The devolution of powers and responsibilities from the national to the local governments also marks a shift in how communities can begin to manage their own affairs, adding to the complexity of interwoven relationships and dynamics. For better or worse, good or bad, decentralized localities assuming greater powers and responsibilities are here to stay.

For the news media, the question is how to address these challenges and how to determine the track of the news that will lead to a better understanding by citizens of community issues. The demands will be great, as it is happening now, for media to clarify the stupefying range of issues and decisions that communities will face and should make. Will media begin to reexamine their roles in this kind of environment? Will journalists remain in their “comfort zone” and stand at a distance as communities slowly fragment and disconnect from public life? Will they continue to watch along the sidelines as measures of citizenship such as voting and participating in governance are corrupted by political expediency? Or will they catalyze community discussions, dialogues on how citizens can identify and begin to solve their own problems?

These are very hard questions to answer given that the media, in the words of journalist Malou Mangahas, “suffer from a poverty of purpose.”

Public journalism provides just that purpose because it reconnects the media with the public that the institution avowedly serves. Public journalism is a concept, an experiment, which says that journalism should not be cynical at all. It debunks the idea of many journalists that the purpose of the story is the story itself. Rather, public journalism invites a new approach to setting the news agenda and covering the news: by offering opportunities for public discussion and debate over what community issues should be top priority and how these can be solved or addressed.

It is a kind of journalism that encourages citizen participation in public life by providing them information that would help them make decisions in a democratic, self-governing social structure. It is a kind of journalism that helps readers, listeners and viewers understand the impact of the news on their lives and how they can actively participate in developing or building the news agenda.

As in any other form of change, public journalism is being debated not only by academics and intellectuals but by journalists themselves. Some see it as a surefire method to losing “journalistic enterprise,” that quality among reporters sought by many editors. But, says Ervin S. Duggan, president of the Public Broadcasting Service in the US, “What seems to me the besetting sin of (journalism) today is a know-it-all cynicism that gets in the way of the story. The very accusation that the cynics make against the experiment of public journalism (sometimes referred to as civic journalism) seems to boil down to the fact that you may not be quite cynical enough.”

Public journalism was introduced in the Philippines in 1995 when the author developed a media program for the Evelio B. Javier Foundation, Inc., a non-government organization working in the arena of local governance. The Center for Community Journalism and Development was born out of that program and redefined public journalism in the context of enhanced citizen participation in governance and the role of journalists in this kind of environment.

It came at a time when local communities were only beginning to grapple with the demands and complexities of decentralization. This posed a big challenge to journalists, especially those belonging to the community press, who had to understand and make understandable the nuances of local governance. But the kind of news and the manner of coverage gave people little room to make sense of what is happening around them, much less what they can do to help solve local problems.

The needs of the community press actually reflected the needs of the community itself, how to have stories that could help people make informed decisions. The first was mainly concerned with conflict, limiting itself to the coverage of winners and losers, and allowing itself to be boxed in the narrow frame of Who, What, Where, When, Why, How but never asking the crucial So what? What could be the outcome of the story; where it will lead to. The second was beginning to get disconnected from public life because it could no longer make sense of events based on stories that get published and aired.

Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University and director of the Project on Public Life and the Press, puts it in another perspective. Says he: “Public journalism tries to place the journalist within the political community as a responsible member with a full stake in public life. But it does not deny the important differences between journalists and other actors, including political leaders, interest groups, and citizens themselves. What is denied is any essential difference between the standard and practices that make for responsible journalism and the habits and expectations that make for a well-functioning public realm, a productive dialogue, a politics we can all respect. In a word, public journalists want public life to work. In order to make it work they are willing to declare an end to their neutrality on certain questions – for example: whether people participate, whether a genuine debate takes place when needed, whether a community comes to grips with its problems, whether politics earns the attention it claims.”

In the Philippine setting, many community journalists have shown that the concept is worth trying out in real time despite inherent challenges. One of these is how to tell stories differently, how to focus on the different layers of public life, how people are beginning to explore areas of participation, how they engaged both the media and other community stakeholders to arrive at common solutions to common problems.

The Visayas Examiner first heard of an ongoing community-based project in Banate Bay (Iloilo) that focuses on ways where people can help address environment problems. The paper felt this was the kind of story that should be printed in its pages over time as a running document of people helping themselves. TVE got in touch with the Kahublagan Panimalay, a local NGO working with the Banate Bay communities and discussed ways of partnering on a public journalism project.

The result was an agreement to work out an arrangement with two radio stations airing the Banate Bay project through their school-on-the-air program “Ugat ang Tubig” for TVE to devote sections of the paper for community discourse on the environment and its effects on the lives of citizens.

To encourage more people to involve themselves in public life, the Bandillo ng Palawan initiated a Candidates’ Forum during the last elections wherein local concerns were presented to the candidates by the different sectors.

The newspaper worked with the Jaycees, the Palawan Network of NGOs, a local cable station, several radio stations, and an internet service provider in holding the forum. This was later followed up by the Ulat ng Bayan/Ulat sa Bayan, a citizens’ monitoring and local government reporting mechanism that Bandillor and its partners are planning to sustain as a public journalism project in Palawan.

