January 10, 1986
Dear Mr. Burgos:

President Marcos has described Butz Aquino and Lorenzo Tanada as "identified with the communists" and the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), the Bagong Alyasang makabayan (BAYAN), and the Bayang Nagkakaisa sa Diwa’t Layunin (BANDILA) as communist fronts (MALAYA, Jan. 9).

Whatever doubts we entertain about these charges, we accept the principles that news stories must report whatever was said. Nonetheless, we should try our best to be fair when we describe people and organizations.

Let’s consider Mr. Teopisto Guingona’s warning that the KBL would disrupt voting in Opposition areas (MALAYA, Jan. 8). MALAYA identified him as the chairman of BANDILA. And you would agree, I am sure, that it would be grossly unfair for MALAYA to identify BANDILA as a communist front without attributing this accusation to President Marcos.

Fairness, I think, demands these three things:

1. When a news medium reports on a person making a public statement, it is bound to respect (and therefore report) the way he identifies himself and/or his organization;

2. If the medium questions the person’s description of himself or his organization, it may (and perhaps, even should) ALSO publish what it deems to be a more accurate description as long as it is clear that the news source did not provide this alternative description and may even disagree with it; and

3. The more critical or derogatory the alternative description is, the greater is the obligation of the news medium to identify the source of this characterization.

If you accept these rules-of-thumb, may I refer you to Benjie Guevara and Joey Salgado’s write-up of Mr. Guingonas’s warning. Please review the statement that Mr. Guingona heads "a breakaway group from the multisectoral BAYAN alliance."

Despite the total irrelevance of the BANDILA-BAYAN split to Mr. Guingona’s warning, these two reporters smuggled into the story BAYAN’s oft-repeated attack on Mr. Guingona as the leader of a bunch of renegades from the mainstream opposition. Worse, they presented this derogatory description as an undisclosed fact, not an accusation made by a competing organization.

Mr. Burgos, was MALAYA fair to Mr. Guingona and BANDILA?

CARLOTA SALVADOR

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