“With its vast and direct influence on public opinion, journalism cannot be guided only by economic forces, profit and special interest.  It must instead be felt as a mission in a certain sense sacred, carried out in the knowledge that the powerful means of communication have been entrusted to you for the good of all.”

– Pope John Paul II’s declaration of the Vatican’s
Holy Year Day for Journalists (June 4, 2000)

Public journalism provides the philosophical and conceptual framework for developing innovative ways of practicing the craft: reporting what’s wrong and also what’s working, telling stories of problems but also how these can be solved by citizens, providing avenues for public discussion of local issues to take place, and getting people to become more involved in governance and in public life.

Techniques for doing public journalism in the Philippines also evolved along the way but basically follow six strategies that would allow for better engagement between reporters and members of the community.

Strategy 1: Community Immersion

Reporters spend time in the community to study its geography, demographics, determine citizen needs, interests, aspirations, and generally to interact with community members as a step towards building trust.  Members of the Forum of Reporters for Equality and Empowerment (FREE) in the island of Mindanao, stayed with a local community in Maguindanao province for a week to more clearly understand its thinking on peace efforts at the height of fighting between government soldiers and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2000.  The result was a series of stories of citizen voices about the need to focus more on peace initiatives and what people think ought to be done.

Strategy 2: Community Conversations

Conducted during neighborhood gatherings or meetings, in small parks or plazas, barangay halls, in front of sari-sari stores or talipapa, and even in people’s living rooms, community conversations allow journalists to probe for insights without becoming intrusive or invasive.  A small group of radio reporters in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato began hanging out with locals to listen to what people really are talking about (and what they care most about), eventually engaging them in conversation and developing a daily program they called Pulso ng Bayan (Pulse of the Town).

Strategy 3: Focus Group Discussions

A more structured form of eliciting data and information, focus group discussions or FGDs allows for a more targeted discussion of a particular issue or problem with key community players like leaders of people’s organizations, civic groups, barangay officials, youth representatives, small business associations, and the local church or mosque.   The journalist must prepare a set of questions beforehand but must also be flexible enough to consider other angles that may develop during the discussion. The Visayas Examiner, a weekly paper in Iloilo City in Western Visayas, sponsored neighborhood roundtable discussions after people came to their offices complaining about noxious emissions from a hospital incinerator.  The discussions led to a series of stories and dialogues with reporters, editors, citizens, experts and authorities.  The incinerator was eventually shut down.

Strategy 4: Citizen Polls

Surveys or public opinion polling can cover a large segment of the community or geographic area and allows the news organization to put together, for example, a checklist of citizen concerns and perceived problems that would help it map out the story.  PBN Broadcasting Network in Bicol polled residents in one municipality after citizens expressed concern about the planned construction of a cement plant in the area.  It then facilitated a series of community dialogues where the pros and cons of the project were discussed and where the affected residents themselves drew up solutions allowing the plant’s operation under certain conditions.

Strategy 5: Community Interaction

Widening the network of sources and partners, listing down other players in the community, establishing contacts with NGOs, people’s organizations, community associations and even exploring dialogues with local governments and agencies often result in stories that examine problems and offer solutions.  It also opens opportunities for the news organization to play a more catalytic role in the community by providing avenues for dialogue through their news pages or programs. The Bandillo ng Palawan in Puerto Princesa City encouraged the different sectors in the province to discuss the creation of the Palawan Heritage Center to arrest the slow deterioration and loss of cultural and environmental artifacts.

Strategy 6: Alliances with the Competition

By pooling resources and talent with other media organizations such as TV, radio and print, news outfits can cut down costs while ensuring broader reach and bigger impact when doing public journalism.  This eschews the traditional mode of media competition that often verges on the cutthroat especially in broadcast.  Four radio stations in Kalibo, Aklan worked together for an hour each day to do a simultaneous broadcast of a collaborative program that tackles children’s rights.  The program soon attracted listeners to report and discuss cases of child abuse, a subject which was taboo before in the town.

Peeling the Different Layers of Public Life

Lessons drawn from the cases illustrate the need for journalists to focus both on their commitment to craft and community as they begin to explore the layers of public life, a first step in understanding how the community actually works or even what makes it tick.

In exploring the multiple layers of public life, journalists are able to see up close how people in a community engage the official layer of institutions and politics and determine the issues they most closely associate with.  Interactions at this level usually occur during public hearings, barangay assemblies or council meetings.

A CHECKLIST FOR COVERING AND ATTENDING PUBLIC MEETINGS

Public hearings, council meetings, or barangay assemblies often look like chaotic, confused debates with a cacophony of voices refusing to give in.  Closely observing, listening, asking and engaging in conversations with the participants often will lead the reporter to a bigger story that have important implications for the community.

