The fights of Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao and the spikes in the prices of rice and oil were the most-followed news events of 2008, the survey review of the Social Weather Stations showed.

The fight between Pacquiao and Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez and the increases in the prices of the staple food were the most followed news event last year, with 81 percent of respondents who followed the news.

Among the other most followed events of the respondents for 2008 were oil price increases, Pacquiao’s fight against boxer David Diaz, and melamine food scare.

“Sports is extremely interesting to the people and next is the price increases,” said Mahar Mangahas, president of SWS, in a press conference in Makati City.

Mangahas said that events that concern health issues like the melamine food scare, which started in China, were also closely followed by the respondents. “We tend to be jittery about things like this, just like SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).

Meanwhile, among the events that were followed but by fewer respondents were: the Congress’ move to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform (31%) , Senate hearing on the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (40%), the aborted Memorandum on Agreement on Ancestral Domain or MOA-AD (37% in September 2008 and 41% in December 2008), alleged road insertion by Senator Manny Villar (41%) and the disciplining of the Court of Appeals justices (41%).

Low attention on Mindanao issues, CARP

Aside from the aborted MOA-AD, the fighting between government troops and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) also received less attention among the respondents. Only 50% of the respondents said that they followed the news about the clashes between the two sides.

National Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said that the amount of attention given to these issues was “paradoxical” and “worrisome.”

“It could be a signal that people in Manila feel safe that they do not pay so much attention to it,” Teodoro said. “It is worrisome because the tension for lingering and morphing of conflict is there.”

Lingayen Archbishop Oscar Cruz, meanwhile, said that he was “sad” that the issue of CARP extension received low attention from the respondents.

“Food is number 2 and yet CARP is last,” Cruz said. “All the food that we can have come from the land.”

“The Philippines is basically an agricultural country so I think the respondents must have come from the urban areas and not from the rural areas. (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)

---

INTERACT WITH THIS ARTICLE