Old Politics, New Media

By Heinz Bulos
March 200J

he public`s thirst or an
emerging news medium is
borne out o the surge in the
site traic o www.inquirer.net, the
Inquirer`s online edition. Not only is
Inquirer.net now aeraging about 500,000
page iews a day - double its daily aerage
o about 250,000 just a ew months back -
but it has also surged ahead to become the
world`s 21st most popular news website.`
And so gushed a news item on
Inquirer.net, ater it introduced a 24-hour,
up-to-the-minute, running account o the
Lstrada impeachement trial. 1he Inquirer
experience, as was o ABS-CBN, GMA
and other media sites, was the coming o
age o new media in the country, the
Internet`s baptism o ire.

Politics and media are anything but
strange bedellows. 1here has always been
a dependent, almost parasitic, relationship
between the two. 1he goernment,
politicians, and political groups need the
media to communicate their agenda - to
explain policies, deny allegations, get
elected, change public perception, a
thousand other reasons. 1he media, on
the other hand, eed on politics or
audience share, higher ratings, bragging
rights, and at times, een a sincere sense
o public serice.

lrom print to radio to teleision, politics
hae always been the media`s bread-and-
butter. 1he Internet is the ourth
generation o mass media, and like its
older siblings, it has learned how to play
ootsie with politics.

Media Metrix`s latest Global 1op 50 \eb
& Digital Media Properties includes NBC,
1ime \arner, and News Corp. on its list.
Media sites, particularly news sites, are one
o the top destinations on the \eb. 1he
Pew Research Center or the People and
the Press reported that 61 o American
Internet users go online or news at least
once a week. In a related study,
Scarborough Research reported that more
than hal o Internet users looking or
news go directly to newspaper sites. 1he
same Pew study also indicated that world
and political news are two o the more
popular online news topics, as speciied by
45 and 39 o all respondents.

1his is not at all surprising. News is
perect or the Internet. News articles are
relatiely shorter in length, can be updated
daily or een anytime during the day, are
suitable or hyperlinking to related items,
are oten orwarded by e-mail, and
excellent or prooking reader eedback.

Unlike print, you don`t hae to wait till the
ollowing morning to grab your daily
newspaper. Unlike radio, you don`t hae
to imagine aces and situations behind
what`s being described. Unlike 1V, you
don`t hae to suer through ten
commercials and absorb incomplete and
edited ersions o the news.

On the \eb, you can get news as it
happens, you can iew photos, watch
ideos, listen to eeds as lie and on-
demand, you can get raw, unadulterated
inormation and make your own
judgment. At least ideally. On the \eb,
there`s no limit to time and space.

Regular political news may be boring or
most people except political junkies. But
when the political issue is important,
urgent, or simply scandalous, political
news becomes a major attraction on the
\eb.
1

Coming of Age and Baptism of Iire
n January 1998, an unknown college
dropout working rom his Los
Angeles apartment shocked the world
with the biggest scoop o that year: an
intern working at the \hite louse was
haing a sexual aair with the most
powerul man in the world. Caution be
damned, Matt Drudge posted the story on
his website, 1he Drudge Report. All hell
broke loose.

Newsweek, which deeloped the story but
delayed its publishing, subsequently
published the story ater Drudge`s
preemption. 1he so-called traditional
media picked up the story, causing public
uror and making Monica Lewinsky a
household name. 1his led eentually to
the impeachment o President Bill
Clinton, who, ater years o
embarrassment rom the indignant public
and harrassment rom sel-sering parties,
ound himsel acquitted by the U.S.
Congress.

Michael Kinsley, the editor o Slate,
exclaimed, "1his story has done or the
Internet what the Gul \ar did or CNN,
and what the Kennedy assassination did
or teleision in general.` le wrote, 1he
Internet made this story. And the story
made the Internet,` then describes it as
the Internet`s coming o age as a media
orce.

In a reerence to Drudge, Lawrence
Grossman, ormer president o NBC and
PBS, wrote in the Columbia Journalism
Reiew, with a hint o sarcasm,
Gutenberg made us all readers. Radio
and teleision made us all irsthand
obserers. Xerox made us all publishers.
1he Internet makes us all journalists,
broadcasters, columnists, commentators,
and critics.`

\ears ater, Agence lrance Presse listed
ten top media eents o the century.
Included were Guglielmo Marconi, the
inentor o radio, John L. Baird, the
inentor o teleision, and 1ed 1urner,
who created CNN. 1hen, there was Matt
Drudge and Monicagate.