Of course, the more difficult challenge is how to integrate this new thinking and perspective into the everyday grind of the news making process, into the writing and reporting of the news. It is too early to gauge public journalism’s impact on the work of journalists and on the communities that they serve. The concept is still evolving, but it has also provided a roadmap for journalists who are serious about their craft and are looking beyond the writing of the story, the airing of a program…to how their stories can help transform communities into self-determining ones.

As in any other kind of journalism, public journalism demands that the practitioner hold on to the basics: fairness, balance, accuracy, timeliness, objectivity plus, stewardship and humanity. It also demands of him a commitment over the long term because public journalism involves a continuing engagement with the community. It is not easy and it is something that journalists must want to do.

Ultimately, public journalism will be judged not on how it will influence the Philippine media landscape but on how it will impact on communities and on people’s lives.

For an upstart like the two-year-old The Visayas Examiner, the situation is even more grim. Five other existing newspapers provide it with fierce competition against the backdrop of a generally conservative posture of the business community and the stifling stance of local political interests that see them as willing tools to amplify their interests.

The post-war years saw many politicians establishing or supporting newspapers in order to attack their enemies and further their political ambitions. Today, the politicians’ hands are less seen because they have retreated to the background until the next election campaign season. Their hold on the newspapers is more in the form of government advertisements, which are the lifeblood of local newspapers. It is common for their paid press releases to become banner stories or land in the front pages of newspapers.

Conscious of this fact, TVE has tried to position itself as an alternative newspaper that practices good journalism—not beholden to powers-that-be and one that cares for its readers and communities.

“We strive to be the paper that readers in our communities would regard with affection. Our editors, news reporters, columnists and contributors prepare the daily issues with the needs and values of these communities in mind,” says Diosa Labiste, its editor-in-chief.

TVE started as a weekly publication but later, and with audacity, (which the owners regretted later) decided to become a daily. The daily publication lasted for six months and TVE again retreated to become a thrice a week newspaper because, among others, there was no windfall of advertisements to support the growing overhead expenses and sustain its expansion plans.

Network television stations and cable television, though only around in the last three decades, have overtaken the local newspapers in audience reach and influence, eating up advertisements intended for latter. Such a situation is a greater challenge to TVE as it tries to fit itself in a media community that has yet to connect with the community and vice versa.

Citizens groups abound but they share an uneasy relationship with the media. For them, the media are just outlets of their advocacy, a mere afterthought in their activities. When the media committed journalistic sins of unfair, inaccurate reporting and corruption, citizens groups are not vigilant enough to call the media’s attention to such excesses.

On the other hand, the media often treat citizens groups as only one of the many news sources they have. When some groups raise a howl about media corruption and injustice in their dealings, news organizations would rather view such criticisms with suspicion. Instead of calling for renewal within the ranks, media practitioners would often hit back at their critics, thinking they have just been misunderstood. Citizens have yet to find the guts to talk back to the media in Iloilo.

In December 2000, The Visayas Examiner affirmed its adherence to public journalism in an organization workshop sponsored by the Evelio B. Javier Foundation (EBJF). Some of its staff members were introduced to the concept of public journalism in earlier seminars and study tours organized by EBJF and its partners. But it was during the workshop that TVE was able to come up with a vision and mission statement that clarified its role as a community newspaper. From there, the paper gladly took up the challenge to try public journalism projects.

If there was not a hint of hesitation among TVE’s writers and editors, it was because there was already a consensus to try new ways of doing things, apart from the traditional detachment of media in the community. But given limited resources and organization problems, the TVE decided to embark on small-scale public journalism projects that would not get in the way of its daily work and deadlines.

In June, the paper carried stories on the hazards posed by an incinerator at a state-run hospital in Iloilo City. The noxious odor and thick smoke spewed by the waste facility have affected households and communities near the hospital. The issue was brought to public attention when a resident, Diana Magbanua, complained that her family suffered from chronic respiratory ailment from inhaling the smoke from the incinerator, some ten meters away from her home.

TVE covered the story extensively by interviewing the complainants and health and environment officials. It also linked with Greenpeace International-Philippines, an international environmental activist group that has been studying the ill effects of incinerators. Its series of special reports and articles on the issue resulted in petition letters calling for the scrapping of the waste facility, dialogs between the hospital officials and the affected households, and an investigation conducted by Department of Health officials from Manila.

The linkage with Greenpeace provided TVE writers with a better background on the issue and the alternatives to incineration. The environment watchdog group sent related literature and provided Internet resources to help in shaping the incineration story. A research provided by Greenpeace noted that the facility is one of the 26 incinerators—second hand rejects that have already been phased out because they cannot meet environmental standards—bought by the government from Austria.

But TVE wanted to go beyond the traditional role of a newspaper, from a neutral communicator to a facilitator and initiator of dialog between key actors in the controversy.

“The news stories can only carry so much information and it is far from interactive. To connect the news sources with the readers, we decided to hold an activity where the news sources or the experts meet the TVE readers in the flesh,” Diosa says.

