Eschew improper emphasis (Ph Journ Code of Ethics) and strive for contextualized, balanced reporting: News reporting of the Covid-minimizer messaging of OCTA #Covid19 #Covid19Ph #Omicron #pandemic
The following are the tweets of an OCTA member as storified by news media organizations (curiously, ALMOST ALL the news media organizations have uniform reporting on this – it leans to a kind of Covid-minimizer messaging)
(embedded tweets with photos and graphics will pixelate in five seconds)
The pertinent provision of the journalists’ code of ethics is as follows:
Philippine Journalists Code of Ethics in the PPI Code, first provision: “I shall scrupulously report and interpret the news, taking care not to suppress essential facts nor to distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis xxx”
SPJ Code of Ethics: “Provide context. Take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story.”
(For a discussion and illustration of these provisions, you may view the pages of discussion on the code of ethics in this site, kindly type “improper emphasis in the search bar of this site and view the results; also, “SPJ” “context” as search terms in this site. Tnx.)
What can be done next time in storifying opinions: To avoid improper emphasis, which in this case, leans to a kind of Covid-minimizer messaging, please contextualize the storification by including other mathematicians’ figures taken from the same set of data, as follows:
University of the Philippines Covid19 Pandemic Response Team member biomathematician Prof. Jomar Rabajante, PhD: Embedded tweet will pixelate in five seconds:
University of the Philippines Covid19 Pandemic Response Team member statistician Prof. Peter Cayton: Embedded tweet will pixelate in five seconds:
and news media mathematician and data analyst Edson Guido: Embedded tweet will pixelate in five seconds:
All these can be included in the same storification for balanced reporting. Covid-minimizer messaging makes people want to crowd the confined spaces of malls and cinemas – of course, we all want that , but only when it’s safe. The number of infections in the major cities in NCR are still over 10,000 while the numbers in areas outside of Metro Manila are soaring – when hospitals in neighboring provinces become full and when patients pile up, where do you think they will go?
Yun lang po.
marichulambino.com 