Aquino ‘not to boycott media’ critical to his administration By Aytch S. de la Cruz 02/22/2011

Aquino ‘not to boycott media’ critical to his administration

By Aytch S. de la Cruz 02/22/2011

Malacañang yesterday clarified that President Aquino was not calling on advertisers to boycott news organization that are critical to his government during a speech he delivered before newly-inducted members of the Advertising Board of the Philippines (AdBoard) last week.

According to presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda, the President was merely encouraging AdBoard to help the government urge media organizations to be more fair in their treatment of news stories about the administration.

“What we’re emphasizing there, in fact, was an appeal to good citizenship. We would like to invite the AdBoard to let’s have, by promoting the good news. We are not averse to criticisms by the way. We are used to that,” Lacierda told reporters at a news conference yesterday.


“What we are saying also is that we need to also show the people what this government is doing. We appeal to fairness. We appeal to good citizenship on the part of the AdBoard members. The funny thing is media has taken this to mean that we are trying to blackmail, or trying to tell them to ban or boycott. There is no such call by the President to boycott media. In fact, we regard media as necessary partner to governance,” he explained further..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/nation/20110222nat4.html