TO REDACT or not to redact. Which could avoid or attract scrutiny and censure? Redactions are not the only issue that could arise if public officials would shade or black out the true, detailed, and complete facts of their wealth.

SOME CANDIDATES may have willfully mocked their lawful duty to file election-spending reports with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) but they are not the only ones who did so. Like these wayward candidates, many media agencies also failed to file reports with the poll body, in defiance of their obligation in law. This is even though television networks, radio stations, and print-media agencies emerged as the biggest winners, money-wise, in last year’s elections: From political-ad spending by some 50 national candidates and their parties alone, these media agencies scooped a whale of a windfall — about P5.4 billion

THE EXPENDITURE totals usually don’t quite add up and tallies from different entities don’t match. But there is no question that among those who strike it big during elections are media outfits, and the 2016 polls proved no different.

ELECTIONS 2016’s 50 candidates for national office and the political parties that fielded them spent P5.8 billion across the 90-day campaign period, PCIJ has found in its review of documents submitted to the country’s poll body. But small and big discrepancies clutter the election-spending reports that the five candidates for president, six for vice president, and 39 for senator, as well as their political parties, had submitted to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).