Incoming Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Chief Trixie Cruz-Angeles expressed that they are currently supporting the accreditation of “vloggers” to Malacañang press briefings.
In a public briefing interview with People’s Television Network, Angeles stated that to continue the effective information dissemination of the government to the public, they are “pushing” to be able to allow vloggers to cover the palace.
“…We are, however, pushing for the accreditation of vloggers to [be] invited to some of the [palace] briefings, especially those conducted by the President-elect,” she states via online interview.
Cambridge Dictionary defines “vloggers” as online personalities who blog or “record short videos of thoughts, ideas, or opinions about a subject”.
Vloggers are mostly found on social media platforms like YouTube or Instagram. A few well-known personalities who do vlogging as well are President-elect Bongbong Marcos, who has almost 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube, and Angeles herself.
Angeles expresses that the accreditation of vloggers is “one of their formulated priorities for the incoming PCOO”. Accrediting vloggers will mean social media personalities can be invited to press briefings together with journalists.
She notes that while no projects have been finalized yet, she will be reviewing the existing policies in PCOO to be able to push for the accreditation of social media personalities as part of future Malacañang press briefings.
Meanwhile, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) questioned PCOO’s plans for vlogger accreditation.
Through an official statement, they expressed that they do not support vloggers’ right to publish because of the possibility that “Pro-Marcos vloggers” will be tapped to cover — a threat to the media’s impartiality.
The NUJP encouraged the incoming Marcos administration to protect the “shrinking space for trained, professional journalists.” They expressed that they understand that “wider access” to information is good, but “not at the expense of institutional media”.
Journalists also raised a few questions about PCOO’s possible plans for the accreditation of vloggers.
“Will the PCOO, which will essentially vouch for the vloggers and influencers it accredits, also be accountable for the content that they might release? Would vlogger access be dependent on whether the content is favorable to the incoming administration or not?” they stated via Facebook post.
NUJP stated that the statement is grounded on their vigilance on any government policies that might discredit the media.
As of this writing, PCOO has yet to issue an official statement about this.
Source: https://youtu.be/EJqN8wOp3nk, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/vlogger, https://www.facebook.com/nujphil/
