It all started with a four-day lakbay-aral (study tour) to Puerto Princesa, Palawan on environment management and protection in October 1997. Journalists from Region VI, including those from Negros Occidental, saw for themselves the pooled initiativesof the Palawan media, the local government and an environmental nongovernmentalorganization in dealing with issues affecting the environment.

The tour, facilitated by the bof environment seminars sponsored by the Local Government Support Program of the Canadian International Development Agency (LGSP-CIDA) and the Philippine Information Agency (PIA).

Enriched and inspired by the Palawan learning experience, the journalists returned to Negros all the more convinced of the need for an organization addressing mainly environmental concerns. That resolve eventually led to the formation of a media NGO of print and broadcast journalists and information officers of local government units in September 1998.

Calling themselves the Negros Green Corps (NGC), the media practitioners see themselves addressing environmental issues beyond the scope of what they ordinarily do as journalists. That is, serving as catalysts of community environment programs, creating venues for the public to understand these programs, and at the same time taking active part in them.

“We felt we should be doing something more than just report the news,“ says Agnes Lira-Jundos, news chief of ABS-CBN TV4 and president of the NGC. “We don’t want our communities to merely be sources of news. We want them to become resources as well.”

Treating their readers and viewers as real participants who have a role to play in the community and providing them entry points for their involvement are but the intended consequences of the Negros journalists’ turn to public journalism.

A number of them, including Agnes, had actually been part of EBJF activities that exposed them to the idea of journalists seeking to connect with their communities by encouraging participation in public life. In fact, venues the EBJF provided helped create the Corps—first, in a roundtable discussion laying the ground for its formation; and second, in a visioning workshop where NGC officers and members crafted their vision, mission, goals and program.

In an EBJF public journalism workshop for Region VI journalists in Boracay, Aklan in September 1998, Agnes and the other NGC officers were invited to share their experiences in giving shape and direction to the newly formed organization.

In August 1999, Negros journalists outside of the NGC structure were introduced to the public journalism concept in a two-day EBJF seminar-workshop. A series of learning exercises first elicited the participants’ perceptions and views of the expanding and ever-changing roles they play in the community. After listening to RGMA-Aklan’s Jay Tejada share their experience about engaging citizens in addressing the issue of child sexual abuse through a multi-sectoral council, they then weighed the merits of doing public journalism as a guide to journalists in helping the public set its agenda.

The seminar also served to consolidate the NGC as it went through the process of formulating its Constitution and by-laws.

If there is one thing that the Negros Green Corps learned about doing public journalism, it is that a clear understanding of the nuances and permutations of an issue enables journalists to write stories that better inform their publics.

Thus, as its initial activity, the NGC hosted a sharing session among the media, government and civil society on coal-fired power plants in light of plans to construct one in the coastal town of Pulupandan in southern Negros. As a public journalism initiative, the forum sought to enlighten and broaden the media practitioners’ perspective on the issue by providing them with technical inputs, a review of environmental laws and an actual case study done by the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center on the Masinloc experience.

In the workshop that followed, journalists tried to identify ways to clarify the issue and encourage greater citizens’ participation. Many of them signified their desire to be part of public journalism initiatives that can be undertaken in the province. The discussions also led to the identification of areas where to focus their advocacy owing to a sharply polarized citizenry.

The NGC followed this up with another forum in June 2000, this time on the issue of clogged waterways in Northern Negros that were posing risks to flood-prone areas of E.B. Magalona, Manapla and Victorias. It was the Corps’s contribution to the Provincial Environment Week being celebrated at the time. The matter of the waterways, Agnes says, was “so chosen because of the impact that the failure to address the problem will have on the community.”

As in the coal-fired plant forum, government, affected community residents and other stakeholders, including the media, came together to discuss the problem and seek solutions other than what initiatives were already being undertaken. In the action plans conceived after the workshops, stress was given to a massive education and information campaign wherein the media can take an active role by facilitating dialogs in affected communities.

Of such endeavors, Rafael Coscolluela, the provincial governor then, believes that these should be encouraged and further strengthened. “An active and effective public journalism effort will make your local government units more aware of the need to perform, more aware of the need to be responsive,” he says, urging as well strong partnerships between the local government and local communities that demand good governance.

Not everything, however, materialized as planned. In the NGC workshop on developing public journalism projects in the province in October, it was found that nothing much had been done after the workshop in June, with NGC members themselves failing to initiate follow-up activities. As such, there had also been an observed waning of interest on the issue on the part of communities.

Still, the NGC was able to come up with a “doable” media response, which it presented to representatives of the Talisay and Silay LGUs and civil society groups as guide in the drafting of their respective action plans. Among the corrective actions taken by the Corps was to hold regular meetings where the group’s position on certain issues can be discussed. The meetings could also serve as a feedback mechanism regarding the efforts of LGUs in addressing the clogged waterways.

Despite the shortcomings, the Negros Green Corps has remained undaunted in pursuing its dream of an ecologically balanced Negros Occidental. The path to them is still via public journalism, through which a self-sustaining network of environmental protection efforts can be achieved.

For sure, that path is not easy. What is important though is that Negros journalists have taken those initial steps. (Agnes Lira-Jundos)