Spinning surveys – Philippine media at its finest.

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The most recent Social Weather Station survey showing 54{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} of Filipinos agree that only poor drug pushers are killed has caused a media feeding frenzy again. It has provided the media more ammunition to use in its brutal disinformation propaganda against the Duterte administration. No, I am not questioning the integrity of the survey but rather the media spin. The thing to remember about surveys and data is that it can be interpreted in different ways and you will still be reporting something factual. I am not saying the media is faking their reporting on the survey result but they are doing something more sinister – deliberately misleading the public. 

Look at this Inquirer report on the recent survey result: 

This is a serious and damning survey result for the administration’s fight against narcotics and narco-politics. It evokes a very strong response and projects a public distrust of the police force and the administration. How can Duterte claim to be fighting for the poor when his police are mostly killing poor people? The headlines forces us to ask these questions and to create doubt. Like I said before, whenever you read a headline that tries to evoke a strong emotional response, do the research yourself and come to your own opinion. So that is what I did. 

This is the result from the SWS survey that the media is feeding on right now. It shows that 54{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} of Filipinos either strongly agree or somewhat agree to the statement that “Rich drug pushers are not killed; only the poor ones are killed.” What is not being reported is the fact that the Net agreement on this statement has actually gone down from +37 in June 2017 to +29 in September 2017. That is a drop in net agreement score of 8 points. If you also look at the survey data more closely you will notice that less people actually agree to the statement in September compared to June of this year. In June 33{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} strongly agreed and 27{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} somewhat agreed but in September this dropped to 31{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} strongly agreed and 23{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} somewhat agreed. So, what happened to those people who strongly agreed or somewhat agreed in June? The survey answers this question – most of them became undecided and some of them strongly disagreed in September. Why did the media not report on this? Because it does not fit their narrative. 

The other narrative that could have been reported about this survey data is the fact that more Filipinos are doubting or are undecided about the narrative that only the poor die in Duterte’s war on drugs. Media coverage of the war on drugs has been mostly negative and focused on victims of vigilante killings and the acts of some isolated corrupt police officers. Filipinos are bombarded by negative media spin 24/7 telling them that the Duterte administration is only going after the poor. Very little reporting is being made about the fact that multiple big name drug lords have been killed too (e.g. Odicta, Espinosa and Parojinogs). The recent SWS survey gives me hope that the Filipino people are slowly seeing through the lies and disinformation that the media is feeding them. This survey result coupled with the other ones that show most Filipinos still support the administration’s war on drugs and that most Filipinos agree that drug pushers should be killed are good signs that the Duterte administration is still fulfilling the people’s mandate. 

This is the kind of media propaganda that the Malacanang communications office should be fighting head on. It is time for the PCOO to be actively calling the media out for their slanted take on certain survey results. I expect the media to fight back and claim violation of the freedom of the press but I don’t think this is. The media just cannot print whatever they want and report on facts however they want without expecting the subject of their slanted reporting to respond. A democracy with a mature journalism profession has a tradition of the right to reply, it is time for the PCOO to exercise this right. As for us bloggers, we should be doing the same thing too. We should continue our fight against media manipulation and take advantage of the change in public perception. Based on the survey, public perception is on our side, more Filipino’s are waking up to the reality that the media is just manipulating them.