Covering Corruption: Frames of Broadsheets on the Philippine Government’s Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) Scandal

This study is a content analysis of the three Philippine broadsheets (The Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippine Star and The Manila Bulletin) from August 3 to October 30, 2013 on how much prominence the broadsheets allot coverage to a corruption case known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) in the Philippines. The research considered the news presentation, journalistic standards, treatment, frequency of appearances and placement on the newspapers. The study also determined the relationship between these attributes via correlation. The researchers concluded that there is a regular pattern of reportage of the PDAF issue in the broadsheets. However, the observed relationships between the variables revealed some form of disparity between each of them.


Introduction
Newspaper contributes a lot when it comes to distributing political information to the public.
As one of the oldest media, newspapers have become not only one of many sources of everyday information but it also has the power to control the reader on what topic to deal with on a daily basis. Jan, Riaz, Siddiq and Saleem(2013) said that today's print media provides people with a wide array of information where thousands of news events happened simultaneously. With the plethora of news and information, the media reminds people which of these subjects should be the "prime issue" from the dozens of ongoing issues. Hence, Walter Lippman (n.d.) argued that people's dependence upon the press to provide them with information about certain matters is a result of limited opportunities for them to observe important events instantaneously.
Since the print media seems to have the power to dictate people on what issues should be deemed important, print media organizations shape their views about the world around the public media and frame their news coverage accordingly (Jan et al., 2013). This only means that print media organizations, particularly the journalists themselves, possess the power to decide which issues to be covered and which to be ignored. In addition to that, Saqib (2008) also argued that the way the audience perceivecertain news issue is shaped and refined in the way journalists frame their news stories. Mhango (2011) isquotingBroydeSharodewhoadmits that "truly objective stories do not really exist, every story is told through the eyes and ears of whoever is covering the story". Thus, this only means that framed news articles is a result of news framing techniques employed by journalists.
Biases in print media, particularly in newspaper broadsheets are highly inevitable since framing of news stories by journalists are always present. Goldberg (2001) argued that the major newspapers in the US are biased with a liberal political motive. This means that no matter how objective the newspapers construct their news, underlying intentions are still evident. Ahrens (2002) proved in his study that the editor of the Washington Times employ "story selection" to promote conservative views. It implies that newspaper outfits seem to possess the ability to filter its news before it became available to the public. Lastly, Kurtz powerful than the soft news when reporting about political issues. Hard news attributes important moments directly related to the public while soft news lacks the kind of drawing power. Moreover, when it comes to their effects on the prominence of an issue, hard news are generally placed in the front pages of the newspapers while soft news appear on the margins of the coverage or in the back pages of the newspaper (Allan, 1999;Gurevitch&Wollacot, 1982;Dor, 2014;Kitzinger 1998, as cited in Lahva, 2009. Moreover, these researchers also concluded that prominent issues are being written in hard news style, while less prominent issues are being written in soft news style. Another way of news presentation used by journalist is opinion news. Opinion news or editorial, is the judgment of the newspaper about one or more current issues and as the constructor of public opinion on current topics that are considered important (Gallur, et. al., as cited in Orosa et al., 2013). Therefore opinion news is purely subjective for it is based on the feelings and beliefs of the journalist or writer, compared to hard or soft news, where facts have basis. Hence, the researchers concluded that opinion news is the lowest form of writing news articles since it is biased, and the ideas stated merely comes from the writers themselves.
Hence, the researchers concluded that hard news is more effective than soft news and opinion news when reporting about political issues, which is in this study, the PDAF issue. In this study, the researchers coded the news presentation of journalists using the following codes: hard news as 3 (high), soft news as 2 (average) and, opinion news as 1(low).

Journalistic Standards
The basic structure of a news article known as the inverted pyramid is still one of the journalistic standards widely used until today (Peha&Carlmichael, 2006). Peha&Carlmichael stated that in inverted pyramid, the most important facts appears at the top, in the first paragraph known as the lead, and then adding facts in descending order of importance.
unsuitable and the loser. This most likely suggests that Josipović's victory for the president's position that time was highly influenced by these biased coverage.