Drudge, who became an oernight media
sensation, wrote in his book, "1he
Internet supersedes eery mode o
communication eer inented...Anyone
rom anywhere can coer anything. And
send it out to eeryone." In his book was
an empty page except or the phrases
"Print is dead. Moies are dead. 1V is
dead.`

Despite the adulation oer the ground-
breaking moe by Drudge, there was
plenty o criticism oer Drudge`s style o
psuedo-journalism. Drudge in more than
one occasion has gotten himsel in trouble
or posting stories beore eriying them,
pulling them when it was conirmed that
they were alse. le does not do actual
journalism work - inestigating,
interiewing, eriying - he simply
monitors arious news sources and sits on
his apartment waiting or his e-mail inbox
to ill up with news, or more accurately,
gossip tips. \et, he and his site remain
popular.

I Drudge`s breaking o the Monica story
became the Internet`s coming o age, the
posting o the Starr Report proed to be
its baptism o ire.

Ater Drudge posted the story, an
inestigation by independent counsel Ken
Starr ollowed. 1he result was the Starr
Report. Starr decided to publish the entire
report exclusiely on the \eb. It
promised all the lurid details, and it did
not disappoint. A sample: le touched
her breasts with his hands and his mouth,
and touched her genitals, irst through her
I
underwear and then directly. She
perormed oral sex on him."

As with any scandal, a political-sex scandal
one at that, and moreso in that it inoles
the President o the United States, people
with access to the Internet logged on in
droes. CNN Interactie reported 300,000
hits a minute. MSNBC reported doubling
its preious record 1.1 million isitors.
ABCNews.com reported 10 million page
iews. News sites were turning away
isitors. Pretty soon, the report spread to
other sites. lortunately, the Internet did
not buckle down to the traic, as
predicted by some, as what happened to
news sites in the 1996 U.S. election
coerage.

1ime magazine noted, \hateer political
moties may hae been behind it, the
decision to release the report on the
Internet proed something important: that
the \eb is an eicient means o
distributing large amounts o inormation
to a mass audience quickly and accurately.
1Vs could relay the report only as ast as a
talking head could read it, newspapers had
to wait till the ollowing morning.`

It's a watershed moment or the Net,
because this marks the irst time that
people are relying on it - rather than
teleision or the radio - to receie the
details o a major news eent,` \ired
News enthused.

It wasn`t the last time media pundits
pitted the Net against print, 1V, and
radio. In the recently concluded 2000 U.S.
presidential elections, the Internet played
once again a major role in reporting a
major political eent. 1he ocus irst was
on the political conentions o the
Republican and Democrat parties. lor a
long time, these were shunned by a
traditional media weary o manipulations
by the political parties to suit their
message and agenda. 1he \eb eagerly
took teleision`s place in coering the
conentions. Real-time ideo coerage!
360-degree panoromic iews! But without
the elements o excitement - controersy,
proocatie iews, mudslinging ,well,
there was a little o that, - the eent
turned out to be a dud.

But it was the elections itsel that became
the \eb`s real test. 1he Internet
competed mainly with 1V or people`s
attention. 1hey had two critical
characteristics that are similar - they
oered real-time broadcasts and updates
and multimedia eatures.

Unlike in the 1996 elections, there were
signiicantly more Internet users, the
technology has improed, and media sites
that hae learned their bitter lessons were
better prepared or the onslaught.

As expected, a lood o people rushed to
news sites. \hat made matters worse - or
better, depending on how you look at it -
was that the race between George \.
Bush and Al Gore was so close that
eeryone was in suspense. \hat used to
be decided in a ew hours dragged on or
weeks as ote recounts were conducted.
News sites, as did 1V news programs,
liplopped - proclaiming Bush as the
winner, then Gore, then Bush again. 1he
\eb did great beore the elections,
putting in details and archies that 1V
cannot match. But at the critical moment,
it played second iddle to 1V. News sites
suered rom technical glitches, content
blunders, and delays. 1V was not immune
rom these problems, to be sure, but the
\eb was not any better. Gien that the
major news sites were owned by the 1V
networks, most o the time they just
ollowed their parents` lead, committing
and correcting the same mistakes. And
while the Internet is capable o webcasting
lie eeds, it`s no match to 1V`s clear, rich
broadcasts. 1V also boasts o real-time
commentary while on the Net, a column
needs to be thought through, written, and
posted. And as Steen Schneider, editor o
Netelection.org, quipped, "It's aster to
say 'Bush won Michigan' than it is to type
in the l1ML.`

Still, the Internet was ar rom being a
loser. News sites reported record traic.
1he top news site, MSNBC.com, had
more than 5 million unique isitors,
beating its preious record o 3.1 million.
1he second top news site, CNN
Interactie, had 120 million page iews,
thrice is preious record.

