Ethical dilemmas and the Drilon kidnapping
by PJR Reports Staff
Would it have improved the prospects for peace negotiations between the Abu Sayyaf group (ASG) and the government if ABS-CBN 2’s Cecilia Victoria “Ces” Drilon had obtained and aired that exclusive interview with the bandit group’s new leaders she said she was after? Should peace negotiations between a police problem like the ASG and the government be on the national agenda at all?
Both questions are crucial to the main ethical issue, unremarked by many commentators, that was at the heart of the Drilon kidnapping episode. Mostly dismissed as a spent force and no more a terrorist organization than a common kidnap-for-ransom gang operating in Manila would be, any interview with ASG leaders aired over a major network would have re-conferred on it the status it once had as a supposedly separatist rebel group, thus putting it on the same level as formations with clear political aims like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The capacity to confer legitimacy and status is inherent in the mass media.
The ASG gained notoriety in the late 1990s as a supposedly terrorist organization with its bombing, assassination, and kidnap for ransom operations. Eventually, however, its lack of any clear political aim made it clear that it does not even qualify as a terrorist group, the definition of which includes having a political program. It does qualify, however, as a group that uses terrorist methods for non-political aims.
As for its origins, Octavio Dinampo, the Mindanao State University professor who was kidnapped along with Drilon, told the Manila Mainichi Shimbun that the ASG is not linked with Al Qaeda as has been repeatedly claimed, but is a “locally-grown organization” supposed to be known as the Al Harakatul Al Islamiya. (Al Qaeda) never created this so-called ASG. This ASG is the creation of the Philippine military,” said Dinampo.
The group has not had much of a media presence after its leader Khadaffy Janjalani and senior ASG commander Abu Sulaiman were killed in September 2006 and in January 2007, respectively. It has receded in the national consciousness primarily because it is correctly perceived as no more than a bandit group that deserves police action rather than peace negotiations as a government response.
Was the story on the new leadership of the ASG then worth risking life and limb? Drilon said it herself after she and the other hostages—ABS-CBN 2 cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama and Dinampo—were released by their abductors that she had gravely endangered the lives of her colleagues. The experience was sobering, she said, and no story is worth any life.
What’s the story?
But what exactly was the story Drilon’s team was chasing after despite the risks involved?
More than four weeks after the abduction, ABS-CBN 2 executives were still mum on what story Drilon and her cameramen had risked their lives for. The network, they said, is conducting an investigation on whether Drilon had breached coverage protocols, thus resulting in the abduction. Nothing is so far known about the story, other than Drilon’s admission that the team was doing research on a story on the “new” ASG leadership.
As veteran journalist and media critic Vergel Santos rightly asked in ANC’s Media in Focus last June 26: “(W)hat did she take the risk for? What exactly was the story she was chasing?” The risks a journalist take depends on the story and the public interest involved, added Santos, who is chair of the editorial board of the BusinessWorld. “You take the greatest risks for the greatest story.” Santos also serves as a member of the board of trustees of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.
Maria Ressa, who also appeared in the same Media in Focus episode, was asked if Drilon’s story was worth the risks she took. “In management view, it was not,” said Ressa, who is head of ABS-CBN 2’s news and current affairs.
That was ABS-CBN 2 management’s view, but the question for journalists is whether the risks involved in getting the story were worth it in terms of providing the public information vital to the continuing need for it to understand what’s happening in the problematic areas of Mindanao.
ABS-CBN 2’s ‘gentle request’
For the most part the Philippine press failed to take up and discuss these ethical and professional issues. Press coverage, especially in its first days, focused on ABS-CBN 2’s “gentle request” for a “news embargo” on reports on the June 8 abduction.
The network requested media outlets to withhold information on the abduction from June 9 up to 6 a.m. of June 10. “The request was made primarily for the security and safety of Ces and her companions. At that time (June 9), we did not know what their situation was. We don’t want to speculate on any information that would jeopardize their safety,” the reports quoted Bong Osorio, ABS-CBN 2 head of corporate communications, as saying.
In ABS-CBN 2’s first public statement regarding the incident last June 10, the media giant said that “(u)ntil we learn more details, ABS-CBN News requests other media to report on this matter with utmost consideration for the safety of our news team.”
Most of the major media organizations based in Manila granted the network’s request. The coverage by the Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA-7, for example, began in earnest only two days after the abduction.
Elsewhere in the country, particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao, radio stations and community newspapers reported the abduction as soon as they learned that Drilon was “missing”. Among these were community papers Mindanao Examiner and Sun.Star Cebu and government-owned stations NBN-4 and dzRB Radyo ng Bayan. According to a June 10 The Manila Times report, at least three radio stations—dzIZ, dzEC, and dzXL—also reported the abduction last June 9. The report added that the radio station dzBB of rival network GMA-7 reported Drilon was “missing” but that “the kidnapping has yet to be confirmed.”
