Karl Patrick R. Mendoza, Ena Marie O. Dizon, Miguel Victor T. Durian, Mark Steven A. Pandan, Joseph Reylan B. Viray
Scandals are often imagined as moments when journalism reasserts its watchdog authority by exposing wrongdoing and mobilizing accountability. However, this expectation becomes unstable in fragile democratic contexts, where scandal visibility does not consistently translate into institutional resolution. This exploratory study examines how publics engage scandal news and what these engagements reveal about journalism's authority through what is conceptualized here as ambivalent governance. Focusing on the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) controversy, the study combines semi-structured interviews conducted in Pasay, Tagbilaran, and Davao with qualitative content analysis of Facebook and YouTube discussions. The analysis shows that publics engaged scandal news through repertoires of ambivalence—pragmatic balancing, mediated fatigue, and distant condemnation—which in digital circulation appeared as satire, cynicism, and nationalist moralizing. Rather than signaling disengagement, these practices reflect sustained orientation to scandal as an ongoing and familiar mode of public knowledge. These practices reveal attentiveness without closure: journalism remains a key source of visibility even as its capacity to produce accountability is questioned. The study advances ambivalent governance as an analytical framework for understanding how journalistic authority is negotiated under conditions of recurrent exposure without closure in fragile democracies. Copyright © 2026 by the Korean Society for Journalism and Communication Studies
Department of Communication Research, College of Communication, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Anonas Street, Sta. Mesa, Manila, 1016, Philippines; Department of Humanities, University of the Philippines Mindanao; Department of Development Journalism, University of the Philippines Los Baños; Department of Philosophy, University of San Carlos; Research Institute for Culture and Language, Polytechnic University of the Philippines
