REPORTAGE – the reporting of news – is in good hands in the Philippines. Our national broadsheets provide responsible reporting, and a quick scan gives the reader a fair understanding what is going on.
Opinion pieces take a scattergun approach, however. This leaves many gaps which should be filled but rarely are.
For example, last Tuesday, a Cebu Pacific Naga-Manila flight skidded off a runway on arrival at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
No injuries were reported.
Much else was not reported. In particular, airlines run to tight schedules in which any untoward event can quickly develop a “ripple effect.” This can result in serious delays to subsequent flights with passengers being seriously inconvenienced.
Evening flights can be a problem so that unscheduled overnight accommodation may be necessary. This means that passengers may arrive at their destination up to 24 hours late.
The print media lapse into jargon. Cebu Pacific is invariably described as a “budget carrier” and Philippine Airlines as the ‘flag carrier’. Both descriptions are meaningless.
Newsworthy aspects are omitted. When I saw the headline “Plane skids off NAIA runway”, I hoped it was an airline other than Cebu Pacific which experienced the problem. I was wrong. To my recollection, there have been five occasions in recent years that a Cebu Pacific flight has been unable to adhere to the runway on landing. Is there any other airline which has such an appalling, life-threatening, record? What is Cebu Pacific doing to improve matters?
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In December 2021, BDO Unibank Inc. found that more than 700 account holders experienced losses due to illicit activity on their accounts. Have any other banks in the world experienced such an enormous (in terms of number of accounts involved) loss?
What concerns me is that banks seem to believe that if the customer is reimbursed for the losses incurred, then everything is satisfactory. Not this customer. I want to understand what happened and what my bank is doing so that it would never happen again.
By mid-February, BDO proudly reported that 94 percent of the 700 hacked accounts had their lost funds reimbursed.
Which means six percent (over 40 accounts) had not yet received refunds.
I would like to believe that journalists are capable of asking pointed questions as to what went wrong. Unfortunately, this is not happening. Banks control the narrative. I would like to see Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to use its authority to cause banks to be more forthcoming.
Why BDO? Are there weaknesses which cause it to be more vulnerable than other banks?
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) plans to host a conference soon in order to discuss how government entities can battle cybercrimes.
I hope journalists are invited.
We need reassurance that our money is safe from hackers. We have not, so far, received the necessary reassurance from our banks.
A few years ago, many of us lost money due to ATM frauds. Although refunds were made by the banks, we have lost some confidence in our financial institutions.
We look to journalists to be more vigorous when questioning bank representatives.
If this results in a more adversarial relationship between bank officials and journalists, then so be it.
Readers need the truth./PN
