Aquino takes dig at media anew

JAKARTA—Why focus on my love life?

President Aquino on Tuesday night asked this question as he again took a dig at Philippine media for focusing on his love life and reporting negative news about the country instead of looking at its brighter side.

In an impromptu speech before the Filipino community here, Aquino said that there were instances that he had good news to tell the country but the media focused instead on his love life.

“I asked why is it that you are focusing on my love life—who I’m courting, where we eat, and what we talk about—instead of reporting that we have (this good news) about fighting dengue. Unfortunately, that’s true,” he added.

Aquino said people who were suppressed for 14 years without press freedom suddenly found freedom to be so intoxicating after the fall of the Marcos in 1986 that “we had 28 newspapers in Metro Manila alone and each one of them competed on a daily basis to find the most negative headline.”

Aquino, who has been in office for less than a year, said that what keeps him going is “primarily the strength that the people share with us.”