Oil price rollbacks ‘big argument’ vs deregulation -- Palace
By Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 18:26:00 09/12/2008
MANILA, Philippines—The rollback in oil prices by P2 to P3 on Friday is a "big argument" against calls by leftwing militants to deregulate the petroleum industry, Malacañang said Friday.
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This is terribly sloppy-- not only on Mr. Guinto's part but also on the part of his section editor and anyone else who approved this article before publication. Typos and grammatical mistakes are understandable (albeit regrettable for a broadsheet), but this is way beyond that. This article defies logic. In case they haven't noticed, the petroleum industry is already deregulated, that's why oil companies could raise (and lower) prices at will (RA 8479, anyone?). And why would the lowering of prices-- a perceived benefit of deregulation-- be an argument against it? Also, the last thing the Left will call for is the deregulation of anything; in case they haven't heard, the "leftwing militants" are actually calling for the reregulation of the oil industry.
At best this is just sloppy work-- maybe they meant reregulation when they wrote deregulation, or maybe they meant for when they wrote vs-- extremely sloppy that it is incompetent. And this sloppiness is systemic, from the beat writer to the section editor to the copy editor.
At worst they don't know what the hell deregulation means and the issues surrounding it. And they're the ones who are supposed to tell us what the news is.
1 comment:
tsk, tsk...
guinto shouldn't have taken dureza's word for it. it's a given that journalists must report events and statements accurately. but this doesn't mean that mere quoting of figures and statements would suffice. (oh, and for that matter, I agree that the editors shouldn't have taken Guinto's word for it either.)
add grammatical errors and silly choice of titles, panoorin nalang natin si mike enriquez. hehe.
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