FILIPINO newspapermen should not take offense that President Noynoy Aquino, unburdening himself in a media forum last Wednesday, criticized how the media have been reporting and commenting on him and his administration.

After all, it is not every day that the most powerful man in the Philippines bothers to hit back at his tormentors, particularly those in the print media. Besides, in fairness, some of his complaints and observations are valid.

We appreciate his reminder that truth, integrity and responsibility must not be compromised as we compete for faster dissemination of information – and that sensationalism and biased reporting is bad journalism. It is also bad business, if we may add.

We can only say amen to his sermon that media, “perhaps especially print media,” have a special role to play before, during and after the May 9 elections – and that “we Filipinos will need a just, comprehensive accounting of this historic time.”

He also repeated what we already know: that the reach, currency and viability of print media are being seriously challenged by social media rampaging in the space-time continuum of the Internet.

It is uncanny, however, how the stone that the President had cast on media can be thrown back at him and his administration – especially on the issues of truth, integrity, responsibility, bias, fairness and other issues (better left alone for now).

Both the President and the Press are answerable to the people they serve. They must continually validate their mandate, but while media did not seek election to their position of responsibility, the President did. It is much easier to impeach unwanted media (their public can simply stop reading them).

• Noy must bone up on media affairs

INSTEAD of chastising media, President Aquino could have contributed to improving the quality of public information had he made good his promise to see to the enacting of a Freedom of Information law.

To help the President gain a healthier appreciation of what media are trying to do in a restrictive and dangerous milieu, we are sharing some notes on how the endangered print media species thinks and works.

When a journalist writes a news report or a commentary, rarely is he guided, as President Aquino insinuated, by a desire to sell more copies of his paper. Pardon me, but we writers are not interested in selling more newspapers — that is the job of the marketing department.

The owner(s) of the publication, the publisher, the editors, the reporters and columnists do not operate as in a conspiracy. Although there are such commonly-held tenets on truth, fairness, good writing, etc., these individuals often view events and issues differently

What the reader sees in print is the handiwork of a team, not of the reporter alone. As for the headline, which the President said is sometimes “sensationalized,” it is written by the page sub-editor, not by the reporter.

In the rush of deadlines, a few unfortunate times the head may not reflect the tone and substance of the story. When this occurs, it is unfair to blame the reporter or writer.

It is ridiculous for anyone, including a bystander in the Palace, to demand or expect a news story to be objective. There is no such animal in the journalistic zoo. No news item is objective for the simple reason that anything that passes through value judgment comes out being subjective.

Differentiated from straight news, a column such as Postscript is opinionated. We cannot help that, because a column is an opinion piece.

But in interpretive reporting, even news may be enriched by the opinion of the writer. Some respected senior writers are allowed, sometimes even required, to give their considered opinion in an attempt to explain the news.

Winnowing the facts and deciding which elements to highlight in the lead and which ones to drop below is a very subjective process. With space constraints, some details have to be left out while significant angles are played up.

It is impossible to write a “complete” story, as the President wants. Even history books written by research teams over an extended period are never complete. Incomplete though it may be, journalism is sometimes referred to as the first draft of history.

• Stories on Cory re news handling

PRESIDENT AQUINO recalled that his mother Cory spoke 16 years ago (when she was no longer President) of a hostage-taking in Mindanao where some newsmen seeking close contact with the hostages and the kidnappers became captives themselves.

He said: “After narrating that incident, my mother posed questions which, I believe, remain relevant not only in that particular context, or to Filipino reporters, but to each and every member of the industry today and in the years to come.”

Some of her questions: Are the reporters telling what they see or what they think readers will pay to read? Do they understand what they see? Are they talking to the right people, or are they just retailing propaganda? (We will need more space to take up those questions.)

I recall my own Cory-media incident. We were putting to bed the Philippine Daily Inquirer at the height of a bloody coup attempt in August 1987 when I (then PDI editor-in-chief) picked up my phone that was ringing. It was the President!

Sounding somewhat agitated, Cory asked if it was true that we had a story about her son (Noy, then 27) having been shot and wounded by renegades on his way home. I said I’ve heard of the report but that we still did not have the story.

The President told me the report was not true, without specifying which details were false. She warned me: “If you get that report, don’t use it! If you do, we’ll sue!” She repeated that before hanging up.