Objection, Your Honor
t`s quite interesting that the biggest
test o the Internet in the U.S. turned
out to be the same period that the
Internet went through the irst and biggest
test in our country. 1he circumstances
were uncanny - an impeachment trial o a
President known or womanizing who
was replaced by an ospring o a preious
President. Clinton was impeached or an
illicit aair and or lying about it. Lstrada
was impeached not or similar reasons but
he deinitely had illicit aairs ,which he is
proud o, and he apparently lied about his
inolement in grat and corruption.
Clinton had Monicagate, Lstrada had
juetengate. George \., son o ormer
President George Bush, took oer oice.
Gloria Arroyo, daughter o ormer
President Diosdado Macapagal, replaced
Lstrada. In all cases, the Internet played a
major part in coering these momentous
eents.

Len beore the Lstrada impeachement
trial, the Net was getting some attention
as a source o news. 1here were, o
course, local news sites like GMAQuest,
ABS-CBNNews.com, Inquirer.net,
Philstar.com, and Manila Bulletin that
were updating their news on a daily basis,
as they hae been doing or some time.

But it was the independent sites and
mailing lists that were spreading news -
and rumors. It`s true that they get their
news source rom traditional media,
posting news articles on sites and lists. But
the Internet came to the oreront when
the PCIJ ,Philippine Center or
Inestigatie Journalism, reports on
Lstrada`s unexplained wealth spread on
the Net. Many wired lilipinos got to read
them online, mostly as scanned iles
attached to e-mail messages orwarded by
riends, een beore they learned about
them rom newspapers and teleision.
1he Internet did not break the story o
course, but journalists began reerring to
the PCIJ report that has been spreading
on the Internet` and columnists
acknowledging the role o the Net in
propagating news.

Still, most people see the Internet`s role in
news reporting as a noelty. lor years,
there has not been any real moe by
media conglomerates to make their sites
suitable or the \eb. 1he sites o the
news dailies were mere duplication o
their print ersions, paying lip serice to
the Internet. 1he 1V networks spun o
news sites that were updated also on a
daily, not up-to-the-minute basis.

One can`t blame them. 1he lilipino
online audience is small. Adertising
reenues are a pittance. Inrastructure is
poor. Access is expensie. It`s just not
worth it to inest money, time, and people
on their websites. In some cases, it`s also a
lack o understanding o what the Internet
is all about.

Despite these, a news site, Inquirer.net,
remains the most isited lilipino site,
besting een local portals. 1he sites o
Manila Bulletin and 1he Philippine Star
get respectable traic as well. ABS-CBN
I
and GMA also enjoy impressie page
iews.

It`s easy to understand why. 1wo words:
lilipino diaspora. Millions o lilipinos are
scattered all oer the world, particularly in
more adanced countries with better
access to the Internet. lilipinos who want
to know what`s happening back home
regularly isit local news sites. lence the
Inquirer.net statistic that 90 o its
isitors are based abroad, particularly the
U.S.

It`s not Inquirer`s site per se that made it
the most popular lilipino site. It`s
Inquirer itsel - the brand, the content, the
reputation. lor a long time, Inquirer.net`s
l1ML pages was updated manually.
1here were no attempts to make it truly
interactie - no hyperlinking to related
articles, no discussion boards, no article
eedback. 1here was a general eedback
orm and a chat room, sure, but that was
ar it goes. It was no dierent with other
newspaper sites. In act, the rest ared
worse. I Inquirer.net was slow to load
and static, philstar.com was slower and
more static. Both hae made major
changes in the past year. But while
Inquirer.net has shown a better
understanding o the Net, philstar.com
seemed clueless, or at least conused.
Amidst the dot-com eer o the 1999 and
early 2000, philstar.com decided it was
also a portal, oering greeting cards, ree
e-mail, an online calendar, among other
things, aside rom, o course, news. On
the other hand, Inquirer.net did a wise
moe o partnering with GMA to build
Inq.net, a multimedia news site.

It was presumably an answer to ABS-
CBN`s growing online presence, or to be
precise, dominance. At the start, ABS-
CBN ocused on promoting its shows on
its site and targeting the younger set with
its Cyberkada section. GMA was more
innoatie, spinning o a news site called
GMAQuest and was more multimedia-
say. A ew months ago, it spun o
\eAreAnime.com ater hitting it big with
anime shows. It also did well with Jose
Rizal: 1he Moie, the companion site o
its award-winning ilm. As dot-coms grew
in prominence, ABS-CBN went ull-blast,
launching its own mega-portal,
PinoyCentral.com. Beore that, it spun o
its own news site, ABS-CBNNews.com.

