Smile for the camera: Aquino (centre) joining media members of the Foreign Correspondent Association of the Philippines after guesting at an annual presidential forum in Manila. Aquino says he ‘sees no issue’ in a US warship’s patrol in the disputed South China Sea. — Reuters
The complaint about ‘negativism’ in the mass media was not mentioned in the news not because it was directed against the media. But because the topic was not new.
THE relationship between the government and the media in modern society is almost always one of mutual irritation. These two systems need one another, yet each is rarely pleased about the way the other does its work. The government criticises the media for harping on the negative, while the media easily bristle at any attempt to control their access to information or to shape the way they report it. The issue is structural, and there is no easy way around it.
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