In August 2000, TVE held a forum “The Burning Question: Why Incineration is not the Solution.” The forum brought the US-based Dr. George Emmanuel, Ph.D., who did studies on incineration and other waste facilities in the US and Von Hernandez, campaign director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia based in Manila, to discuss incineration and its alternatives. Both speakers received good ratings from the audience composed of 43 participants from public and private hospitals, government agencies, business groups, academe, and environmentalist groups.

Twenty journalists from local communities around Mindanao will be participating in a training workshop on trafficking in persons at the Waterfront Insular Hotel in Davao City July 12-14, 2007.  The workshop is the first in a series to be conducted by the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD) in partnership with The Asia Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The workshop is a major component of the project Strengthening Community Media Capacity to Address Trafficking in Persons and is open to selected print and radio journalists who have at least five years’ experience working in the provinces either as freelances or staff of news organizations.  The next two workshops will be conducted in Luzon and the Visayas in late 2007 and by mid-2008.

Community journalists who participated in the training workshops will be asked to submit story proposals.  Selected proposals will be supported with modest grants from the project and stories will be published in the respective news outlets of the journalists and in the CCJD website which will have a special Trafficking in Persons section. (Ma. Diosa Labiste, The Visayas Examiner)

Hence, for a long time, radio was valued mainly for the morning news and its public service called “panawagan.” There farmers asked for help in finding a missing carabao. Students aired pleas for their parents to send them tuition money.  Travelers relayed messages for relatives to fetch them from the jeepney or bus station.

These days, radio stations still do that, and much more. With three to four local stations competing on the AM band, hard-hitting talk shows and exposé-laden news programs have become the name of the game. When some professionals and business leaders started publishing community newspapers, their influence in shaping public opinion also grew rapidly and began to tilt the balance in favor of more critical coverage of news events. In most cases, reportage of perceived anomalies and irregular transactions in government has helped some news agencies and personalities gain credibility and respect among the general public.

Among the publications that gave a much-needed boost to serious news coverage and commentary in the province in the mid-1990s is Bandillo ng Palawan, the flagship project of a non-profit media organization bearing the same name that promotes environmental awareness. Bandillo started as a monthly magazine in 1993 and endured a six-month hiatus in 1997 before coming back in 1998 and 1999.

Although the English-language magazine has yet to be resurrected since it temporarily halted publication in 2000, its publishers have managed to maintain the newspaper’s Filipino edition, which started as a bimonthly and is now a regular weekly paper. Bandillo has three won national awards for in-depth coverage of environmental issues in Palawan.

AS a media organization, Bandillo was one of the lead agencies in the organization of the Palawan Press Club (PPC) in August 1998. It was during its press club membership days when it first encountered the idea of public journalism.

Yasmin Arquiza, Bandillo ng Palawan editor, recalls that as part of organizational development efforts in its first year of existence, the PPC coordinated with the Evelio B. Javier Foundation (EBJF) for an introductory seminar on ublic journalism. Two representatives from each media agency were invited as participants, along with information officers from several government offices and special projects.

Resource persons gave inputs on the concept of civic journalism as practiced in the US, the introduction of public journalism in some Philippine provinces, the importance of media ethics, and new opportunities for community participation in governance through the Local Government Code.

Participants also engaged in joint vision-setting and team-building exercises. The main objective for bringing news  reporters and news sources together was to have a greater appreciation of each other’s duties, as well as promote better understanding of the roles of media and government in a changing political environment.

A follow-up seminar from the EBJF gave the Palawan media the opportunity to hear from experienced journalists about investigative reporting and ethical questions that go with it. Group activities and structured learning exercises helped participants to “think outside the box” and to appreciate the value of working as a team rather than individually to attain certain goals.

The three-day seminar concluded with the turnover of responsibilities to a new president. Memoranda of agreement were also signed with the Governor of Palawan, the Mayor of Puerto Princesa, and the head of the Palawan NGO Network for the conduct of monthly forums where important issues affecting the community are discussed.

In between these seminars, field trips to northern and southern municipalities were held where members met with local officials and community organizations. These activities were meant to forge linkages with newsmakers outside the capital city of Puerto Princesa, where coverage tends to be focused, and widen the scope of local news reportage.

Together with a forestry conservation project based in Palawan, the press club also held a seminar on environmental reporting to help improve the skills of members in this specialized field which is particularly important in the province due to its reputation as the country’s last ecological frontier.

But with the press club’s change in leadership and increasing friction with other members who did not share Bandillo’s views on media ethics and responsibility, the latter decided to renew its ties with the EBJF separately and focus its public journalism activities on other concerns.

“Unfortunately, the gains of the first year were not sustained in the succeeding years of the press club. Our experience in the past three years showed that many of the members were not that willing to fulfill their responsibilities as journalists,” Yasmin laments.

Bandillo’s first public journalism project was the cross-visit of barangay park rangers from Olangoan Falls, a proposed nature reserve in Puerto Princesa City, to two established ecotourism attractions in the province in May 2000. The activity was part of Bandillo’s protected area initiative together with the barangay council of Binduyan and the Henry TSL Foundation that started in September 1999. The partnership was unique in the sense that it brought together the media, a local government unit, and the private sector in a conservation project focused on ecotourism and environmental education.

