This is a similar problem I was trying to highlight when I responded to Irene (@mindanaoan) in a Twitter.com tweet with this: “That’s the trouble when society relies on altruism. [You] get into uncomfortable relationships. State services get less personal.” This is after she tweeted about how she “found out that Philip Morris – yep, the cigarette makers – donated as much as Php 8 MILLION for [the] Typhoon [Sendong victims].”
And that is what happens when money you hadn’t earned enters the picture. It’s like that icky feeling you get waking up after a one-night-stand (so I heard). It is also why a society that relies disproportionately on charity will always struggle to stand among its regional achievers as peers.
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Web search giant Google.com struggled with a similar problem in the early days when it was trying to figure out how to make money off its brilliant Internet search services. Its dilemma is that its millions of users have come to trust the independence of the search results it delivers them. At the time, its biggest competitor Overture sold search results to the highest bidder — which means that when you search for “Hawaiian vacation”, the result that the Overture site will deliver you is a link to a travel agent who paid the most for the search term. This made Overture’s search results unreliable.
As we know now, Google makes lots of money from advertising. But it does so by being transparent about which of the content that appears on its results pages are paid for. Try a search on Google right now and you will find some sections of the page that comes up clearly shaded and marked “Ads”. That way the user knows which parts of the page contain the objective results and that these results are not infiltrated by tainted (read funded) content. And that is why Google is frequently rated as one of the most trusted brands on the Net.
And so we come to Rappler.com, which claims to be a “social news network” (go figure that one out here). I tweeted on New Years Eve, “The question is who is funding #rappler? That will be basis for assessing how objective these guys really are”.
The founders of Rappler.com — traditional journalists — who now fancy themselves “online journalists” are moving into territory in the same way Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III presumed to take “social media” campaigning by the horns — with minds ill-equipped to see the point. The two-and-a-half year history of publicity gaffes accumulated by the Aquino machine (despite the presence of Filipino Net pioneers in its bloated team and alliances with others) is a testament to this lack of understanding. In a similar manner, the cadre of be-credentialed “online journalists” that now make up Rappler.com seem to be experiencing the irony of how the very experience and education they attempt to leverage is actually proving to be their biggest liability.
A run-in with the University of Santo Tomas (UST) over a doctorate degree it granted Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona is now putting the fledgling brand equity of Rappler.com to the test. The centre of it all is one of their writers, decorated “journalist” Maritess Vitug. Rappler.com justifies the authority it presumes to wield in facing off with the venerable institution by surrounding their writer with the pomp and circumstance she had come to be accustomed to in her “years” as a “journalist”…
The request for a University of Sto Tomas (UST) position was made by Marites Dañguilan-Vitug, whose body of work as a journalist stretches back 30 years and is the author of one of the world’s top 10 books on courts and justice systems, “Shadow of Doubt.†She is the founder of Newsbreak, which has operated as a magazine and online for more than a decade until it joined Rappler in December 2011.
Very traditional, to say the least. Ms Katrina Stuart Santiago couldn’t have made a sharper and more succinct point around the above episode…
it is important that Rappler respond to these questions properly and accordingly, and not brush it off by invoking Vitug’s years as journalist or by saying that they are “ journalists
have worked for global news organizations and top Filipino news groups.†certainly if they take pride in being “online journalists†who “promise uncompromised journalism that inspires smart conversations and ignites a thirst for change†they must begin by answering questions on legitimacy and credibility, banking as they do on the names that are on their roster.
As Angela Stuart-Santiago in a subsequent piece highlighted: Vitug backed by her Rappler colleagues and fans turned a rebuff from UST management that questioned her credibility and countered with requests for clarification on what exactly Rappler.com stands for into what amounts to an online tantrum. Stuart-Santiago points out that Vitug…
[…] could have checked out the matter with CHED, and maybe she would have learned what [Inquirer.net writer Lito Zulueta who wrote UST’s response] gleefully pointed out, that UST is allowed by CHED to grant academic degrees to individuals “whose relevant work experiences, professional achievements and stature, as well as high-level, nonformal and informal training are deemed equivalent to the academic requirements for such degrees.â€
…which inadvertently (and unfortunately for the Rappler mob) turns them into the usual suspects of the sort that Stuart-Santiago speculates could be “part of a diss-corona campaign in aid of his conviction sa impeachment trial”, and as such brings the now obvious question:
Who funds Rappler.com?
Perhaps, rather than succeed in its mission to “uplift” the standards of online news “reporting”, Rappler may instead further validate the emerging credibility of those of us who simply get on with it without making a big fuss about what our “credentials” (if any) entitle us to. Considering that many appalling ideas are already being spread by what are supposed to be our most “respected” opinion shapers, we may actually need to learn to rely less on what tradition dictates.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Fake justice, fake doctorate, whats next fake Corona? resign now!
Trolls are FAKES so Vincenzo must resign also.
You’re squatter mentality at its finest since you never read the article.
I red the article and its proCorona.
Nope. It’s all about journalism, not Corona.
