Who is the dummy?

LIKE other professions and vocations, we, journalists and media practitioners, belong to a community. At least, that’s what I believed in.

Having worked with national and international media organizations made me believe that. There are lots of organizations that help the local press. Like me, many local media practitioners know this. They have been aided in one way or the other.

These organizations fund pieces of training, seminars and yes, even bail money when media practitioners get into trouble with this country’s archaic libel law.

This is the reason why I felt so disappointed with some of my colleagues who just kept mum when Rappler executive editor Maria Ressa was arrested again last week.

Ressa may not be the most lovable of journos in the country but that’s not what journalism is about. Make no mistake about it, but what this insecure administration is doing to her and Rappler can happen to you and your outlet.

Most of them parroted this administration’s legalese bovine crap. It’s like these people don’t know how to use Google search. It’s like these people haven’t learned how this administration used legal proceedings to curtail the freedoms of Sen. Leila de Lima, booted out Supreme Court Chief Maria Lourdes Sereno, and many others.

Ressa was arrested because the complainant, the National Bureau of Investigation,, claimed that Rappler violated the Anti-Dummy Law in connection with its relationship with Omidyar Network.

It is disappointing that some veteran journalists and editors in Mindanao take this crap hook, line, and sinker. It is as if they haven’t attended seminars in Manila funded by the likes of Omidyar.

A simple Google search would show you that Omidyar is a philanthropic funding organization. Any media outlet could access funds from this organization. This organization gives grants and program-related investments. Their ledgers can be accessed at their website www.omidyar.com. Check it out and then you will realize that the charges they slapped Rappler are just a smokescreen to silence it.

As the fourth estate, media outlets are strategic organizations that tyrannical regimes shut down. This administration has successfully whipped into submission the legislative and judiciary branches. You would be naive if you think that the attack on Rappler is not an attack to press freedom.

Meanwhile, this administration has unabashedly partnered with the communist People’s Republic of China. In fact, it has been brandishing the communists’ investments in the Philippines. Now, I dare pose this question: Who is the real dummy here?

Journalism as we know it

I OWE a lot of the stock knowledge I have right now to journalism. If my life is a school term, journalism would be its baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate degrees. I witnessed my father practice it in four different mediums: print (Mindanao Post), radio (DxCC RMN’s pioneering AM station), television (Rainbow TV-12), and he was fortunate enough to use the worldwide web.

He was a widely read person but I have always been fascinated by his command of the language and his skill at presenting an elaborate scheme in a way that any person on the street could understand.

I wasn’t really into journalism at first. I was more of a literary person or I was aspiring to be one. I wrote poems, sonnets, and short stories. I wrote for the school paper but was on the literary section and not on the news or op-ed section.

However, when my father suffered his fifth heart attack, he asked me to be his ghost writer while he was still recuperating in the ICU. First, as a writer, I wouldn’t pass on this opportunity to diversify my writing skill. Second, as a child, I felt honored that he would ask his youngest son.

While I wrote his thoughts for him while he was recuperating, the newspaper had an opening for a typesetter or as millennials today referred to as layout artist. Eventually, I was lured into journalism or as I called the people who practiced them as the “news guys.” I asked the editor-in-chief then for a stab at writing news stories. He was gracious enough to give me an opportunity.

When I told my father I was venturing into another form of writing, he told me there was nothing to be jittery about. He said journalism is nothing but storytelling or truth-telling as he put it. He told me it is like writing a short story but using real-life situations and characters.

He cautioned me though against the use of fancy vocabulary since journalism is more on informing readers, and not to impress them. He told me to understand current events keenly so that I could write clearly and concisely. That, after all, is the essence of communication.

“How could you make people understand the issue you’re reporting about if you, the reporter, do not understand what you’re reporting about,” he said.

So, that was to be my guiding principle in my foray into journalism: write to express, not impress, and write to inform, and not romanticize with the form — substance over form, if you will. If the context is king, content is queen, and form is one weak prince, I dare say.

As I have said at the start of this column, journalism to me is like one long school term in that you get to learn a lot of things in the course of your career. I remember JB Deveza and I scoured through the city for a finance guy to explain to us what the hell are CDNs and CDOs when the Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, which led to the collapse of Wall Street.

The collapse had affected our local economy and we have to understand first what happened in order for us to report it clearly. In the course of my journalistic career, I have had a crash course on almost anything under the sun — from different sciences to mathematics.

In my years of working with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, I got to revisit my literary writing past. Well, not entirely. But, when my editor-in-chief knew that I used to dabble in poems and sonnets, she said the skills I had in writing poems are also applicable to journalism. Yeah, I was also as surprised like you. She said for news reports to be compelling, the writer must also learn the art of cadence and meter. They don’t have to rhyme, of course, you silly goose.

That’s it, how my ongoing journalistic career started in a nutshell — old school.

So when the Presidential Communications Operations Office’s dynamic duo, Secretary Martin Andanar and Margaux “Mocha” Uson, and their trolls suggest that journalism, as we know it, is passé and that the “new media” is the “in” thing, I become curious. I thought I should check out what this so-called new journalism is all about.

Journalism, as in life, is a continuous process of learning. Even if the old school in me thinks that there’s no such thing as new or old journalism, the curious cat in me still wanted to check it out. My colleagues told me to dismiss PCOO since only the medium changes but the skill in writing the content of the report is still essentially the same: “6 Ws and 2 Hs.” In case you’re wondering what the extra “W” and “H” are, they’re the “whence” and “hence” of the story.

As this administration’s deodorant communication unfolds, however, all I’ve seen so far have been smokes and mirrors. Their reports are full of factual errors, unsubstantiated claims, and a butt load of typos and the lack of proper punctuations. I’m not even going to dignify Mocha’s “symbolism photojournalism” by discussing it in this column.

I know Martin is currently doing the rounds, selling his brand of “new journalism” but I think I’ll just stick to the “old journalism” (if there is such a thing) or plain and simple journalism. That is until I see a compelling reason to jump ship. For now, I’m proud to be an adherent of plain and simple journalism.