During the three-day activity, a dozen park rangers traveled to the southern municipality of Narra to visit Estrella Falls, a popular destination for tourists and local residents alike. The mayor and other local officials welcomed the group and shared their experiences in managing the park. The municipal board also gave copies of their resolutions on park fees and related ordinances that could help the barangay council of Binduyan craft its own rules for Olangoan Falls.

On the second day, the barangay park rangers went to the St. Paul’s Subterranean River National Park, where they had a  brief interaction with their more experienced counterparts. The St. Paul’s park rangers gave a briefing regarding their responsibility in protecting the rich biodiversity of the World Heritage Site, as well as insights in handling visitors to the famous underground river, the main attraction of the park.

In the morning of the third day, the group went on a river trek to Olangoan Falls, where a facilitator from EBJF helped  the barangay park rangers process the lessons they learned and discovered during the trip Limited financial resources forced the tripartite partnership to lie low beginning January 2001, but communication lines among Bandillo, the barangay council, as well as its park rangers, and the Henry TSL Foundation remain open.

The good news though is that their protected area initiative has started to bear fruit. The Department of Environment  and Natural Resources has begun surveying Olangoan Falls and has conducted a public hearing as part of the 13-step process for its eventual declaration as a protected area. Meanwhile, newly elected Mayor Dennis Socrates pledged to provide funds for ecotourism destinations in the city, with Olangoan Falls at the top of the list he enumerated during his first State of the City address.

Bandillo also organized the “Trainers’ Training for Environmental Advocacy” held in the northern municipality of El Nido in June 2001. The training was jointly sponsored by Saguda-Palawan, another environmental group in the province, with facilitative and funding support from EBJF. The activity arose from the need of both groups for advanced skills training since many of their members were increasingly in demand as resource persons and trainers in various seminars.

Participants in the training included local journalists, ecotourist operators, NGO workers and municipal employees. Inspired by reports from other provinces about their public journalism efforts during a sharing session in February 2001, Bandillo ng Palawan teamed up with the Puerto Princesa Jaycees and the Palawan NGO Network for a Candidates’ Forum held prior to the local and congressional elections in May.

A total of 12 candidates for the position of mayor and vice mayor of Puerto Princesa, as well as congressional  representative for the second district of Palawan, presented their campaign platform during the one-day forum in April. A multisectoral panel grilled the candidates about their stand on particular issues. Two local radio stations and one local cable television broadcast the event live, while Moscom-Puerto Princesa provided chatroom and email facilities for those who wanted to send in questions through the Internet. Listeners and viewers were also encouraged to send questions through the radio stations or via text messaging.

After the forum, each of the candidates signed a covenant where they pledged to abide by the promises they made during  the campaign and report their accomplishments for the first 100 days in a follow-up activity if they won. During the week of the May 14 elections, Bandillo ng Palawan published a simplified matrix that summarized the campaign platform of major candidates for top local positions.

At present, organizers are preparing the second part of the project, the Ulat ng Bayan/Ulat Sa Bayan where the  performance of the winning candidates will be up for evaluation. During the Ulat ng Bayan, the same multisectoral panel during the Candidates’ Forum will present their assessment of the first 100 days of the new administration.

In the Ulat sa Bayan, the officials themselves will give a report about their accomplishments. The evaluation will  focus on three major areas: economy and the environment, basic services, and governance. Of the candidates who signed the covenants during the forum in April, two were elected as mayor and vice mayor of Puerto Princesa. Other officials invited to the program are the governor and vice governor of Palawan, and the two congressmen of the province.

Though the Candidates’ Forum is a regular election activity of the Philippine Jaycees, the local chapter in Puerto Princesa can only hope, as much as Bandillo and the Palawan NGO Network do, that their unique partnership can be institutionalized and continued in the future. The three are also looking at ways in which they can sustain their monitoring of the performance of local officials as a means of promoting good governance at the local level.

Even as Bandillo ng Palawan has strengthened its linkages with various groups in public journalism projects, the group  still nurtures hopes that it can help the Palawan Press Club move beyond its narrow confines and grow into a truly professional organization.

“Despite our disagreement with some officers of the club, Bandillo has tried to help other members of the group by sending them to advanced training outside Palawan. In the process, it is hoped that a core of well-trained and responsible journalists can be created that will provide better direction to the press club,” Yasmin says.

At the same time, the management of local media agencies need to become actively involved in molding their reporters b y giving them better pay, improved working conditions, and clearer editorial direction.

In terms of promoting good governance, there remains a pressing need for independence on the part of journalists whenever they relate with local officials. In a small community like Palawan, it is inevitable for media agencies to tecome associated with various political camps. Often, they end up getting used overtly or covertly. Community journalists need to learn that credibility can only come from an independent stance. In the end, their conscience will have to prevail when the public interest in the truth is at stake.

