IT SHOULD have been a no-brainer: News organizations should pay their own way when covering elections. Reporters should also turn down payoffs, whether these are allowances or gifts or money "for the boys." Otherwise, the independence of the news coverage could be called into question, and whoever would be doing the asking could only be in the right.

Yet in the May 2004 presidential elections, candidates and political parties ended up shouldering the transportation and lodging of more than half of the reporters assigned to cover their campaign sorties. Their support went as far as providing equipment to one in 10 of all campaign reporters and giving per diems to two in every five of them.

A number of reporters also seemed to possess wobbly journalistic values, with at least 17 percent of them openly admitted to taking the money offered to them by their sources in the course of their coverage.

The reporters' lack of qualms in taking the money appeared to stem in part from the failure of the newsrooms of more than half of the reporters to issue specific ethical guidelines for the election coverage. Some of the journalists also believed taking money from their sources does not influence the way they report.

Corruption among journalists and the dependence of news organizations on the resources of candidates and political parties are among the findings of a PCIJ survey conducted on the 2004 election coverage.

From May 24 to June 1, 2004, the PCIJ polled 59 reporters from leading Manila-based national newspapers and radio and television stations that covered the five presidential candidates. The survey questions probed the level of preparedness for election coverage, the logistical support provided by news organizations, the focus of the coverage, and journalistic values.

The reporters, who filled out a self-administered questionnaire consisting of 56 items, were selected through purposive sampling. This means the results at best reflect only the views of the reporters who took part in survey, and in no way represent those of the entire population of reporters who covered the elections.

Of the reporters polled, 23 were assigned to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, eight to Panfilo Lacson, nine to Fernando Poe Jr., eight to Raul Roco, and eight to Eddie Villanueva. (Arroyo, as incumbent president, had a regular press corps; this explains the big number of reporters that covered her campaign.)

More than a third came from broadsheets, 15 percent from tabloids, and 25 percent each from radio and television.

Demographic Profile of Campaign Reporters

Gender:	Male - 46% Female - 54%
Mean age:	34 (range from 21-63)
Years in journalism:	11 (mean)
Highest degree earned:	Bachelor's (76%) Postgraduate (15%)
Monthly Income	P10,000-P19,999 (44%) P20,000-P29,000 (36%)

IN 1998, the Philippine Press Institute, an association of newspaper publishers around the country, took pains to draw up and circulate to its 97 member-organizations guidelines on covering that year's presidential elections.

The guidelines were rather explicit. Newsrooms must shoulder the cost of coverage during the election campaign and count, including dining out sources for stories, airfare, hotel accommodation, per diems, and operations expenses of staff members.

Journalists are prohibited from accepting cash or gifts in kind from politicians and political parties and from moonlighting with political parties.

The guidelines remain highly applicable, but the PPI admitted an oversight for the 2004 elections: It failed to reissue the guidelines to at least jog the memory of their members on the need to remain ethical and incorruptible during the election season.

Then again, most news organizations already have their own codes of ethics. All but two of the 59 reporters polled said their agencies have a code that spells out clearly what constitutes an unethical act.

Some 86 percent of the campaign reporters also said their newsrooms had set aside budgets for the election coverage. This, however, did not automatically mean the organizations paid all their reporters' expenses.

Once out on the field, more than half of the reporters let candidates and political parties pick up the tab for their transportation and lodging during campaign sorties. Only 29 percent said parties and candidates never paid for their transportation and 24 percent said they never let the political camps pay for their lodging.

Television reporters, who are better paid than their colleagues from print and radio, were the least dependent on subsidies. The most dependent were the tabloid reporters, who relied mainly on subsidies extended by political parties and candidates. Eighty percent of TV journalists said their news organizations footed their expenses most of the time to all the time. The ratio was much less for radio reporters (only 47 percent said their news organizations provided regular support for coverage) and print reporters (57 percent).

Television reporters tended to pay back the parties who advanced their expenses, while it was most unlikely that tabloid reporters would. Reporters assigned to Arroyo (61 percent) and to Lacson (50 percent) also seldom bothered to reimburse the expenses advanced by the parties.

The majority or 78 percent of the reporters covering Arroyo availed themselves of the resources the Palace placed at their disposal. Sixty-three percent of reporters assigned to Lacson received subsidies for transportation and lodging from his camp. Half of the reporters covering Villanueva and 38 percent of those covering Roco said the candidates and parties helped them out with their transportation and lodging.

Only 22 percent of the reporters assigned to Poe admitted that they were subsidized. But a significant 44 percent of those assigned to the campaign refused to answer the questions pertaining to expenses, making it difficult to say whether they received subsidies.

Newsrooms, of course, had every chance to reimburse the candidates and political parties if they wanted to. But only a third bothered to do so while 42 percent never did.