PCIJ stories bag top honors
in Statistics Media Awards

by Karol Ilagan

SEVERAL PCIJ stories on governance won recognition in this year’s National Statistics Month (NSM) Media Awards held at the Century Park Hotel, Manila on Monday, October 3, 2011.

Malou Mangahas, PCIJ’s Executive Director, won the Outstanding Award for Print and Broadcast for “her contribution in promoting and communicating reports on GMA News TV’s Investigative Documentaries and various articles posted on the PCIJ website, which enable statistics to reach out to a wider audience.”

Mangahas was cited for her stories tracking President Benigno S. Aquino III’s P37-million excess campaign funds following the May 2010 Presidential elections. She was also cited for her story on how to track and crack tax cases in relation to the tax evasion case filed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue against Ang Galing Pinoy Representative Juan Miguel Arroyo and his wife Angela, among others.

GMA News TV’s Investigative Documentaries, a program which Mangahas hosts, also won the award for the Broadcast (TV) Category.

As well, Karol Anne M. Ilagan, PCIJ’s Research Director, won the award for the Online Investigative Category for her article “COA quizzes Ombudsman,” which looked into the questionable way the Office of the Ombudsman handled its finances in 2008 and 2009.
The story was part of PCIJ’s four-part series on the anti-graft body that was published in February 2011.

Judges of the National Statistics Month Media Awards also gave a plaque of appreciation to former PCIJ researcher Che de los Reyes for her PCIJ reports on the government’s controversial Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, also known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, or the 4Ps.

Meanwhile, Roderick T. Dela Cruz of the Manila Standard Today and Francis Cancino of Aksyon Radyo bagged the Print Category and Radio Category awards, respectively.

The NSM Media Awards are given out by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) in recognition of the role of media practitioners in promoting, popularizing, and using statistics in information dissemination. The first NSM Media Awards was held in 2009.

This year’s edition was conducted in celebration of the 22nd National Statistics Month with the theme “Quality Social Protection Statistics for Focused Targeting: Improving Outcomes, Changing Lives.”

Prior to the awarding ceremony, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) launched its National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR). NHTS-PR is an information management system that will be used in identifying beneficiaries of current and future social protection programs.

The NSCB also launched the Philippine Poverty Statistics Portal, a one-stop web portal on information and statistics on poverty available from various government agencies.