Of course, these are easier said than done. Learning how to preserve harmony and balance community relationships with press freedom is a tricky thing. Unlike large cities where reporters can criticize local officials without worrying about immediate backlash from neighbors, or the relatives of politicians, Palawan is a sensitive community where every little thing becomes a personal issue to most people. Its only advantage is that the province is largely peaceful, and most groups are open to resolving conflicts through dialogue.

In Yasmin’s view, the ideal is far from the real in the context of Palawan’s community press. All things considered though, she notes, the situation is not that bad either.

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)

The report was about how rampant the phenomenon of pedophilia is in Third World countries like the Philippines. But to her dismay, the supporting film footage seemed more an endorsement of it, what with a charming, well-to-do Caucasian male shown cavorting in an idyllic beach resort that resembled every bit pristine Boracay Island. It even left viewers with an instruction that children’s sexual favors can be bought at US$10 a night.

“Instead of sounding like a condemnation of pedophilia, it sounded more like an advertisement—‘Come to the Philippines, pedophiles. Kids are cheap and you can have fun.’ It bothered me a lot,” she laments.

At the time, the Uswag Development Foundation, the Kalibo-based non-government organization primarily involved in socio-economic projects for Aklan’s poor folk that she heads, was espousing health concerns, in particular, the issue of HIV/AIDS infection. “It was a related concern but it wasn’t focused on children,” she says.

What brought additional impetus to her burning desire to do something about the issue of sexual abuse among children was the arrest in January 1996 of two foreigners, a Dutch and a German. Both were caught by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation while on vacation in Boracay with two young girls, aged nine and 12. Found in their hotel rooms were photographs and other materials that showed evidence of pedophilia. The two were able to post bail and leave the country before their trial. They were however nabbed in England and are now serving sentences in their respective countries.

To Didi’s mind, Uswag’s HIV/AIDS awareness campaign needed expanding or refocusing to highlight what she considers a more vital concern—child sexual abuse in her home province. But such an endeavor required more than the usual coalition-building efforts among its regular partners. The response no less necessitated a multi-sectoral dimension.

Thus was born the Citizens’ Council on Social Concerns (CCSC) in March 1996. Under Uswag’s helm, and with funding support from the Partners Program of the USAID granted to the Gerry Roxas Foundation, the Council was able to bring together all the relevant sectors for one common vision, that of a child sexual abuse-free Aklan.

Hand in hand in promoting and protecting the rights of children against sexual abuse in the CCSC are representatives from government, both local and national; print and broadcast media; business; academe; local civil society organizations, including women, youth and the disabled sector; law enforcement agencies; and the legal profession.

Admittedly, Didi did not harbor high expectations of the media at first. By then, Uswag had only begun to seriously consider working with the media for its HIV/AIDS advocacy project. Such initial engagement had somehow betrayed not a few of its members to be peripheral in their coverage of community issues. But the coalition experience gradually made her realize the folly of this perception, finding in the media an invaluable ally in development work.

It helped that the CCSC has as one of its active members a young radio broadcast journalist from GMA Super Radyo-Aklan. Previously with Radio Mindanao Network’s dyKR, Jay Tejada is no stranger to organizing and advocacy work. He had been a community organizer before pursuing a career in radio. Polio-stricken at age two, he also sits as representative of the disabled sector in the Council.

Though he has since taken a different path, Jay has not stopped thinking of ways to help empower the people so they can make their lives better. In the five years he has been with RGMA, his weekly radio program has served as a venue to enlighten them about the more relevant concerns. Still, he felt something was amiss or lacking in the practice of journalism in Aklan.

“My feeling was that merely reporting the news was not enough. We needed to know more, we needed to understand the issues better not only to make us better journalists but also in some way help communities look at their own problems and begin solving them.”

Jay was actually looking for a reconnection with the Aklan communities he had served as a non-journalist before. That opportunity first came with the multi-sectoral coalition that finally resolved to lick the social menace of child sexual exploitation.

The 29-year-old broadcast journalist admits to being overwhelmed by the community response to the campaign. Limog it Pag-eaum (Voice of Hope), the radio program he hosts, would get swamped by a lot of calls from listeners offering assistance to victims, giving their peso’s worth of advice. One specific instance he likes to cite was the case of a sixteen-year-old girl abused by her father since she was ten, and whose case was dismissed by the fiscal’s office after the victim executed an affidavit, upon the intervention of her mother, withdrawing her complaint.

The girl, it turned out, had also written a letter to her younger sister, who was also being abused by their father, to explain why she had to lie in her statement. That letter eventually became the hot topic of discussion on air.

“We got so many callers offering us information on legal processes, and they were using legal terms. Maybe they were people from the fiscal’s office sympathetic to us, or just concerned private lawyers,“ Jay recalls.

Children and Women’s Desks were set up in police stations. By April 1998, 14 out of the 17 Aklan municipalities had CWDs in place, manned by officers trained in specific laws addressing children and women’s rights.

Though many of the Council members see the coalition moving towards a more service-oriented thrust, Jay sees there’s still much work to be done at the level of advocacy.

“We want to go further towards enhancing collaboration, especially with the legal system since it remains insensitive to the issue,” he remarks, noting the absence of a government prosecutor in the Council’s membership.

