Covering the US polls–A blend of tech and content

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

Previously: Lessons from the US election coverage

The overwhelming use of technology, with an amount of showmanship, was a trademark of the US TV networks’ coverage of the 2012 polls.

Veering away from its “hologram effect” in 2008, CNN lighted up the top of New York City’s Empire State Building in red and blue depending on which states went to Pres. Barack Obama or his challenger Mitt Romney.

NBC turned the skating rink at the Rockefeller Center into a giant map of the United States and colored it real time according to the count.

That’s not to mention the graphics, touch screens, and number-crunches that were used on election night.

It is just another incarnation of the progress that began when the networks first counted votes with computers in 1960, and when someone on TV first thought of lighting up maps into blue and red states to illustrate those results.

Election night 2012 in New York City: NBC’s Democracy Plaza and CNN lights up the Empire State Building (Courtesy Max Bradford/NBC and CNN)

The US media also thought outside the box with interactive ways of enhancing the election night experience through the Internet.

And both politicians and the media made greater use of another interactive means–social media–in feeling the pulse of voters.

Filipino viewers will be looking for some of these new technologies in the coming 2013, and more so, the 2016 elections.

Not left behind

While the networks are surely mum on which they might use here, the experience of the 2010 elections shows there will be some novelties in store.

“The US-based networks were the ones who got it first, and who got it right,” said Cheryl Favila, ABS-CBN News Production head. “Of course, if you belong to an Asian country, and find that presentation impressive, you’d like to get that technology also.”

But budgets predictably limit the quality of technology local networks acquire, Favila noted. The technology may be similar but the software is simpler compared to those used by US networks.

For instance, ABS-CBN was offered a virtual set like the one used by the BBC. Favila said they opted for augmented reality which they felt would be more reliable and helpful to the network’s news presentation.

“It’s not really keeping in step, but I would say we also don’t want to be left behind, even if our capability is only limited,” she said.

Superior or not, the technologies are merely riveting ways of packaging data into easily-digestible information for viewers.

Halalan 2013: Media lessons from the US elections

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

One glaring similarity between the United States and Philippine elections is the field day of media organizations (television in particular) especially on election day.

Indeed, elections are when the media pull out all the stops in delivering live updates and showcasing the latest broadcast technology.

People look forward to elections that they become the best times to showcase a network’s capabilities, said ABS-CBN News Production chief Cheryl Favila.

“The results are there, but next to that is how the networks present their election stories… how we can make our presentation better for our viewers,“ she said.

The 2010 elections, for instance, are also remembered for tech terms like augmented reality that spiced the viewing experiences of Filipinos.

It recalled the 2008 US elections, when CNN first unveiled the hologram effect as a means of interacting with reporters on the field.

Jessica Yellin via hologram in 2008 and Ron Gagalac via virtual presence in 2010 (Courtesy of CNN & ABS-CBN)

The US election coverage clearly was not readied in just a few months, Favila said.

“Probably at the very least a year, so that they get the perfect graphics, they get the perfect location, and at the same time, they were prepared with analysis,” she said.

Coverage of the US polls has also been compared with ours for their speed in calling results, the ease of reporting on just two major parties, the greater focus on issues, and the increase in interactivity.

Some of those traits are inextricably linked to the US political system. Others to the pace of technology.

With midterm polls coming next year, a rundown of the traits may elicit a second look at how elections are covered in the Philippines.

Some coverage elements, however, might take more than just programming decisions to change. And whether practices should be altered or adapted is still subject to judgment.

The Pinoy media and the US elections

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

(Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

Among the elements Philippine viewers noticed during the recent Presidential elections in the United States was the absence of a central body overseeing and tabulating the vote.

Even during the local US Embassy’s public-held election watch events here on November 7, there seemed to be no other source of election results than the news media.

At one such gathering in a mall in Quezon City, the center of attraction was a giant LED screen which, in between intermissions and speeches, showed CNN’s marathon election night coverage.

As a time zone of precincts closed each hour, the network anchors would sift through exit poll and survey numbers to gauge how the voters would choose.

Minutes later, CNN would call which states would be won by either Pres. Barack Obama of the Democratic Party or his Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney.

A cheer later arose from the crowd assembled at the mall when CNN began to project a substantial increase in state votes that would bring President Obama closer to re-election.

From CNN’s live shots, the scene in Manila mimicked those all over the US. Party supporters and spectators at public spaces monitored big displays of telecasts from CNN, FOX, NBC, and other US networks.