Here are some tips that journalists may find useful when attending public meetings:

* Be early so you can chat up officials or civic leaders to give you a broader context for the meeting.  Doing so may also give you important story leads.
* Be patient; see the meeting through.  Important and crucial points sometimes find resolution towards the end or during informal caucuses.
* Jot it down. Discussions may sometimes appear trivial or inconsequential but may lead to something truly important.  Properly attribute direct quotes.
* Know the rules.  Are reporters allowed to ask questions during session or afterwards?
* Take note of dates of hearings, voting schedules, etc.
*Ask for handouts when these are available.
* Schedule interviews with possible sources or key informants

If officials decide to go into executive session, ask why.
+ Always ask yourself: what do my readers (or listeners) need to know to be able to understand better the issue or issues being debated?
+ Observe the environment: Is it tense? Are people freely discussing ideas? What’s the general body language?
+ Listen closely to what people are saying.

Exploring and digging deep also enable them to examine another layer composed of non-government organizations, people involved with advocacy groups, citizen associations or civic organizations interacting and reflecting their own respective agenda in public discussions.  This helps media persons understand better the dynamics of a community and how competing values can sometimes forge collaborative efforts when confronted with a common issue.

“It used to be that reporters in Aklan would talk only to traditional sources like government officials and authorities when doing a story, missing out on the voices that really matter – the citizens themselves, groups like people’s organizations; the stories tended to be shallow and did not allow for public discussion to take place afterwards,” says Jay Tejada, former program director of RGMA DYRU-Aklan.  “The shift in thinking came when we were confronted with child rights issues and how to adopt the principles of public journalism in our coverage and reportage.”

Churches, community centers, barbershops or beauty salons, day care centers or multi-purpose halls in the barangay comprise a third layer that journalists should not ignore especially during the immersion process where observation and trust-building mostly occurs.

People’s living rooms, the sidewalk or backyard also are layers that can provide journalists deeper insights into the personal views of individual members of the community, what they think of issues, what is urgent and paramount, how they see themselves within the context of the community, what roles they play, what they can do.

By understanding the community dynamics and uncovering its different layers, journalists are able to broaden the frame of their stories by bringing key stakeholders into different focus and giving them a voice on issues that impact on the community.  In several of the public journalism initiatives undertaken by news organizations in a number of provinces in the Philippines, the stories were less conflict-driven and gave the public a sense of what they can do to address community issues.

The importance of framing the public journalism way is that both reporters and editors are challenged to look beyond stories that tell only of villains and victors or winners and losers.  They are instead forced to select the relevant context for the story or information that could be discussed by their public and later translated into action.

Aside from the frame of conflict, there are other frames that the journalist can explore: explanatory, problem-solving, investigative, and human interest.  Each proposes a particular context and value from which a story can proceed and constructs its consequence and impact.

Richard Harwood, president of the US-based Harwood Institute that deals with media culture and public life, says that “every story has a frame on it already so we’re not talking about anything new.  It’s not about creating new frames because we want to get away from the old ones.  It’s about understanding the essence of a story so that we can begin to understand what the appropriate frame is for the story that we’re doing.”

In the cases cited in this book, the media outfits doing public journalism not only broadened the frame on many issues but examined ways in which to engage citizens that helped them set the frame for their stories.

Setting the context allowed reporters and editors to look at the big picture and give their stories a sense of place and history.  They also looked at who is responsible for finding solutions to community problems and writing about problem-solving from a citizen perspective.  By comparing communities (why is one beset with petty crime and what did another do to address a similar problem) journalists were able to present stories that tell not only of problems but also of things that work.

One paper ran a series of reader suggestions on how best to ease traffic jams in the city after facilitating a community dialogue in which reporters, citizens and experts sat down to discuss urban issues.  A small radio station in Mindanao motivated listeners by asking them what they would want to do to address community issues or how they can help.  Another newspaper provided a section for citizens to give feedback on their coverage of peace and conflict in Central Mindanao.

These are examples of how empowerment information not only helps tell the story more clearly but also how it allows citizens to make sense of what is happening around them, to see that they are not powerless to do something about community problems, and that their voices matter.

Processes and Steps in Developing the Story

When Doing Public Journalism, Don’t Forget…

• To rethink your role in the community as journalist, citizen, and stakeholder
• That journalism should be guided by basic human values
• The basics (accuracy, brevity, balance, clarity, fairness)
• To use investigative reporting skills to peel the layers of public life in the community
• To examine and report what’s wrong… and also what’s working
• To bring in more voices in the news coverage and story
• To synthesize, and not simply record events and information
• That journalists should not always set the news agenda
• To provide context to give readers and audience a sense of place and history
• That public journalism is an attitude and a set of values
• That it is something that journalists must want to do and that it is a commitment over the long term
• That the public is the intended outcome rather than the assumed audience