Though it proved to be one commendable undertaking, Jay’s CCSC involvement has really only served to initiate the journalist in him further along the path of public journalism.

Seeing how people are involving themselves at the local level to make a difference strengthened his resolve to re-fashion his craft. His formal introduction to the concept of public journalism came in 1998 during a seminar for journalists from Region VI sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, a German foundation espousing active citizens’ participation in governance.

A year earlier, he had encountered the Evelio B. Javier Foundation, an NGO engaged in projects providing for interfacing mechanisms between the media and local governments anchored on the governance frameworks of democratization and decentralization under the 1991 Local Government Code.

On an even more positive note, the Aklan journalists welcomed the fact that the community did recognize their role in community development. But, as they realized during the sessions, that entailed regarding themselves as citizens first with crucial roles to play in the community. Doing so helped them in coming up with public journalism action plans addressing the primary issues and concerns identified by the community—the drug menace, garbage disposal and management, flashfloods—in the next seven years.

Emracing the idea of public journalism, believes Butz Maquinto, erstwhile RMN news manager and now RGMA chief, is inevitable. “I think we were headed in that direction. Besides, the people no longer just expect us to broadcast the news or entertain them. It has come to a point where it’s already an imperative to become involved.”

Such a collective resolve among the Aklan media has helped programs like Limog it Pag-eaum evolve from a dyKR venture solely hosted by Jay back in 1996 into what it is today. Every Friday beginning noontime, Limog it Pag-eaum airs as a simultaneous broadcasting endeavor that includes three other radio stations—RGMA’s dyRU, IBC’s dyRG and dyMT-FM of the Aklan State University.

The KBP has given the one-hour program free airtime to tackle no longer just child abuse cases but to monitor the performance of elected public officials, giving Aklanons more opportunities to participate in public life.

To the cynic, such an alliance would seem highly unlikely, especially in a medium that is known for the fierce, sometimes venal, competition between rival stations.

Jay himself admits it was not easy when they started. “Since we were from different stations with our respective programming, it reflected on the focus we initially put on the issue. We have to admit there’s really competition. But that’s natural. We just have to agree to a common ground, and that’s the welfare of the children of Aklan,” he says.

Eventually, the competitive drive yielded to the cooperative spirit. The stations came together to agree on a format, lined up topics on a monthly basis, coordinated with the concerned agencies, and visited areas where the problems were reported.

With Limog it Pag-eaum also came a significant perceptible change in the way reporting is now done on issues like rape and child abuse. Previously, questions hurled at victims took any of this insensitive variety—“How were you raped?”, “Were you hurt?” or “Did you enjoy it?” Names of the victims and their families were mentioned without regard to their privacy or the case’s confidentiality. As a result, journalists had to undergo a special training on child sensitivity, as well as on the legal protection and law enforcement aspect involving child abuse cases.

The current focus of the radio program is actually an extension of the “Media in Partnership with the Community for Good Governance” project through the KBP that begun with the collaborative media coverage of the May 2001 mid-term elections. As a continuing public journalism program, it initiated voters’ education on the process of elections, fraud prevention, and provided effective venues for voters-candidates consultation and dialogues.

More importantly, in these forums were forged covenants between the candidates and the community to serve as post-election monitoring and feedback mechanisms by which the performance of elected officials will be assessed.

These took the main form of a people’s agenda drafted during a multi-sectoral consultation in April facilitated by the radio stations and the KBP. About a hundred representatives of the various sectors from the 17 municipalities of the province—academe, government, business, the media, NGOs, people’s organizations, religious, youth and women’s groups—took part in the whole-day activity.

Participants identified six areas of concern which they want their elected officials to address—environment and tourism; peace and order; education; children, women and family; livelihood; and agriculture and production. In each specific area, they then enumerated improvements they want achieved, the most pressing problems that require immediate attention, and possible solutions that public officials may adopt.

With support from the Commission on Elections, the Philippine Information Agency, and civil society partners like Uswag, the people’s agenda was formally presented during the Candidates Forum broadcast live on Limog it Pag-eaum.

Of these initiatives, dyKR’s Nida Lachica sees the seeds of people empowerment. “It was the first time that something like this happened in Aklan, where contending parties and candidates were brought together to face the community. And I admired the courage of the people in confronting the candidates with questions, asking what their concrete objectives were in seeking public office.”

These days, Limog it Pag-eaum enjoys immense listenership erstwhile the monopoly of trite, inconsequential daytime soap operas. As a profession, journalism, too, has never been regarded with more respect in Aklan than now. This, Jay credits, to the initial steps the Aklan journalists have taken towards bridging the disconnections in the public realm—not only between citizens and its government but also between the community and its news media.

Doing public journalim, the Aklan journalists have ceased to imagine themselves and their work outside of the community, that they cannot have a story without taking the community into account.

But the key, Jay says, is first knowing one’s community. “What can they do to help themselves? Start from there. Be a facilitator. Don’t think that you can do it by yourself. The community has its power. It’s a matter of tapping their resources, their potentials.” (Jay R. Tejada, R-GMA Kalibo)

Undoubtedly, Duggan was talking about the American press. But it struck me nonetheless because he could just as well be talking about the Philippine media.