Positive and Negative Framing
Determining whether a news article is positively, neutrally or negatively framed (treatment of news articles) can have a significant effect on the prominence given to a particular issue. Block & Keller (1995, as cited in Wood, 2011 suggested that positive and negative frames are two distinct modes of representing the same information. For example, "positive frames present the positive consequences of adherence to the message recommendations (e.g. 'If you quit smoking, you reduce the risk of developing lung cancer'), while negative frames describe the negative consequences of non-adherence (e.g. 'If you don't quit smoking, you increase the risk of developing lung cancer)" (Block & Keller, 1995as cited in Wood, 2011. In this particular study, the researchers considered a news article as: (1) very positive when there are exceedingly favorable statements, descriptions, and/or implications about PDAF; (2) positive when there are generally more favorable statements, descriptions, and/or implications for PDAF; (3) neutral if there is merely a listing of events that give neither positive nor negative implications about PDAF; (4) negative when the article is generally critical of the PDAF issue; and (5) very negative when the criticisms are extremely negative for the PDAF issue.Since Block & Keller (1995, as cited in Wood, 2011 also said that negative frames are more effective than positive frames (when subjects are paying high attention on the issue), and neutral frames meddles between the two (50% positive, 50% negative), the researchers derived a coding that sets very negative frames as (5); negative frames as (4); neutral frames as (3); positive frames as (2); and very positive frames as (1).

Prominence of Newspaper Issues
In some sense, framed news articles by the broadsheets affect the prominence of the media organization. Prominence of elements in the news influences the prominence of those elements among the public (McCombs and Caroll, 2003). Hence, broadsheets discreetly communicate a host of cues about the prominence of certain issues on their daily agenda -the   also stated that prominence of a story can be operationalized as its quantity (in increments of space and time) weighted by its placement within the medium, which will be adapted in this study.

Frequency of Appearance of Articles
How frequent an issue appears in the newspapers is one of the cues to be measured in order to determine how much prominence is given to a certain topic or matter (which is in this study, the PDAF controversy). A study by McCombs and Carroll (2003) stated that for all the news media, frequency of appearance of an issue (say for example, in broadsheets) day after day is the most powerful message of all about its prominence.

Placement of Articles
The positioning of news articles also plays a vital role in measuring news prominence. Outing layouting but also in advertising and webpage layouts. Any kind of storytelling, specifically in news stories, must take this pattern in full consideration. In this particular study, the researchers measured the prominence of a news story with regards to page positioning using the following codes: (1) lower left/right, below the fold as 1; (2) center, below the fold as 2; (3) center, above the fold as 3; and (4) upper left/right, above the fold as 4. This coding will be done because there is an apparent belief that the most prominent news articles are placed on the upper left or right (above the fold) of the newspaper while the least prominent ones are placed below the fold.

H4. The higher the placement of PDAF issues on the upper left or right fold of the three
Philippine broadsheets, the more prominent is the issue.

Objectives
Generally, the researchers wanted to answer:

Research Design
The study used a quantitative approach. More specifically, the study is descriptive and explanatory because it wanted to identify how the three broadsheets reported about the PDAF issue and the relationships of some journalistic variables.

Research Data
The researchers conducted a content analysis of selected news articles for three broadsheets in the Philippines (Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star and Manila Bulletin) from August 3 to October 30, 2013. The study required three coders to evaluate the data.

Sample and Sampling Technique
For the news articles, the research used the random stratified sampling technique to gather data from the three broadsheets (Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Manila Bulletin).
The articles were selected with an interval time frame of three days (Every 3 rd , 6 th , 9 th … 30 th ) from August to October 2013. This means that from the three broadsheet, thirty issues were selected (30 issues x 3 broadsheets = 90 articles overall). The articles from each issue were also randomly selected.

Instrumentation
Content analysis is defined as a research technique for measuring the objective, systematic quantitative description of communication content (Amores, 2012). It has been used most frequently for research problems in which the questions can be answered directly from a description of the attributes of content (Holsti, n.d.). Thus, this method also aims to quantify media content through coding. Hence, content analysis is the most applicable method to perform with regards to evaluation of attributes of newspaper articles. Code sheets and code books were used.

Data Gathering and Interpretation
The journalists' constructs were divided into two parts. The first part was the News Presentation that was divided into three codes:  For the descriptive interpretation of the data, the mean rating and standard deviation were computed in order to compare and measure the distribution of the tabulated data to each of the variables. Hence, a scale was made to infer the computed mean and standard deviation.
The table above shows the scale that the researchers used to interpret the mean ratings of the collected data. The variables and its respective qualitative equivalents were listed side by side with its numerical representation.For the inferential interpretation of the data, the researchers analyzed relationships between the research variables. In comparison, the descriptive interpretation merely compared and measured the tabulated results as a whole. On the other hand, the inferential analysis of the data further discussed the effects of one research variable to the other, and how, in general, these variables affect the prominence of the issue. Thus, the researchers applied the formula for correlation in order to determine the effect of one variable to another. Furthermore, the researchers also computed for the inter-coder reliability or the agreement between the coders using the Holsti formula (Holsti, 1969): Where: R= Reliability M= number of coding decisions on which the two coders agree N1, N2 & N3= the total number of coding decisions by the three coders, respectively

Study Limitations
The researchers struggled in finding a political expert who will be the third coder of this study. The researchers set qualifications for the third coder, hence, he/she must either be (1) a newspaper journalist or writer or columnist; or (2) politically inclined or has training in politics; or (3) teaches politics or political science or political communication. To avoid bias and favored results, the researchers tend not to resort to people connected to the three broadsheets. Another limitation is the expertise of the coders. The results of the study will be much firmer if there will be more than one expert coder who will analyze the data. Lastly, time constraint was also considered a study limitation because the time of the researchers was not dedicated to the study alone.

Frequency of Appearances
A total of 90 articles were content analysed using the code sheet with its respective code book. For the News Presentation (Variable 1), 83% of the articles were classified as hard news, while the remaining 17% were coded as soft and opinion news. As per the Journalistic Standards, (Variable 2) 47% or almost half of the articles answers all 5Ws and 1H. Hence, 38% answers 4 questions which is also close to the highest scale. No articles were classified as to answering only one question from the 5Ws and 1H. Moreover, for the Treatment or right portion of the newspaper, 14% were placed on the center above the fold, and the remaining 17% were placed on the lower fold of the newspaper.

Descriptive Data Interpretation
One of the objectives of this study is to find out how the three Philippine broadsheets have reported the PDAF issue. Hence, the descriptive data interpretation level shows how each of these broadsheets presented PDAF in terms of news presentation, journalistic standards, treatment and placement. Likewise, it will also show how the three broadsheets reported PDAF in a general tone.

Inferential Data Interpretation
The study wanted to find out the relationships between the named variables. Moreover, it wanted to find out if one variable has a significant effect to the other. Furthermore, it sought to know how much that affects the prominence of the news articles. Therefore, for the inferential data interpretation, the researchers determined the relationship between the variables, and how each of them affects the other. Hence, this will measure if the degree of correlation between the variables is strong, moderate or weak. showed that the relationships between the variables will eventually lead to the prominence of the issue.

Relationship of Journalists' Constructs to Framed News Articles
One of the objectives of this study is to find out whether higher news presentation and journalistic standards will eventually result to higher treatment to achieve prominence of the issue. Table 7 shows that journalists' constructs (news presentation and journalistic standards) and framed news articles (treatment) have a strong correlation with a correlation coefficient of -0.93. Since the coefficient is negative, the result seems to imply that the increase in journalists' constructs led to the decrease intreatment.The resultalso seems toreveal that journalists' constructs and framed news articles have moderate correlation with the frequency of appearances of PDAF issues with a correlation coefficient of 0.61. Likewise, the increase in journalists' constructs and treatment led also to the increase in frequency of appearances, since the coefficient is positive.Furthermore, the results also inferred that the relationship of journalists' constructs and framed news articles (treatment) to the placement of its articles have a moderate correlation. Hence, the coefficient resulted to -0.61, which is negative. This seems to imply that the increase in journalists' constructs and treatment led to the decrease in placement of news articles.

Frequency of Appearances to Prominence of the Issue
The study's third hypothesis states that thehigher the frequency of appearance of PDAF issues in the three Philippine broadsheets, the more prominent is the issue. Hence, it was discussed previously in this paper that PDAF issues were mostly reported as hard news with a mean rating of 83%. Likewise, almost half of the news articles answered the 5Ws and 1H with a mean rating of 47%. Hence, the three broadsheets framed their PDAF articles as very negative, with a percentage of 48%. And lastly, 68% or almost three-fourth of the news articles was placed on the upper left or right, above the fold of the newspapers.

Placement of News Articles to Prominence of the Issue
The study's fourth hypothesis states that the higher the placement of PDAF issues on the upper left or right fold of the three Philippine broadsheets, the more prominent is the issue. Referring to Table 6, which contains the summary of mean ratings and standard deviations of the three broadsheets, it was shown that most of the PDAF articles were placed on the upper left or right, above the fold of the newspapers by getting a mean rating of 3.42 out of 4.
Furthermore, in order to achieve more reliable results, the researchers also computed the inter-coder reliability or agreement between the coders.   Table 6 shows the inter-coder reliability for journalistic standards. No published news articles that answers only one question from the 5Ws and 1H so the reliability resulted to zero. 60% and 79% agreement between the coders were achieved for answering only 2 questions and 3 questions, respectively. Likewise, 93% or total agreement was achieved for answering 4 Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 6 -Issue: 3 July -2016 questions, and 84% agreement was the result for answering the 5 questions from the 5Ws and 1H.   Table 8 shows the inter-coder reliability for the placement of news articles. It can be seen that for all the 90 articles, the three coders agreed that 7 articles are placed on the lower left/right, below the fold portion of the newspaper, 9 articles are placed on the center, below the fold portion, 13 articles on the center, above the fold portion and 61 articles on the upper left or right above the fold portion.

Expert Validation: Voices from the Journalists
Results of the interview revealed that journalists' from the three broadsheets offered mixed views about the subject PDAF. The three journalists agreed that PDAF issue is a prominent issue because it "involves public interest" and that it is "timely and talked about most of the time." Hence, the three journalists also agreed that PDAF should be mostly written as objective but highlighted the requirement that "it should be based on facts" and journalists This study also supports the earlier statement ofScheufele's (1999, as cited in Scheufele& Tewksbury, 2007) that framing news articles builds a social reality in a predictable and patterned way. Hence, in relation to this study, the social reality equates to the PDAF issue, and the three broadsheets framed it with an observable pattern. It can be recalled that the results revealed that the three broadsheets gathered relatively the same level of news presentation (hard news), journalistic standards (answers all 5Ws and 1H), treatment (very negative), and placement (upper left or right). Therefore, the three broadsheets presented their PDAF-related articles in a foreseeable manner, following a certain pattern.
Moreover, Jan et al. (2013) also claim that print media organizations possess the power to frame their news articles, dictate people on what issues should be deemed important and shape the views of the readers. Saqib (2008) argued that the way the journalists present their news stories can shape and refine how the audience perceive a certain new issue. The study supports the previous assertions of Jan and his co-researchers and Saqib in a way that the three Philippine broadsheets frame PDAF as an important issue, and they dictate the readers on their views about PDAF.
This study also confirms the findings of Navarro et al (2011) in their study about print media reportage of agricultural biotechnology in the Philippines that the media, particularly newspaper outfits, dictates the audience of "what is often perceived as controversial if not contentious issue." Hence, although the three broadsheets framed PDAF as a controversialissue for the months of August, September and October, the degree of prominence of PDAF degrades when a new issue that has greater impact is exposed to the public. The researchers observed that the number of PDAF-related articles is at its peak on Based on the critical analysis of the researchers during the data gathering process, it was observed that the three broadsheets' reportage of the PDAF articles differ with the consistency of the number of issues published on the covered months of this study. Hence, Philippine Daily Inquirer has constantly published more PDAF articles than Philippine Star and Manila Bulletin on a day-to-day basis. Unlike the two broadsheets, they tend to publish more PDAF articles than usual on days when more controversial PDAF-related news is exposed to the public. This is evident during the days of the Million People March against Pork Barrel, when Janet Napoles surrendered to President Aquino III, and the whistle-blower BenhurLuy's unexpected testimony against Janet Napoles. It can be inferred that although the three broadsheets published PDAF articles on a daily basis, the level of its appearances differ from each other.In terms of news presentation and treatment, the mean rating of the two variables revealed that the three broadsheets universally reported PDAF as hard news, and framed them as very negative. Thus, Baum (2002, as cited in Lahva, 2009) described hard news as objective, only report on facts and its sole purpose is to inform. However, the results showed that the dominant framing employed by the three broadsheets is very negative. This seemed to reveal that the three broadsheets craft their PDAF articles as hard news or objective, but it tends to undermine the hidden motive of the broadsheets which is to dictate the readers that PDAF should be projected as a negative issue.
In terms of the treatment and placement, it was already declared that most of the PDAF issues were framed as very negative, thus the placement of majority of the PDAF articles were placed on the upper left or right above the fold of the newspaper. Hence, the researchers infer that PDAF articles, which are predominantly framed as very negative, are placed on the portion of the newspaper (upper left or right) where it captures most attention of the readers.
Thus, this seemed to imply that the three broadsheets wanted to heighten the reputation of PDAF as a controversial issue.The researchers also observed a pattern that most PDAF articles that are presented as hard news are placed on the upper left or right portion, and mostly on the front pages of the newspaper. One general factor that the researchers consider is period of time. Hence, this study analysed the three broadsheets' PDAF coverage from August to October 2013, which is the period when PDAF just erupted, and it was the most debated topic in the Philippines that stirred the attention of the readers. Likewise, several researchers (Allan, 1999;Gurevitch & Wollacot, 1982;Dor, 2014;Kitzinger 1998, as cited in Lahva, 2009 argued that hard news are generally placed on the front pages of the newspapers. Therefore, it can be inferred that journalists tend to craft their news as hard news or objective so that it can mostly appear on the front page of the newspapers. One of the objectives of this study is to find out how the three broadsheets reported their news articles about PDAF. Hence, with the analysis of the PDAF articles' news presentation, it was revealed that these broadsheets reported PDAF as hard news predominantly to achieve better framing. Therefore, this support the study of Baum (2002, as cited in Lahva, 2009) when it asserted that hard news presentation is more powerful than soft or opinion news when reporting about politically-inclined issues.Moreover, the results also showed that the broadsheets generally adhered in answering all the 5Ws and 1H. This clearly upholds to the Guided by the framing theory, and based on the researchers' findings, the news media seems to frame their news in accordance to the degree of prominence of the issue during a specific period of time. Hence, PDAF was negatively framed by the three broadsheets because its prominence was as its peak during the months covered, and it gradually digress because another prominent issue was exposed to the public. Moreover, even though the news media seems to make it appear that news are reported in an objective manner, the results still show that majority of them were treated as negative. This implies that the three broadsheets cannot undermine the possibility that their own views will be mixed with the stories they make. This also seems to infer that newsmakers cannot move away from framing their supposedly neutral stories into positive or negative ones. Hence, in the case of PDAF, it was majorly framed as a negative issue by the three broadsheets.Through the analysis of the PDAF articles' News Presentation, Journalistic Standards, Treatment, Frequency of Appearances and Placement of News Articles, it seemed evident that the three Philippine broadsheets gave prominence to the PDAF issue. Moreover, the three broadsheets generally reported PDAF as hard news, adhered in answering all the 5Ws and 1H, framed their news as very negative, and placed their PDAF articles on the upper left or right portion of their respective newspapers. It clearly revealed that the three broadsheets gave high prominence to the PDAF issue.
However, when the relationships between the variables were observed, there is quite disparity found in each of them. It was mentioned that the three broadsheets gave prominence to PDAF by reporting most of its articles as hard news to achieve better framing of the issue. Hence, the results revealed that news presentation and treatment have a strong correlation, which means that the relationship between these two variables is very high.Likewise, the results also revealed that the journalists' constructs (news presentation and journalistic standards) and framed news articles (treatment) has only a moderate correlation with the frequency of appearances. The results also showed a positive correlation which implies that when the journalists' constructs and treatment is higher, PDAF articles' appearances will also go higher.Moreover, results further showed that the journalists' constructs and framed news articles also have a moderate effect or correlation with the placement of articles. The coefficient revealed a negative result which implies that when the first two variables increase, the second variable will decrease.
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 6 -Issue: 3 July -2016 The PDAF issue is, in retrospect, a timely topic to discuss for research. The researchers realized that even though there are several preceding studies that analyzed the content of politically-inclined matters, there is still no particular research that is focused on studying news content related to PDAF.Thus, this study aims to expound the knowledge of people about issues linked to PDAF.Another important contribution is its in-depth data interpretation wherein it does not focus on the descriptive level of evaluating the results. It does not only aims to compare and contrast the tabulated data, but it also revealed the relationships between the research variables, and how it can affect one another.Hence, this paper can be a future reference for researches related to politics, or studies that employed content analysis as their research design.

Recommendations
The researchers propose that in future related studies, the corresponding coders who will evaluate the newspapers should be deeply knowledgeable about politically-inclined matters to ensure more sturdy and credible results.The researchers also recommendallotting a longer time frame in conducting the study, especially during the data gathering period. In that way, results can be further verified and be more established.Moreover, the research can be further expanded by adding more variables that would determine the prominence of PDAF issues.And lastly, instead on focusing on content alone, future researchers can also perform a focus group discussion with journalists from the three broadsheets to directly know how they package or write their PDAF stories.