Is media fickle minded?

As the lamp post controversy hit fever pitched months before the May 2007 polls, the media in Cebu were like savage beasts.

It relentlessly attacked government officials accused by a bidder who lost a contract at the height of the ASEAN summit preparations.

Like a hungry pack of wolves, the media in Cebu went for the jugular and slit the throats of government bureaucrats and politicians who were perceived to have pocketed millions.

The public, enraged by what they were made to believe as the mother of all corruption in Cebu would not settle for less until heads rolled down Mount Olympus. And so it happened, two mayors and their deputies, several DPWH men were placed in preventive suspension.

Six months after the controversy broke; one of the two Hizzoners was again accused of alleged corruption. This time the business community rallied behind the accuser.

The losing bidder who exposed the alleged lamp post overpricing publicly complained that he never got the same support that another whistle blower received from the financial sector.

Immediately after the public whining by the lamp post whistle blower, the Cebu media accused the guy of having a hidden agenda. The Cebu press began to question the person's credibility. They castrated the man for doing an expose without hard evidence.

But, if you will look back during the lamp post brouhaha, the media never questioned the credibility of the losing bidder, instead hailed the guy as a local hero. The members of the fourth estate practically took the person's statements like gospel truth then.

A few weeks ago, the media took the government to task for the "suicide" of a poverty stricken 12 year-old girl from Davao. A national broadsheet even labeled the girl as a "poverty saint".

A new twist to this story surfaced. The girl might not have committed suicide. Instead, she could have been murdered.

And so a hard hitting columnist of a Manila newspaper led the media to start beating their breast in mea culpa for coming up with ferocious statements against the failure of government to fight poverty.

Judging from these two separate media events, I am starting to ask the question whether the press is fickle minded. Are they?