All of the news organizations had separate means and resources for collating the popular vote. Yet somehow, their final calls matched up—President Obama had won four more years.

(Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

It wasn’t long after the unified projections that Mitt Romney conceded his defeat.

In the Philippines, the influx of numbers would still have been called “partial and unofficial.” And the local news media would still have taken their cue from the Commission on Elections before declaring any candidate as the winner.

This prompt resolution of the vote prompted local humor blogger @I_amHolo to tweet: “In the US, CNN is Comelec.”

Indeed, the US elections have been opportunities for Filipinos to compare the workings of their democracy with that of the country that introduced this system to their shores.

And now with globalization and a ubiquitous, 24/7 media, the similarities and differences have become much more highlighted.

Ganito ang Sawdi Layf - Nike

In 2001, I was one of over a hundred students who enrolled at the Second Philippine International School (SPIS) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

A number, like me, had transferred from other Philippine schools in the area. Many, however, had moved from the Philippines with their parents. We also had over 20 new teachers and staff from the homeland.

Thus the fastest-growing Philippine school in Riyadh at the time grew a little bigger.

And tucked inside the first 2001 issue of SPIS Insights, the school’s then two-year-old publication, was a short yet ingenious Filipino article on an OFW’s new life in the Kingdom.

The author, a pseudonym (that is, not me).

It matched the homesickness of those missing the Philippines with the quickest available connection they had to home–ABS-CBN’s The Filipino Channel or TFC.

Even if you haven’t landed on the Arab desert, the sampling of TV shows (many defunct, others still airing) in this piece will evoke memories of the early 2000s.

(POSTSCRIPT, Oct. 5: After posting this, I thought of sending a link to a former SPIS teacher, Sir Nick Peñaverde. Turns out the tidbit I heard was true all along. He did write the following piece. And reading it again seemed like a gift on National Teacher’s Week. Here’s a tribute to all my elem and high school teachers–all OFWs too.)

(Published on Page 10, Filipino section of SPIS Insights, Volume III, Issue No. 1, August 2001)

(From the book “Pinoy Television: The Story of ABS-CBN)

 
Mahigit apat na buwan na rin ang nakalipas sa PAHINA ng aking Saudi life. Animo’y MISSION X ang bawat karanasan na nilalaro sa MBA ng buhay.

Noong una’y OKA TOKAT ang nararamdaman, ngunit dahil kapwa Pilipino PIPOL ang KABALIKAT palagi, KEEP ON DANCING ang feelings kahit sobrang init ang bawat sandali.

Ala SINGKO Y MEDYA ang gising kung magluluto ka pa at ASAP ka naman para ‘di mahuli sa SINESKWELA.

SARAP TV kapag may selebrasyon at bertdeyan, dahil libre ang MAGANDANG TANGHALIan BAYAN.

Sakay ng THE BUZZ sa tuwing mag ma-market day, S.I.M. card ng Aljawwal ang kailangan upang celpon mo’y maging okey.

Iba’t ibang bagay dito sa Camel Land aking lubos na nauunawaan. Huwag gagawa ng maling GIMIK upang ‘di ma-ISYU 101, sumunod sa alituntunin at batas upang ‘di ma-KRIS & TELL ang buhay.

O SPIS sa Sawdi, salamat, maraming salamat. PANGAKO SA’YO mga turo mo at aral ay aking pahahalagahan. Sa PUSO KO IINGATAN KA tulad ni SHARON na iniidolo ng masa.

Ang galing mo’y dapat lang i-TALK TV at ibalita sa TV PATROL, at awitin ng lahat ang tagumpay mo sa SING dat SONG.

Kung KAYA NI MISTER, KAYA NI MISIS ang mga homesick na nagdaan, asahan mong ako’y ‘di magbabago, BODY en the GUARD mong tunay.

Mananatili ang suporta ko sa iyo, tulad ng nag-aalab na FLAMES. Saan man, kailanman, MARTIN LATE AT NITE o MAGANDANG GABI BAYAN man, TFC THIS WEEK, this month, this year- ikaw lang, MAALAALA MO KAYA ang laman ng puso’t isipan.

RECUERDO DE AMOR ang ngalan mo, at maituturing na THE GLOBAL FILIPINO ang iyong mga produkto.

Ito ang aking Sawdi life, ang aking karanasan, bumalikman sa Pinas ‘di ito malilimutan, ngayon, bukas… hanggang SA DULO NG WALANG HANGGAN.