It was apparent that ABS-CBN had eery
intention to dominate cyberspace as it
dominated 1V broadcasting. lor GMA to
take on its long-time rial, it needed a
strong, established partner. Inquirer.net
also needed to eole as a major online
media player. \ith GMA`s rich
multimedia resources and Inquirer.net`s
traic, it was a lethal combination.

And the timing could not hae been more
perect. Just as Inq.net was getting o
the ground, the Singson expose broke out.
\hen the Senate hearings began, it was
obious that the issue was starting to grip
the entire nation. \hen the Lower louse
impeached President Lstrada and the
Senate agreed to teleise the impeachment
trial lie, eeryone in media knew it was
going to be explosie.

ABS-CBN`s cable news channel, ANC,
coered the proceedings lie. lor some
time, it has introduced an innoatie
linkup between its 1V and \eb
properties, letting iewers o its talk show,
1alk Back with 1ina Monzon-Palma, send
eedback online at real-time ia e-mail and
SMS and discuss what`s being talked
about on the show in its chatroom. I
there`s one thing ABS-CBN is good at is
interactiity, in the sense o community
building. It also had on its ABS-
CBNNews.com site a \eb-only newscast
called \eb Patrol, hosted by Julius Babao.
1hese eatures proed to be popular, as
iewers ehemently aired their opinions.

GMA, as has become its habit, spun o a
website dedicated to the impeachment
trial with its own domain name,
thepresidentontrial.com. On the site,
GMA saily and thoughtully posted
useul inormation such as transcripts o
the trial, explanations o legal
gobbledygook, a timeline, on-demand
ideos, and more.

Its joint enture with Inquirer, Inq.net,
proed to be the killer site. A 24l edition
posted up-to-the-minute updates on the
trial. ABS-CBNNews.com also oered
lash reports, as did philstar.com.
Businessworld Online, long more
progressie than its bigger rials, was a bit
late in catching up, oering a running
account but not as requently updated as
the others. It complained at the start o
the trial that new media was practically
ignored when only traditional media
reporters were admitted to coer the trial,
or lack o space`.

Both ABS-CBN and GMA eatured lie
eeds o its cable 1V and radio broadcasts
as well as on-demand audio and ideo
archies. ABS-CBN used RealPlayer while
GMA used Microsot Media Player. \hile
broadband oerings were helpul or
news-hungry lilipinos stuck in their
oices or based abroad, they paled in
comparison to 1V, particularly cable 1V.
Millions o lilipinos were glued to their
teleision sets, ignoring their preious
penchant or Mexican telenoelas and
obsessing with the lie drama unolding
beore them.

Indie Sites
he impeachment trial also saw the
prolieration o protest sites and
independent news sites.
1ransparent Accountable Goernance
,1AG, combined the resources o the
Social \eather Station, PCIJ, the Makati
Business Club, the Philippine Center or
Policy Studies, and 1he Asia loundation
to monitor and report on grat and
corruption in goernment. eLagda.com,
primarily a digital-signature campaign, also
posted news and opinion. Parody site
PLD1.com has long gleeully posted news
critical o the administration, and was
perhaps the irst to disseminate online the
controersial PCIJ reports. 1he Guerilla
Inormation Network ,GIN, was ormed
as a central news bureau that practices
open source journalism.` 1he intention
was to make the site a grassroots-leel
source or news. 1he olunteers behind
the site, anonymous though they may be,
hae made a conscious eort to publish
real news, not rumors, through a rigid
process o accepting and posting
contributions. 1he concept and structure
o the site are ground-breaking, but
content so ar has not lied to
expectations.

It appears that people preer to get their
news rom the old reliables. It makes one
wonder i indie news sites like GIN can be
sustained. Len i it`s a non-proit site, it
still needs traic to make it worthwhile.
CyberDyaryo, an online-only news site,
has been around or some time, but has
not really thried. I there`s any small
operation that made it big during the
political crisis, it was print news tabloid,
Pinoy 1imes.

Indie news sites hae been relegated as
secondary sources o inormation. 1o
understand this, it must be acknowledged
that we hae a relatiely ree press. \es,
on more than one occasion, traditional
media has been wary o reporting on
items that may backire on them,
particularly on their rich owners who hae
businesses that need to hae a
harmonious relationship with the
goernment. 1his has been a constant
1
criticism lodged by the independent PCIJ.
And those who know the stories about
Manila 1imes, Inquirer, and ABS-CBN
can only agree. \et, with sti competition,
news has a way o coming out. And so,
the general public remains largely trustul
o what mass media reports on.

