Divided by Two

The Philippine media are as divided, and the division as masked. Mostly unremarked is the distinction between the dominant media (often mistakenly labeled the mainstream) and the alternative. But equally unnoticed is the segmentation within the dominant or corporate media themselves in terms of the audiences they address, which they separate into, on the one hand, the elite and middle class audience, and on the other, the mass or D and E audience. The division is evident across all the news media. In print the division between the broadsheets and the tabloids is manifest in the language used (English for the former, Filipino for the latter) as well as cost per copy. But even more expressive of this division is the difference in content, which, in addition to the assumption that English is the language of excellence and Filipino the language of mediocrity, assumes a difference in terms of interest and levels of appreciation and understanding.–From the Introduction

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luis V. Teodoro is a retired journalism professor of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Mass Communication (UP-CMC) where he was dean for two terms (1994–1997; 1997–2000). Prior to his deanship, he was thrice chair of the UP-CMC Journalism Department.
He has published two books in the United States: Out of This Struggle: The Filipinos in Hawaii (as editor and published by the University Press of Hawaii in 1981) and Two Perspectives on Philippine Literature and Society (with E. San Juan Jr. and published by the University of Hawaii Center for Asian and Pacific Studies in 1981). He was editor of the alternative news agency Philippine News and Features during the Martial Law period.

His collection of short stories, The Undiscovered Country, includes Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Philippine Free Press, and Carlos P. Romulo award-winning fiction, and was published by the UP Press in 2006. A collection of his essays on communication, journalism, and the media, In Medias Res, was published by the UP Press in 2012, followed in 2014 by a collection of opinion pieces, Vantage Point: The Sixth Estate and Other Discoveries, which received the 2015 National Book Award for Journalism. Divide by Two is his fourth book published by the UP Press.