Sino ako ang tanong mo?? ASSIGNMENT mo na ‘yan!

Pinoy TV mash-up for OFWs, 2001 edition

When senators get unhappy

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

What the media expected was a little hell-raising at the confirmation of newly-appointed Interior secretary Mar Roxas and his replacement at the transportation department, Sec. Jose Emilio Abaya.

Yet that fizzled out as quickly as it came up.

Sen. Miriam Santiago raised her hand when Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile asked if there were any objections to Roxas’ confirmation.

Santiago later told reporters it was merely palabra de honor. She wanted to “wake up Malacañang” and had threatened to veto Cabinet members who failed to attend her investigation of interior undersecretary Rico Puno.

But after a quick break that followed her statement, Santiago withdrew her objection–to applause. Clapping is prohibited at the Senate plenary, but no one bothered then.

Click on the pic to watch the video. (Shot by Marco Gutierrez, ABS-CBN News)

Roxas, a former senator, was a close colleague of Santiago’s (“Even his wife [Korina Sanchez] is very close to me,” she added). She didn’t want someone “needed in public service” to end up as “collateral damage” in a battle of hers.

Objection was futile anyway, Santiago said, since President Aquino could issue an ad interim appointment on September 22 if the Senate goes on break without confirming Roxas.

All’s well that ends well, and Abaya got confirmed as well.

But as the Senate reporters settled down to file their Roxas-Santiago stories, it turned out that wasn’t the last controversy of the day.

Our technical crew got a call that Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV would deliver a privilege speech at the plenary session. ANC planned to air it live.

The newsrooms had already been watching out for Trillanes. He was banner story in the Inquirer that day for holding backdoor negotiations with China on its territorial dispute with the Philippines over the Scarborough or Panatag Shoal. When ANC called him about it, he confirmed it.

So after Trillanes’ office put out word of his speech, the best guess was something about China.

Instead, he began with a familiar line that wasn’t his: “Gusto ko happy ka (I want you to be happy)”, the Senate President’s campaign slogan.

The real deal, Trillanes said, was “Kung gusto ko, isasagasa ko. Kung ayaw ko, uupuan ko. (If I want it, I’ll rush it. If I don’t, I’ll delay it).”

9/11: A mosaic of memories

"Obviously a very disturbing shot..." The first images from CNN.

Sitting through a morning class. Coming home from school. Extended on night duty. Roused from bed.

Filipinos recall how they found out across different time zones ten years ago that the iconic World Trade Center Towers in New York were attacked.

It’s a connection they share with the United States and the rest of the global village that paused this week to remember.

“The sun was on full-dial. I was indolently shuffling through my notes… when I heard a panic-stricken voice yelling from across the hall–’A plane just hit the World Trade Center’.”

Jeff Canoy‘s American History class that morning was interrupted by the cry. His professor soon got a call and turned on a television set. The channel trained live on the burning Tower 1.

In a college writeup he resurrected online, Jeff remembered the confusion, questions, tears, and hysteria that gripped him and his classmates as they grappled with the reality and gravity of what they had hoped was only a film.

They were ordered to keep calm and remain seated in their class as word came that a plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., just near their place in Maryland.

Jeff, now with ABS-CBN, reported on September 10 how Filipino activists observed the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

(Screengrab from TV Patrol. Click to watch.)

“…Right after September 11, the general cry heard across the world was that ‘we will never forget’,” Jeff wrote the next day.

“Ten years later, it seems like we haven’t.”

EDSA 25: ‘I was there’

(Shot by Bernie Mallari, ABS-CBN News)

February 25, 2011 was not declared a working holiday, but Samuel Loyola took the half-day off to visit the EDSA Shrine in Ortigas.

He said that before his eyesight fails him, he wanted to see and be at the same place he was 25 years back.

Samuel came to our ENG van carrying a yellowing, dog-eared newspaper page printed with his small claim to history. Wrapped in plastic, the paper was only taken out on Februarys.

It was the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer dated February 24, 1986. Below its headline, a boy in a tank top was giving flowers to a soldier.

“That’s me right there,” Samuel said, pointing to a grinning man who peeped out from behind another, somehow expecting the camera shot.

(Shot by Bernie Mallari, ABS-CBN News)

He said he and onlookers laughed when they saw the uniformed man halted by the kid’s present.

It was typical of the spirit along this highway when prayers met force and good-naturedness doused anger with cold water.