Given the absence of details in the reports, it would seem that withholding the story until the facts came in would have been more prudent. However, ABS-CBN 2’s “gentle request” could have been better understood if it had released the information it had, and justified the request for an embargo on the basis of its limited nature. As it was, its refusal to provide the information already in its possession contributed to the speculation and limited information that characterized the reporting on the incident in the first few days.
Justifying the need to hold the story, Ressa cited the abundance of false and inaccurate information in first days following the kidnapping.
“Maybe in the first four days, I would say 98.9 percent of what came out publicly was false,” Ressa told Media in Focus last June 26. “We were powerless to do anything or say anything to stop it.”
ABS-CBN 2 was not so powerless. They could have reduced the level of speculations on the abduction. When ABS-CBN 2 asked other news organizations to initially withhold reports for the safety of hostages, did it divulge such details as Drilon’s reason for going to Sulu? At what time did the network know that Drilon’s group was missing? When did ABS-CBN 2 confirm the group had been abducted, and how? These details could have strengthened rather than weakened ABS-CBN 2’s case for an embargo and helped stop the spate of inaccurate and misleading information on the kidnapping.
ABS-CBN 2 should have provided the public with facts as soon as possible, Santos said, differing with the network’s decision to ask for an “embargo”. “We give the facts as we get them,” Santos said. “It becomes complete as it is revealed.” Santos said the network should have called a press conference so the public would know what is going on, as the case clearly involved public interest.
Anti-crime advocate Teresita Ang See had a similar view. Coverage of the incident cannot be helped because of the subjects involved, she said. ABS-CBN 2 should have issued regular news bulletins to the media to lessen speculations and rumors on the abduction. “The media indulged in a lot of speculation,” Ang See told PJR Reports in a phone interview last July 12.
What is clear is that the press should have followed up the circumstances regarding the “embargo” and abduction. But more than a month after Drilon’s group was freed, and Drilon suspended for disobeying orders not to pursue the story, most of the details of the incident are still unknown to the public. The excuse that ABS-CBN 2 was not releasing those details does not wash. The news organizations could very well have checked other sources and documents that are already available to fill in the gaps
The June 8 abduction in Sulu was the first and biggest case in recent memory when a network asked other news organizations to temporarily hold reportage. That angle should have been pursued further.
Debates in the community
The decision by some media organizations to grant ABS-CBN 2’s “request” sparked debates in the journalism community, especially about imposing a “news embargo” on similar cases in the future. Complicating the issue further was that three of the hostages were media practitioners themselves.
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines chair Jose Torres Jr. said initial reporting of the incident could have angered the abductors and put the lives of the captives in greater harm. But he also stressed the need to inform the people in the community where the abduction happened. Torres said the decision on whether to release the news calls for a “balance on the part of editors and a question of ethics.”
“Lives and the people’s right to be informed should be balanced,” Torres told the Inquirer. “If the information is all clear, then that should have been the time the story should been out.”
While some camps accuse the media organizations of connivance to temporarily conceal the abduction, and claim that it was a clear display of ‘arrogance’ and an ‘unethical reaction’ by the media, the Inquirer’s editorial last June 12 (“Judgment call”) underscored that “this (news embargo) was not a case of professional solidarity trumping public interest, but precisely, public interest demanding a thorough vetting of the story before its release to a society already jittery about renewed prospects for conflict in Mindanao.”
Pointing out the result of the incident, the Inquirer editorial said: “An embargo should now be standard operating procedure for all media in the initial hours of a kidnapping.” The safety of hostages should be a paramount consideration, the paperadded last June 12.
News blackouts should be ideally observed in every kidnapping incident until after the release of the hostage whether he or she is famous, Ang See told PJR Reports.
To University of the Philippines journalism professor and PJR Reports editor Luis V. Teodoro, journalism’s ethical rules apply to every story, whether the subject is a journalist or not.
“When ABS-CBN 2 asked for an embargo, the details of the kidnapping were not yet available, and lives were at stake. Public interest could have been even more compromised by inaccurate reporting, even as the ethical rule of compassion applies as well to vulnerable colleagues in the profession as much as to sources and news subjects who are at risk. In this context, the request, which specified a time limit as is usual in embargoes, was reasonable.
“We can take issue with the wisdom of Drilon’s pursuit of the story that put her and her team in jeopardy. The Abu Sayyaf is receding into obscurity and deserves that fate. But Drilon’s safety was totally separate from that issue.” |
