Tag Archives: PCOO

komentaryo

Mocha and the end of troll discourse

If there’s anything the past week has revealed it’s the slow death of troll discourse. It’s entirely possible the social media armies aren’t being paid enough, but it’s also possible that we just have ceased to be afraid of being bullied online. The latter is my more optimistic perspective, because it’s been a year after all, and now more than ever, this government’s strategies of silencing and skewing discourse have been exposed to be nothing more than bad communications and terrible damage control.

The only reason it requires mention at this point in fact, is the existence of one Mocha Uson, whose behavior has not evolved from being rabid Duterte supporter during the campaign to being a government employee whose salary is being paid for by public funds. The latter behooves us all to critique her and her actions — as we should all government officials, especially when they continue to be a source not just of falsity and hate, but also — and more importantly — the most terrible kind of propaganda that justifies the killings of thousands.  (more…)

komentaryo

Andanar’s PNA train wreck

This is all very simple, really. The Philippine News Agency (PNA) has made enough mistakes, has been in the news often enough for being nothing more than a laughable excuse for a newswire service, and ultimately responsibility falls on Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.

After all, I have personally heard him talking about how much he idolizes China’s Xin Hua News Agency, and how he would like to emulate its technology, its offices across the world, its professionalism. The fundamental problem with this of course is that Xin Hua is a state news agency in a country with censorship, where there is no freedom of the press, or of speech. And unless that’s what Andanar hopes for the Philippines, there is absolutely no reason to even think of emulating Xin Hua.

But PNA’s foreign news section is filled with news taken from Xin Hua, and that can only fall on Andanar’s shoulders. Why are you even thinking this news service to be credible source of news about China, and about the world?  (more…)

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#Andanar’s learning curve, social media user accreditation, #PCOO’s downward spiral

It seems the learning curve is steep for Martin Andanar — and everyone else on the Duterte communications team. A year in, and this week’s mistakes and mishaps can only be symptoms of the bigger crisis that is Presidential and government communications. We are also reminded (yet again!) that we are wasting public funds on the salaries of officials who have no idea what they’re doing.

After a year, instead of actually evolving in his knowledge of social media, Andanar is still stuck on his simpleton assessment of what social media is about. He’s still working with the nonsense of counting followers like it matters. Department Order 15, which seeks to accredit “social media practitioners” to cover PCOO and Presidential events even asserts that social media is where “the citizenry” might be “engaged” in order to “enrich the quality of discourse.”

Was Andanar in the Philippines the past year? At what point did partisan social media (that is, pro-Duterte and pro-Dilawan) “enrich the quality of discourse”?

(more…)

komentaryo

Truth, fake news, propaganda

It was only a matter of time: after Malacañang watched its followers discredit media on the basis of the superficially discussed notion of “bias,” it then allowed for the proliferation of fake news.

Of course when we speak of that now, a year into Duterte’s government, it has become clear that it also means government officials who have so benefited from the manner in which media has been put into question, that they don’t even feel the need to retract their statements anymore. From Andanar insinuating Senate media were paid to cover Lascañas, to Ubial insisting she didn’t say there were 59 Marawi evacuees who have died, and every other questionable statement from the President to the Justice Secretary in between, we have watched government officials utter shameless denials, instead of the more honorable admission of having committed mistakes, having spread false information, and issuing retractions of previous statements.

This is no surprise when one considers that this appeals to government supporters on social media. And when your basis for public opinion is social media (see last column), why would you care about right and wrong, fake and real, news? (more…)

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A year of anti-information

A year into this President, and after the epic failure that is this Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), I am now beginning to think that contrary to what we would like to believe, maybe what we’ve seen to be a crisis in communications IS the communications strategy.

After all, look at Martin Andanar, utterly silent, getting away with releasing badly-written, ill-conceptualized pro-Martial Law videos, being paid for the bad work of all the divisions he is in charge of – from PTV4 to RTVM, the Philippine News Agency and all other Presidential and Malacañang websites. Look at the official Facebook page of Andanar’s Assistant Secretary and find that half of her posts are marked as fake news pages by the fantastic Fakeblok app of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) and the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP).

Look at us, getting used to this state of affairs, including the utter lack of credible and relevant information coming from government, save for shameless and questionable numbers that contradict what we know is happening on the ground, and official statements that are denied altogether even with multiple witnesses, even when we all heard what they said, even when there are recordings all over the place. (more…)