Media-money-go-round

Media-money-go-round

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 03-26-2014 WED)

 

"Pay·o·la": pāˈōlə/ noun/ the practice of bribing someone to use their influence or position to promote a particular product or interest."

 

The Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) is making a big deal about the National Agri-Business Corp. (NABCOR) media payola, as it and everybody else, particularly other media people, should do.  But everybody, including the Inquirer, should make a big deal about its own and other mainstream media's payola too.  Almost all mainstream and even non-mainstream media, such as the Web's "social media," have one form of payola or another.  Only self-financed and people-funded media would have none of it.

 

Even global corporate giants give out payolas, as can be seen in the following: "'Microsoft reportedly pays YouTube uploaders to promote Xbox One'... GAMES CONSOLE MAKER Microsoft is offering 'influencers' money to promote the Xbox One on YouTube ... (It) offered to pay content creators $3 CPM (cost per thousand page views), or about £1.80 CPM for videos uploaded featuring Xbox One content...

 

"Smith's account (one recipient) was deleted after Machinima was proven to be involved in Microsoft Xbox One 'payola'."

 

Payola for media can come in many couched forms.  It could be just envelopes where the content may not necessarily be money but gift cheques.  Whether or not such gifts are sizeable enough to be payola, a media outlet or practitioner may still not consider the interest of the giver at any given instance.

 

Payola can also come in the form of "investments," like the 20 percent stake one business oligarch put into the Inquirer, among other major print and broadcast media amounting to billions.  As disclosure is one of the ethical principles to mitigate the various forms of "payola," the Inquirer probably made the admission in a boxed item one day after one weekly newspaper exposed the said "investment."  But the late disclosure of such a major payola may still be considered unethical.

 

Another form of payola is advertising.  What comes to mind is Linggoy Alcuaz' revelations a decade ago about corruption at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) under Honeygirl Singson that were never published as promised by the PDI's Editor-in-Chief Letty Magsanoc after a series of giant PCSO ads in the paper, giving rise to the speculation that PDI does have news that are really balanced--in the banks--and views that are fearless in their hypocrisy.

 

 

 

Recently, the PDI emblazoned the names of two media personalities in its headline, "Pork payoffs to newscasters Erwin Tulfo, Del Prado, others bared" but it didn't name one of the significant "other" who got P2 million.  Why?  Why the double-standard?

 

If the media grapevine is to be believed, the said broadcaster is allegedly from ABS-CBN, who has primetime radio-TV-webcast slots.  I once heard this "Tonying" on radio boasting of his seven figure income from the same conglomerate that made its billions from the overly expensive power rates over the past decades since EDSA I to this very day.

 

Recognizing the problem of media workers and their need for economic independence from payolas and payola-givers, including media corporations who run on payolas of all forms and keep these practitioners in constant "economic survival" mode, I picked up an idea two decades ago from the British and former British Commonwealth countries, as well as from France and Germany, where the Fourth Estate is supported by the state (i.e. known simply as government in the Philippines, making no distinction from the state).  Many sectors of public interest are supported this way, such as the statutory funds for the Philippines' National Commissions--for the Arts, for Women, etc.

 

So I proposed in several of my columns in the defunct Today that the Philippines set up a "National Commission for the Press and Media" and be provided by the state a certain amount, say P200 million (about the amounts of the other commissions), to provide media workers and journalists protection, welfare and health, educational, and organizational funds through press and media organizations to be accredited by the media community and the academe.

 

Rep. Tony Roman picked it up when we discussed it in my wife's then restaurant, Mama Rosa.  Roman brought it to Congress but it was eventually shot down by the House's Information Committee, which, I think, was headed by a then Rep. TG Guingona, who said to me in a hearing, "The media owners will get angry."

 

When I was teaching MassCom and Journalism at the PUP between 2003 and 2005, I used to tell my students, "You think it is so great to become journalists?  A rice farmer is independent at least for the months after his rice harvests; as journalists, you will have a pen in one hand and a begging bowl on the other because you cannot even eat without a benefactor to feed you.  In our system, better get a wife or a husband who has a good job if you want to be a principled journalist."

 

(Tune in to "Sulo ng Pilipino" on 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; catch GNN's Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on "Manila's truck ban" and "The Napoles-De Lima scandal"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)