN the absence of a clear scientific finding, the basis of concluding the cause of death lies in the medico-legal report. That's the proper way of reporting such deaths.

 Yet, TV patrol and ABS-CBN accepts Erfe's "findings'--hook, line and sinker? And they call it news. 

Imagine, headlines saying "Dengvaxia-linked deaths"? And when one reads it, the conclusion of the headline came from an unauthorised source? Is that journalism? Is that news? 

Every one knows the difference between news and opinion. News reportage relies on exactness, opinion relies on norms. News is a narrative of an incident which already happened and there are no "probabilities" involved here--only the exact outcome already.

The World Health Organisation has already said there is still no confirmed Dengvaxia liked deaths but here is one television station claiming that there are already. Since when did ABS-CBN, specifically TV patrol become a health or medico-legal authority? 

News organisations are like research organisations--they search or look for facts first and when all these facts fit the news frame, they report.

Journalists are not theorists--they are writers of journals, of everyday occurrences and of the past, and in some instances, of a future based not on speculation but on scientific guesses.

The responsibility of journalists is not to gather facts just to fit or create a theory. No. Journalists are gatherers of facts, period. These facts are not mere facts, but observable, measurable and truthful facts or it exists in reality. Journalists are more of epistemologists, or empiricists.

Dr. Erfe's claims are " claims" meaning "observations" and his claims of seeing a pattern is not a fact but a theory or opinion. It becomes a fact when checked or counter checked or survives a counter.

What do you call this? Is that responsible journalism? No. Some foreigners define it like this see link. Actually, let me withdraw this.

TV Patrol is not just doing implicit speculation, but explicit speculation which has no place in journalism but probably in marketing.

TV Patrols feeds on fear to generate viewership. They are reporting Acosta's irresponsible statements to generate public sympathy and viewer ship believing that the issue has human interests involved in it.

I agree but why exploit it to a point that people all over the Philippines and even beyond these shores are panicking and some are getting extremely paranoid?

It is like the time when TV Patrol reported on alleged ghost hauntings in Caloocan. Instead of getting videos of these supposed ghosts, they made some people "dramatise" the alleged apparitions basing only on one testimony. So, that's news?

Now I know why certain people, and that includes Duterte, want nothing more than re-define our concept of self-expression and of 'journalism" by including a term "responsible" before "journalism."








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