Not a lovers’ spat #MediaCrisis

WHEN the then-President-elect Rodrigo Duterte was doing those two-hour conversations with the press, informal and freewheeling, no filter and no holds barred, he gave them news for days. All media needed to do was latch onto the more controversial statements, the jokes and retorts, toward ensured hits and shares and likes on their website and social media accounts.

They could also milk these bits and soundbites all it was worth, where one story could yield a good number of articles: from breaking news to longer form ones, in English and then in Tagalog, and then news articles with video clips. They could go on and use it for an op-ed article, or find a “political analyst”—the job de rigueur!—and create an article out of that as well.