TV Patrol and 24 Oras: A Comparative Study of the News Objective on Nepotist Reportage as Viewed by Residents

The goal of this research was to determine the news objectivity that was used by the broadcast journalists of the two major primetime news programs in the Philippines on the issue of Napolist, a list containing the names of the law makers and other government officials allegedly linked to the pork barrel scam. The research is focused on determining the news objectivities of presentation in terms of thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency. Moreover, it analysed the tone of news presentation in terms positive, neutral and negative tones. Also, it examined the forms of news which were used in news presentation of the Napolist issue in terms of hard news/straight news and soft/feature news. Content analysis was employed on the news video clips aired from May 12, 2014 to May 26, 2014. Public viewers of the Brgy. Ibabang Dupay, Lucena City served as coders of the study. Findings in the content analysis showed that it is evident that the news presentation of 24 Oras to not mislead the content of the news photos and videos, to label analysis and commentaries to not misinterpret facts and contexts, and to present clear facts, form hypothesis and honest interpretation of what happened, were given emphasis by the said news program. Furthermore, the study proved that the general tone used by the two primetime news programs is neutral which implicates that the news presentation from both news programs are not taking either the positive or negative sides. Moreover, results revealed that all the Napolist news are in the form of hard news which were reported immediately and emphasized facts of the recent event. The study recommends TV Patrol and 24 Oras to equally consider and give weight to the values and impact of the four objectivity elements in presenting and interpreting news namely thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency.