The official news agency of the Philippine government strikes again.
On Friday, the Philippine News Agency posted what appears to be draft articles that were meant to be vetted first by their news editors but somehow the unedited news stories found their way posted on the news agency’s official website and social media platforms.
The editors’ comments were placed on the headline space itself apparently for easy visibility on the content management system or CMS, the platform used primarily by online content providers, including news organizations.
The said comments were supposed to be instructions on how the news stories will be handled or vetted by other editors or reporters within the news agency. However, those same comments ended up as final posts of the articles.
Here are some of the headline screenshots that appeared on the PNA online posts:
Netizens of course took notice and immediately feasted on the editorial blunders. Many were posting screenshots of local news articles that should have been posted last April and started appearing on Friday on the official PNA website www.pna.gov.ph.
A few minutes after the headline bloopers went viral, the PNA website was inaccessible to the public.
This is not the first time such incident hit the state-run news agency. The most recent mistake was an August 11 story that used the logo of food firm Dole Philippines instead of that of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) for a story about the latter’s pay rules for the 2018 holidays.
The government’s news agency also drew flak for posting the China government-run Xinhua News Agency’s opinion piece against the arbitration ruling on the West Philippine Sea and a story titled “95 nations in 3rd UPR convinced no EJKs in PHL” as well as for using a Vietnam War photo with a story on the armed conflict in Marawi. City.
Since the August incidents, Sec. Martin M. Andanar, head of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), took the helm of the PNA and promised immediate actions to prevent further editorial oversight.
Andanar even said that the writers and editors of the PNA will undergo retraining to prevent a repeat of their blunders. and employees who would commit errors would face sanctions.