A report used in a piece published by a certain Yvonne Chua of the University of the Philippines showed that Rappler was among the least trusted brands in Philippine news media. The report, published by the University of Oxford and the Reuters Institute showed Rappler alongside tabloid publications Abante and Bulgar at the bottom of a list of “most trusted” brands.
At the top of the list is the GMA Network. ABS-CBN did not join any of the big corporate news media enterprises in the Top 5 and ranked below newspapers categorised as “regional or local newspaper”.
The author of the report that features this Reuters-Oxford study, Yvonne Chua, exhibited a biased approach to featuring these statistics and attempts to highlight the recent plight of Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, suggesting that this may have something to do with the dismal ranking of her news team’s brand.
Journalists have faced regular verbal attacks by President Duterte and his supporters in his battle with media critics. Trust in ABS-CBN, which was subsequently subject to a government shutdown order, scored 61% in the survey, 12 points lower than the GMA Network, which has a reputation for more cautious decision-making. Rappler, which is fighting multiple court cases, has a score of 49%.
However, this only serves to highlight facts that may be confronting or, worse, unacceptable to Filipino Opposition “activists” and partisans — that few Filipinos buy into the slanted “news” published by Rappler. This is evident in the way Chua “reports” these trust statistics — sad and dishonest piece of “analysis” coming from a member of the University of the Philippines community at that.
Webmaster of Get Real Philippines