Media monitor: ABS-CBN report on fake Noynoy medical record 'costly mistake'

Media watchdog Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility has rebuked ABS-CBN for its April 8 television report on the fake psychiatric report on Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the CMFR said the network’s “most glaring error" was placing more emphasis on the contents of the fraudulent report instead of the denials by the Ateneo de Manila University, priest Carmelo Caluag, and Aquino himself that the document was authentic. In a statement entitled 'A Costly Mistake,' the CMFR said "Loss of credibility and public trust are too high a price to pay for an exclusive that, as it turned out, wasn’t really one." It added that the time constraints cited by ABS-CBN news and current affairs head and ANC managing editor Maria Ressa should not have prevented the network from revising the report. "It seems that ABS-CBN was convinced that it indeed had an exclusive, prepared the report before it sought confirmation of the document’s legitimacy from its alleged author, and thought that rather than take the time to redo the story and postpone its airing, it had to air it immediately over its early evening “TV Patrol World" news program before its competitors got hold of the same story," the CMFR said. "And yet both standards of accuracy and fairness should have compelled ABS-CBN to hold the story for later airing if it indeed lacked enough time to redo it before the broadcast time of “TV Patrol World" last April 8. ABS-CBN denies ‘scoop’ was its goal For its part, ABS-CBN denied it was driven by the goal to outdo its competitors. It added that it got hold of Caluag and Aquino’s denials while "TV Patrol World" was airing. A report on abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak quoted the network as saying that "We are not motivated by the desire ‘to scoop’ nor did we prepare the story earlier. The time-frame was decided by the fast spread of documents on the web and on text and, more importantly, by the timing of the denials of Fr. Caluag and Sen. Aquino, which happened while our flagship newscast was already airing." "We acknowledge we could have done a better job, but the priority was to air the denials as soon as we got them because if we didn’t, non-professional journalists — the greater part of the public we serve — would continue to believe the document is authentic. We err on the side of the Truth," it added. ABS-CBN’s ‘source’ In its statement, the CMFR also told ABS-CBN to identify who provided the fake medical document. "The fraudulence of the document is reason enough to release ABC-CBN from whatever confidentiality agreement it has with its sources, unless revealing the names will endanger them," it said. But the network rejected this, saying "if we ‘expose’ our sources, no one would ever trust us again." "At times, sources feed you wrong information, but that’s information as well! It gives you hints about what’s really going on behind the public line. In this instance, we revealed the document was given to us by sources from the Nacionalista Party. That is all that’s necessary to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Everything else is positioning and deflection," ABS-CBN added. The Nacionalista Party has since denied being the source of the fake document, even vowing to punish whoever from their camp responsible for the distribution of the fake medical report. — Sophia Dedace/RSJ/LBG/HS, GMANews.TV