The image–minus Samuel and the smiling entourage–is immortalized in the yellow 500-peso bill that future Filipinos, unfortunately, will no longer see except as collectors’ items.

Held hostage: On the ground

The eyes of not just the nation, but the world, were glued to a strip of public space in Manila for almost 12 hours on Monday.

Just weeks earlier, this amphitheater was packed with witnesses to a climax in a political drama. We watched one man capture a nation. Another man there held us hostage yesterday, almost literally.

Two of our ENG vans had already arrived at the Quirino Grandstand and broadcasted the initial shots of a gunman hijacking a tourist bus of Hong Kong Chinese. We came soon after from Camp Crame, where we first got word of the hostage-taking.

Radio DZMM pieced the first details for us as we drove to Manila to support the coverage.

My mind ran through the Jun Ducat case of 2007, the last very similar event. I was thinking how our field ops teams and how the media, as a whole, handled that crisis. I remember mixed reviews. Would we do better this time?

Our two vans were on opposite ends of the grandstand, each held off by yellow lines about 200 meters from the bus.

My team parked 300 meters facing the bus and cabled a camera with a frontal view of its dashboard.

Six live ABS-CBN cameras were perpetually fixed upon the bus, monitoring the negotiations through extreme closeups and telephoto lenses. More backpack cams were scattered on both ends.

That foreign lives were involved and that it was live brought international attention to Manila. CNN hooked up to ANC’s non-stop coverage.

Growing up with CNN

Unlike most Pinoy kids my age, my first memories of television were state-run foreign TV, reruns, and CNN.

I spent my childhood in 1990s Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a few years before The Filipino Channel invaded the desert with programming from the homeland.

My brother and I would wait till 1 p.m. on class-less days for the government’s English-channel 2 to sign on.

Aired first were kiddie fare like Looney Toons, Bionic Six, and Sesame Street. Some mostly-British comedy, reality game, and gag shows followed into the night.

Then my father got a satellite dish.

This hallowed mount

Our convoy drove past the peak by over 50 kilometers. Apparently, our lead driver had never been there and so steered on even south of Bataan.

I still wonder how we could have missed the cross of lights that grew clearer as we finally traversed the road up Mount Samat.

We arrived to see the sun rise over a breathtaking sight: trees and greenery stretched out all the way to the sea.

Nearly 70 years before, this green was strewn with foxholes, its air reeked of smoke, and its slopes consumed by fire.

A young country’s defenders then held the last line of sovereign territory in Southeast Asia against an invading army.

Ordered to resist “to the limits of human endurance,” the soldiers did so even as ground troops pushed them up the mountains and planes tried to flush them out with bombs.

All until April 9, 1942 when Bataan’s senior American officer yielded the Filipino-U.S. forces, who then walked down on the longest march of their lives.

Nonetheless, it set back the Japanese war plan. The peninsula Tokyo wanted in a month was conquered in three.

Now on Mount Samat’s top are monuments of stone to the thousands who sacrificed their lives in World War II.

We were there on probably the best day to see it–that day of surrender, now honored as the “Day of Valor,” when families and comrades of the fallen climb Samat to remember.

Only then and there do the highest officials of the Philippines, the United States, and Japan gather to lead the sequence of triple wreath laying, the silence, the taps, the gun salutes, and the speeches.

This diplomatic exercise seems to have been played out ever since–Japan says sorry, the U.S. pledges, and the country says thanks.

The veterans they honor are a vanishing breed. Year after year, the old men who go up Samat number less, many replaced by widows donning their husbands’ caps, medals and photos.

On a day of remembrance, the nation–save for teachers, scouts, media and those with a sense of history–hardly notices.

Vice President Noli De Castro, in his final time to lead the observance as VP, apologized to the veterans and lamented that all he could bring them again were the country’s thanks.

It is difficult to find an apt recompense for an effort paid in blood.

The story is told of how the soldiers never let go of Bataan believing in the Americans’ promise of help and return. Those who survived the Death March fought on as guerillas and paved the way for U.S. General MacArthur’s return.

A fitting example for us who battle on in wait of another General’s return–He whose sacrifice on a hill is also honored by the giant cross on this hallowed mount.

See more shots from Bataan at this PinoyJourn Multiply gallery.

Acknowledgments to:
Ms. Tess Paneda of the Philippine Information Agency
Mr. Michael Charleston Chua of the Philippine Historical Association and their documentary “Tagumpay”