Messages from P-Noy’s encounter with Focap

President Aquino put an end on Wednesday to the five-year drought that dried up the free exchange of information between the Philippine presidency and the foreign press covering Malacañang.

It was President Aquino’s first appearance at the annual Presidential Forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap), since his election in May 2010. Prior to this, his predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had not attended the Focap forum for five years, since the controversy with the news media over her issuance of Executive Order 464  in September 2005 broke out. EO 464 banned Cabinet officials from testifying in congressional inquiries into allegations of corruption in her administration without securing prior permission from her.

In reviving the traditional forum, President Aquino marked the lifting of the barrier that had impeded the free exchange of information between the foreign press and the presidency, although, the domestic media maintained their coverage of the Palace and access to the President through his numerous and often cross-cutting mouthpieces.

Since its founding in 1974, during the martial law government of Ferdinand Marcos, Focap served as the window of the outside world into what was happening inside the Philippines under the dictatorship. Marcos understood the function of the Focap as a double-bladed medium: through the group, he could mobilize international support for his regime, although it also served as a channel through which regime opponents inside the country and abroad could expose the abuses and repression of his regime. Thus, Marcos tolerated the Focap and allowed it to have a degree of independence in gathering news and he seldom interfered with the foreign correspondents’ activities—although in reality, there was nothing his regime could have done much to gag the foreign press representatives of Western democracies in their news gathering activities.

In reopening that window offered by the Focap forum, President Aquino did not do the foreign and domestic press a favor. It did very little to enable foreign correspondents, as well as the domestic media, to perform their functions of ensuring a critical examination of news. He didn’t come off as the knight errant for a free press. There was nothing concessionary in his decision to revive the formal contact of Malacañang with the foreign media, although the foreign correspondents may now have a direct platform on which they could grill the President directly on the key issues of the day—in both foreign and domestic news—without being too dependent on the domestic media for news.

The first encounter of the President with Focap members the other day sparked exchanges that demonstrated that the tradition of the adversarial relations between the government and media was well and alive, and that the end of the drought merely put behind us the era of government suppression of information practiced by the Arroyo administration. But it did not signal the beginning of a more cordial and benign relationship between the Aquino administration and that sector of the media whose coverage of news has remained a source of irritation for the government.

The Arroyo administration had been plagued by a testy and hostile relationship with the media; and the suppression of bad news through Arroyo’s ban on officials from testifying at congressional hearings was a response to this bad blood between her government and the press.

This hostile atmosphere proved to be a disaster to her government, and her suppression of information did not help her in winning legitimacy. This legitimacy issue undermined the stability and credibility of her government for most of the four years of her second term—during which she also cut off engagement with the foreign media.

President Aquino, who has not yet encountered legitimacy issues, is no less onion-skinned than his predecessor on public issues, and his relationship with the media is at best uneasy. He finds the ubiquity of the media unsettling, a nuisance to and an invasion of his privacy. There has really not been an earnest two-way informed dialogue between the President and the Palace reporters.

At the first encounter of the President with the foreign correspondents at the Focap forum, sparks began to fly. For example, the President took offense when he was asked if he was playing video games during the hostage-taking of Hong Kong tourists in Manila last year, in which a number of tourists were killed.

Obviously annoyed, the President told the reporter to look into the calendar of activities in Malacañang that day. He said every minute of that day was accounted for.

“So, if you just do a little checking, you will see that is no basis for such an allegation and I’m sorry I’m also human. I feel kind of insulted when I’m asked to disprove a non-event. And I think any of us given the same situation would also feel that way. Why do I have to prove something that did not happen?” Despite this exchange on a “non-event,” a senior Focap member said he found the President to be in “control of most of the subjects and issues” covered at the forum. Some Focap members described the President’s replies to questions as “candid” and “honest,” at times lacking in preparation. “What you see is what you get,” said another Focap member.

The next time around, the foreign newspapermen would be more careful, aware if they might be asking questions that would insult the dignity and intelligence of the President. That’s not the job of reporters—to censor themselves.

The first encounter foreshadows rocky clashes at future Focap forums—not a season for sweetness and light.