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Rappler "Reporter" Pia Ranada is in hot water once again, this time for her report "Chinese businessmen flock to Duterte's Malacañang" where she makes what is effectively a racially-based categorisation of businessmen Philippine President Rodrigo Durterte had so far met with...
Since the start of his presidency, Duterte has had at least 16 meetings with the Chinese, 13 with Filipino businessmen and groups, 3 with Americans, and two with Japanese (meetings with Filipino-Chinese groups are counted both in the Chinese and Filipino tallies). This does not include courtesy calls of businessmen during his trips abroad.
This prompted Inquirer columnist Oscar Franklin Tan to call her out, posting a link to the article on his Facebook profile and adding the caption "Check out Rappler's racist fake news". An exchange between Tan and Ranada ensured in the comment threads of the post where Ranada attempted to defend her article and convince Tan it contained no racist insinuations.
De La Salle University professor Antonio Contreras also picked up Ranada's affront to the Filipino-Chinese community and elaborated on this also on a Facebook post further highlighting the lameness of Ranada's persistence in being unapologetic about her lazy journalism.
You are creating internal racial categories to maliciously impugn the President. Your lazy and pained explanation doesn't convince. You simply ignored the fact that a significant number of Filipino business people have Chinese surnames or are with Chinese ancestry. By associating them with business companies from China, you are in effect implying that they share the same agenda and loyalties. That is most unfair. And most inaccurate.
It's time sloppy journalism is routinely called out. It begins with reading the work of the media carefully and with a critical mind. Only then will the unqualified amongst the lot be clearly-identified and weeded out from an industry already suffering from a crisis of credibility.
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