Palace officials will meet separately with various media organizations starting next week to discuss protocols to follow when covering sensitive incidents in the future, a Malacañang official said Friday.
"Ako personally pupunta ako sa mga news organizations, makikipag-usap sa kanila (I will personally go to the news organizations and talk to them)," said Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning head Ricky Carandang, who was a broadcaster prior to his current government post.
"There will be no conditions. I want to listen, I want to hear," he added.
The meetings will be held in light of Monday's hostage tragedy in Manila’s Rizal Park, where eight tourists from Hong Kong and the hostage taker, former police inspector Rolando Mendoza, ended up dead. (See: Hostage crisis timeline)
Various broadcast outfits’ live coverage of the unfolding 11-hour hostage drama has been widely criticized locally and abroad. President Benigno Aquino III himself said, in a press conference hours after the incident, that because Mendoza was monitoring television and radio news inside the bus, the operations of troops on the ground were "severely hampered."
"There are two ways to do this: you can do it in a big meeting na parang townhall na nandun lahat (townhall-style with everyone attending), or you can do it in small groups," Carandang said, adding that he prefers talking with small groups as this is “more productive."
“So starting next week, we intend to meet with small groups of media just to level off kung ano bang pwede nating gawin (on things that we can do) to work together more carefully in the future," he said.
Major TV networks ABS-CBN and GMA Network have both issued statements after Monday’s hostage tragedy vowing to review their coverage guidelines and practices.
The Kapisanan ng mga Broadkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) said it is also set to meet with Department of Interior and Local Government and police officials next week.
The meeting's goal is to "thoroughly review" media coverage of the hostage-taking incident "to come up with new measures" that would prevent the media from handling future incidents in the same manner, the KBP said.—Jam L. Sisante/JV
