Media to undergo seminar on poll coverage

CEBU, Philippines - About 30 selected members of the broadcast and print media from different parts of the country are now in Cebu City to attend a four-day seminar workshop sponsored by the Philippine Press Institute to prepare them on how to be effective in covering the May 10 automated elections.

Yvonne Chua, the workshop director, said aside from the PPI officials headed by its chairman Isagani Yambot, the PPI has also invited several lecturers from the Commission on Elections and some other government agencies to give more knowledge to the participants on how to cover the elections through the web.

Comelec-7 regional director Ray Rene Buac will lecture the participants during the event to be held at the Waterfront Hotel and Casino in Cebu City tomorrow morning about the conduct of elections while Telibert Laoc, the former executive director and currently a member of the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), will discuss about the issue of watching the elections.

The journalists will be also taught about issues of legal protection by lawyer Harry Roque of the Center for International Law Philippines.

Former chief justice and now Ambassador Hilario Davide Jr. is also invited to speak before the journalists and to discuss important topics that will also help the media in covering the elections.

Erwin Lemuel-Oliva, the country editor of Yahoo-Philippines was invited to discuss about the technical aspect of the seminar that will tackle the issue of “The Best Social Tools for Journalists”.

Chua said the participants of the seminar workshop are also encouraged to share their experience or ideas in covering the past elections.

The last part of the workshop will discuss the adoption of the guidelines in reporting the elections that was tackled in a seminar-workshop attended by the same group of journalists in Cagayan de Oro City last October. — Rene U. Borromeo/BRP   (FREEMAN NEWS)