But what is at the heart of this journalistic cynicism? Is it because the rules that govern the news cycle no longer apply? Is it because uncorroborated stories are now the norm? Is it because journalism has become so competitive that the idea of stewardship, that we as journalists serve causes higher than ourselves no longer have an honorific cachet? That the story has become expedient to the demand for speed? Or is it symptomatic of an unraveling of the social fabric that the news media, wittingly or unwittingly, contributed to?

To give this observation context, however, we must go back a little bit to the heady days of the People Power Revolution in 1986 when Filipinos peacefully threw out a dictator. It was both a time of remonstrance and rejoicing as a new democratic space suddenly opened up. The taste of freedom was a giddy experience after years of repression. With the fall of the Marcos regime, a decade-and-a-half-old system of media controls collapsed in the twinkling of an eye. Scores of wannabe newspapers, radio and television stations rushed madly into that vacuum. It was anarchic at best, but people didn’t care one bit. They loved their news unexpurgated and unbridled. The media were deemed trustworthy and credible.

Sadly, in many newsrooms it was to become the norm, although it would be unfair to say that the media have not succeeded in focusing public attention on such issues as corruption in governance, environmental degradation, the conflict in the south, etc. In fact, it was the press that catalyzed mass action that eventually led to the downfall of President Joseph Estrada.

Although freed from state controls, the media were not able to develop their potential to play a watchdog and development role in Philippine society. The imperatives of the market have made the media predominantly commercial in orientation. The sense of public service and civic responsibility that was a mark of the anti-Marcos press gave way to crass commercialism as media organizations used their freedoms to outdo rivals in the race to peddle newspapers and television programs. Intense competition has distorted the conduct of journalism, the content of newspapers, and the programming of radio and television. (Batario, Coronel, de Jesus; Media, Democracy and Development Initiatives, UNDP)

Such unrelenting commercialization has made it difficult for the media to provide citizens the information that they need to be able to assess government policy, vote wisely and to otherwise perform their responsibilities as citizens.

Born of expediency, commercial viability and, more alarmingly, hubris, the practice of journalism could not go anywhere near being heroic. The Philippine media were at a crossroads of sorts, undecided as to which path to take, even as citizens were beginning to demand information that would help them make sense of what is happening around them.

A decentralization law, the Local Government Code of 1991, was in its early stage of implementation; people were feeling their way around the effects of devolution on their lives. At that point citizens groups, more particularly non-government organizations, were testing the waters of popular participation.

With scarce resources and greater responsibilities, communities needed to understand a host of issues, they needed to see how they could participate in local affairs, they needed to address problems, to make difficult decisions. To do all that, communities needed information that will help them identify, and begin to solve, their own problems.

The challenges for the Philippine press were great. How do journalists determine the track of the news that will lead to a better understanding by citizens of community issues? Do journalists need to reexamine their role in this kind of environment? Will they remain in their comfort zone and stand at a distance as communities slowly disconnect from public life? Will they continue to stand at the sidelines as measures of citizenship like voting and participating in governance are corrupted by political expediency? Or will they catalyze community action by offering opportunities for discussion and debate?

These were some of the hard questions that in early 1995 prodded two journalists to reexamine journalism both as craft and principle and how it has contributed, or not, to the determination of democratic development in the Philippines. These are the very same questions that underscore the need to address the challenges faced by local communities in the Philippines as they grapple with the complexities and demands of decentralization and democratization.

The two journalists (who later formed the Center for Community Journalism and Development to spearhead the public journalism movement) were then doing research on local initiatives and good governance practices for a book on decentralization. They were surprised to discover how very little, if any, of the travails and triumphs of local communities have seen print or been aired on radio and television. It was as if the news media had simply turned their backs on what clearly were stories of success and hope, failures and problems. More importantly these were stories of people trying to reconnect with public life, of voices saying that they are charting their own destinies and that could have inspired others to do the same.

So it was not by accident that the concept of public journalism in the Philippines began to slowly and painstakingly take root. It began as modest experiments in local communities to help citizens understand the impact of the news on their lives, how journalism can provide opportunities for community debates to take place, and how they can likewise actively participate in building the news agenda, an agenda that has always been set by journalists in the newsroom.

Which brings to mind what Daniel Yankelovich said in his book Coming to Public Judgment, allow me to paraphrase him: “Journalists are expert at agenda setting. We have so much fun with it that we dash around raising consciousness here, raising consciousness there, then rush on to raise consciousness somewhere else, leaving all previous crises unattended.”

Public journalism goes beyond mere agenda setting. It is an evolving principle, a philosophy, a framework that encourages and provides a forum for public debate over issues that are most important to citizens and how they can address these. It also requires that when these public debates do occur, all the voices of the community be heard.