I this were a repressie country, indie
news sites would be in the best position to
be the primary credible source or news. I
the Internet had been prealent in the
seenties and early eighties ollowing
martial law and beore the People Power
Reolution, the Internet would hae been
an unstoppable media orce. Censorship-
obsessed China as it is has been stumbling
on how to control inormation on the
Net.

Another thing going against indie news
sites is that it`s the media giants that hae
access to the people and institutions they
report on. A case in point is the
Businessworld Online complaint. I the
Senate excluded Businessworld Online`s
reporters, what more a small, unknown
site lor the greatest impact, people who
want to do an exclusie interiew or want
to explode a bombshell would preer 1V
or print oer the Internet anytime.

And so, een i the Internet does make
eeryone a publisher, reporter, and critic,
news or the masses remains within the
control o an oligopoly o media
conglomerates.

1alking About a Revolution
t was the so-called People Power 2
Reolution that really pushed the
Internet in the country to the
oreront. \hereas most people were
content to catch summaries on the
impeachment trial, when people started to
conerge in LDSA and talks on
oerthrowing Lstrada became serious, all
o a sudden, people demanded blow-by-
blow accounts.

\ith the huge demand or news,
Inquirer.net and ABS-CBNNews.com
rushed to oer news alerts by e-mail, with
not so successul results. Inquirer.net or
instance suered a mail serer problem,
unable to send its e-mail alerts. But then
again, who really needed to be reminded
with news alerts when most eeryone is
uriously clicking on his browser`s Reresh
button to get the latest updates
Inquirer.net introduced a \hat`s
lappening section, to report on the daily
rallies. During this time, it`s traic surged
een urther, resulting to more than one
million page iews per day.

1heir online news were updated at a much
aster pace - almost eery ew minutes, a
new item comes up. But it still wasn`t ast
enough. Listening to lie radio eeds or
watching a tiny, choppy, lie ideo
webcast can be a pain. And when eery
word counts, it can be rustrating being
interrupted eery so oten by your media
player that keeps on buering data
streams.

At such critical moments, nothing beats
teleision, and to a lesser extent radio. As
John Katz in \ired News noted, Radio
and teleision are as ast as the \eb,
when it comes to breaking stories, and
hae many more iewers and listeners.` In
act, when broadcast and cable 1V needed
to interrupt its regular programming, it is
the best source or breaking news. On less
than urgent occasions, the \eb is in a
better position to break stories irst. \hile
traditional media takes its time writing,
editing, and presenting its materials, the
\eb has a aster editing-to-publishing
cycle.

Perhaps it is utile to compare the Internet
with the so-called Old Media. Lach has its
own merits and shortcomings. And each
I
can complement one another. Just as
radio did not kill print, 1V did not kill
radio, moies did not kill theater, ideo
did not kill cinema, the Internet will not
kill all o them. Perhaps it will grow to
become the primary source or news, but
right now, it is just one o many. Katz
puts its best, 1he \eb oers speed and
timeliness, the ability o citizens to
connect to one another. It's the reest
enironment in all media to absorb and
express opinions. 1hat doesn't make it
better or worse than print or broadcast
journalism, just dierent.`

Related Sites:

Media Metrix Global 1op 50
http:,,us.mediametrix.com,data,top50gl
obal.jsp

Pew Research Center: Media Report
http:,,www.people-
press.org,media00rpt.htm

Scarborough Research
http:,,www.scarborough.com,

1he Drudge Report
http:,,www.drudgereport.com,

CNN Interactie
http:,,www.cnn.com

MSNBC.com
http:,,www.msnbc.com

ABCNews.com
http:,,abcnews.go.com,

Republican Conention
http:,,www.2000GOP.com

Democrat Conention
http:,,www.dems2000.com,

Inquirer.net
http:,,www.inquirer.net

Inq.net
http:,,www.inq.net

Philstar.com
http:,,www.philstar.com

Manila Bulletin
http:,,www.mb.com.ph

Businessworld Online
http:,,www.bworld.com.ph

ABS-CBNNews.com
http:,,www.abs-cbnnews.com

GMA Quest
http:,,www.gmaquest.com

1he President on 1rial
http:,,www.thepresidentontrial.com

1AG
http:,,www.tag.org.ph

eLagda
http:,,www.elagda.com

PLD1.com
http:,,www.pldt.com

Cyberdyaryo
http:,,www.codewan.com.ph,CyberDyar
yo,

GIN
http:,,www.gin.ph

PCIJ
http:,,www.pcij.org