The Manila Times Podcasts

This gets a higher rating because there are few other options for headlines about the Philippines. Greatest among the negatives is the music played throughout. The music makes it harder to hear the voices. Further it is distracting and terrible as music. I am aware of only one other headline podcast that has such mood music, also from the Philippines. Most do not have it since mood music is distracting and manipulative. There is also no need to read the actual printed headline; Just read the lede. The problem with one of the readers is not his accent but rather that he is swallowing his words, speaking too much from the back of the throat that makes him sound unnatural. Along with humans reading the headlines and the top editorial, a few stories are read by bots, which can be tolerated but only when the story is particularly interesting. At least there is no terrible mood music.

I like the concise reporting on the latest local news but one of the reporters (Christian?) has a forced anglicized pronunciation of words, replaces a lot of “s” and “-tion” with “z/zh.” All of which gets more annoying the more he does it. Other than that, good job. It’s my pod source of local PH news, and listen to it alongside BBC Global news for world news and NPR shows for US news.