It is active in the sense that civic engagement is expected of all citizens and that “urban problems, for example, cannot be solved by news organizations or local elites acting on others’ behalf. Common problems require common discussion and common solutions.” (Lewis Friedland, National Civic Review)

An editor in the Visayas in the Central Philippines believes that public journalism works because the local media every day impact on every aspect of community life. She said: “Public journalism works well in local communities because members of the media are also looked up to as citizen leaders and are seen as stakeholders in community life.”

However, journalists are not “civic engineers” whose only role is to build community. Their main job is to observe and report with a certain degree of detachment. But public journalism requires that they re-examine that role, that they should challenge communities to seize opportunities for charting their own future. Public journalism is re-engineering what the news media do to shape them into more useful tools for dynamic citizenship.

But as in any form of change, there is also resistance to public journalism. Some see it as contributing to the waning of journalistic enterprise. Other journalists fear it is a reinvention of the Marcos-era “dev-com” method of propagandizing through the news media. Still others think it is nothing but advocacy journalism that takes up a particular cause.

The concept is being debated still.

But it would do well to remember that in doing public journalism we simply need to hold on to the basics like fairness, accuracy, balance, and timeliness as in the kind of journalism that we are most familiar with. But then again for good measure, we should throw in such ingredients like stewardship, justice and humanity sautéed with a dollop of ethics and a dash of human values.

I would like to believe that public journalism goes beyond the Five Ws, and One H. Rather it asks the question, So What? After I have written the story, so what? What happens next? What can citizens do as a result of that story? What do I care?

In the Philippine setting, the early experiments in doing public journalism worked within the framework of the “So What” question: What citizens can do to reclaim their rightful participation especially in governance to help shape viable and livable communities. What newspapers and other news media should be doing to capture the different voices of the community. What avenues for citizen engagement should be explored by journalists.

Many community journalists around the Philippines have shown that public journalism is worth a try despite the inherent challenges it brings. One of these is how to tell stories differently and how to focus on the different but interconnected layers of public life.

Other public journalism initiatives, like in the island of Palawan, actively engaged local communities in the participatory management and preservation of the environment. A series of community dialogues initiated by the weekly Bandillo ng Palawan resulted in the formation of a citizens’ environment task force to work for the declaration of the Olangoan Falls, a majestic cascade located in a remote inland village, as a protected area.

In the island of Mindanao, which many of you probably read about as a place of never-ending conflict and mayhem, (nothing could be further from the truth) journalists felt there was little understanding of why those pocket wars keep on erupting. Media attention was focused on conflict alone, viewed from the perspective of the war correspondent, relying most assuredly in the old newsroom adage that if it bleeds, it leads.

Romy Elusfa, a Cotabato City-based journalist and founding member of the Federation of Reporters for Empowerment and Equality (FREE) Mindanao, said “They (journalists) do not bother to explore and probe the underlying issues, the quest for peace, our efforts at development and how there are other voices out there aside from the spokesmen of the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.”

When the Headliner, a newspaper published by FREE, a loose, tactical alliance of Mindanao journalists, ventured into public journalism it began with a series of community dialogues to touch base with citizens and find out what they think of the peace process and what they can probably contribute. The result was the holding of a Candidates’ Forum and Covenant Signing before the May 2001 elections wherein citizens were able to articulate their own views about how government and citizens should work together for peace. The outcome? A community-based monitoring and feedback mechanism called the People’s Forum for Sound Governance.

Headliner, together with several radio stations and a local TV channel opened its pages and airtime to allow citizens to continue the discussion while at the same time providing them a running guide as to when the next forum would be, how they can participate, how they can become involved.

Iloilo City is a laid-back urban sprawl in the Western Visayas. It is grappling with myriad urban problems like drug use, traffic congestion, pollution, slum settlements and a contentious news media.

It is also host to a small newspaper called The Visayas Examiner. The editors and reporters of the newspaper, however, felt that they were just grinding out the news without a sense of how this impacts on the community. Until people came to their offices to complain about emissions from a nearby hospital’s incinerator. As a result of that visit, the paper sponsored neighborhood roundtable discussions on the effects on people’s health of incinerator emission by bringing in environmental experts to talk with reporters and citizens.

To the editors’ surprise, demand increased for more discussions and people were asking the paper to put in their ideas and recommendations, this time for addressing local issues such as traffic jams, the relocation of squatters, and preserving the city’s cultural heritage. The Visayas Examiner responded by expanding its public journalism section to include a series on good urban governance practices to let its readers know that some things in their city also work.

I can go on talking to you about this kind of journalism that enables, educates, empowers, liberates, strengthens a sense in leaders and citizens alike that they can solve local problems, and strengthens democracy. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for you, I don’t have the whole day to do so.

Remember, however, that people will always find it a lot easier to criticize the news media for their failings than to take shared responsibility for transforming what is decidedly one of the most central and critical institutions in public life. It is thus crucially important for citizens and leaders of the community alike, whether in government or not, to look at the journalists brave and daring enough to explore new ways of practicing their craft, with less jaundiced, if not kindly, eyes.

It may be too early at this point to gauge the impact of public journalism on the lives of citizens and journalists; what is important to remember is that the first steps to a long journey have been taken. It will be up to all of us to see that those steps do not falter along the way.