TROLL HARDER. 😛
read* though it is pronounced as red it is still spelled as r-e-a-d. 🙂
Fake journalism?
No, mtgal na sya dyan kaya alam nya ang ibinibigay nyang info sa bayan.
BIASED info. Only fools who are gullible enough to believe in her articles because of their gullible minds and made ‘tsismis’ as national pastime.
@Nutzi Vincenzo
Corona will not resign for your boss dictator.
By the way, how is the saint business of the holy and blessed tito BadNoy? Tell Malascanang Communications Group to keep lying about his heavenly credentials. As I said before please let BadNoy prove this. Tell him to heal your fawning mind. Tell him to walk on manila bay water all the way to Corregidor. Better yet, tell him to ascend to heaven. That will make everyone’s day. LoL!
Dpat magresign na sya dhl nanggugulo lang sya, kta mo pati supreme court dinadamay nya.
“Dpat magresign na sya dhl nanggugulo lang sya, kta mo pati supreme court dinadamay nya.”
Interestingly enough that statement is also applicable to PNoy…
Quoting Corona’s speech”
“Bakit po? Para makapagtalaga si [Noynoy Aquino] ng sarili niyang Chief Justice na kanyang kapit sa leeg?”
Oh yeah, Noynoy did that in order to save his family’s Hacienda Luisita.
Your tito noy should be the one to resign!
You delusional & idiotic yellow troll.
Give up troll, this country ill needs a savior such as your tito noy!
Mhal pa rin ng taong bayan si Tito Noy, at kung meron man, eto ay mga byaran ni Gloria.
May proof ka ba na bayaran kami? Just give us concrete evidence. 🙂
“Mhal pa rin ng taong bayan si Tito Noy”
COOL STORY BRO.
The people there should also stop ranting just because they failed to get an interview, and stop passing “silence” as “guilt.” That’s another form of prejudice.
Its guilt. Silent means yes
Silence can be yes or no. They chose to be silent because they wanted to. 🙂
When maritiess vitug launched her book, she asked her friend maria ressa to makes sur sure all news programs at anc carried a repprt on her book. When i got to read ot, it was merely full of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
pinoy buzzz,
Did you notice how she discredited the justices except for one?
There you go. Powerful cliques make for an inbred information landscape. You get mediocre work propagated and made immune to critical evaluation.
Inggit lang yan.
It’s not being jealous. It’s all about you people being shallow. And you never realized it.
Don’t you know what you did is RED HERRING? You’re putting up comments against Corona but that is not the point of the article.
I never did like mercenary journalism. Putting a price tag on it is not only unethical.It is also highly immoral. The dictator Aquino likes to pay people off. This is seen in the bloated budget of the Malascanang Communications Group and manipulated surveys. This has already revealed his real side. A corrupt style to control gullible/ignorant people’s minds. His uncle Adolf would have been proud of him.
whatever happened to unbiased journalism?
“Malicious” was the only comment I made upon reading the article of Ms. Vitug. The author and the publisher are equally guilty of it. I wonder if legal actions may be filed by UST being the aggrieved party.
sad that the country has no reputable journalists.
in the west they wouldn’t even get a job sharpening pencils.
and calling them journalists is an insult.
presstitutes as someone else said is very appropriate.
“who simply get on with it without making a big fuss about what our “credentials†(if any) entitle us to…”
We’ve had previous, indeed extensive, discussions on this matter over at MLQ3 and FV.
Credentials are needed to ascertain credibility. Even Google checks bona fides of its search results.
Happy Year of the Water Dragon! (from the dis-enfranchised, un-credentialed Rabbit)
You’ve got a cadre of top government officials and representatives full of people bristling with law degrees. Would you say these people possess the “credibility” you seek? Even Chief Justice Corona, who’s got credentials that would shame even the President of the United States has his credibility being hung out to dry before the Pinoy lynch mob of Noynoy Aquino.
I think I recall these “discussions” on FV. Some bozos used the analogy of where one would seek medical care. Of course any sensible person would go to a practitioner with the appropriate credentials. But, see, that’s a false analogy because that discussion, as I recall it, compares doctors with quacks. But even among doctors who present equal credentials, reputations and skills vary and, as such, among their peers relative credibility also has to be earned.
This is the problem Noynoy Aquino cannot solve. The Social Media people, who keep criticizing him. First, he sent those YellowTard Computer Hackers. To mess up the computer sytems of the social media people. Then, he tried to discredit them, as ignoramuses. Now, he formed a paid group of seasoned “Journalists”, to deal with them. It did not work, and it will never work. Because, Truth is like water….it comes out in any opening it finds…
So, good luck YellowTards…
BadNoy is setting all the evil examples. His recent hate-think, no holds barred attacks against CJ Corona shows his true colors. That Neil Tupas is nothing more than a paid hack. BadNoy is destroying our culture, society, freedom and democracy. It makes me wonder. How far is the dictator willing to go? His mindset is fully capable of dividing the people. He destroys lives and institutions. This pattern could very well lead to his own destruction.