DOLEFUL DAY The logo of a food company finds itself in a story released by the Department of Labor and Employment.
The state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA) found itself in a pickle on Friday after it mistook the logo of a food processing company for that of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole).
The logo accompanied a story on the labor department’s rules on holiday pay.
Instead of the logo for the Dole, the labor department’s acronym, the PNA used the logo of Dole Food Company, which processes fruits, mainly pineapples.
The post was up for a few hours on Friday and was widely shared by netizens on social media before the PNA took it down, with an apology describing the error as a “careless act” by the staff.
“In an effort to ensure that all stories are accompanied by a photo, the staff inadvertently attached the wrong photo rather than the logo of the Department of Labor and Employment,” the PNA editors said in a post on the news agency’s website and on its Facebook page.
“Rest assured that appropriate action is being taken in pursuit of the delivery of accurate information to our readers. Our apologies,” the editors added.
It was the second time in a week that the PNA had come under fire.
On Wednesday, Malacañang asked the PNA to explain why it had posted an article from China’s Xinhua News Agency that was critical of the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, which invalidated Beijing’s expansive claims over the South China Sea.
The Xinhua article posted on the government website described the arbitral tribunal’s ruling favoring the Philippines as an “ill-founded award.”
Though the PNA has a partnership with Xinhua, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar said all reposts from the Chinese news agency should undergo scrutiny and were subject to the PNA’s discernment before posting.
Under the Duterte administration, the Philippines and China have rekindled ties that had been frosty during the Aquino administration because of the two countries’ territorial dispute.
In May, the PNA also apologized for using a photograph of American soldiers conducting a house-to-house search in a poor village in Vietnam for its story on the Marawi siege.