InkSights: question power, but check your facts

Give young journalists a politician, a school building, and an oversized smiling face on a tarpaulin, and you will rarely have to wait long for an opinion. That became wonderfully clear during our recent InkSights Unscripted journalism masterclass in Iloilo City. The editorial writers were asked to wrestle with politicians putting their names and faces on school projects. Many came ready to argue. Some came swinging. A few practically sentenced the tarpaulin before the first paragraph was over. I enjoyed the fire. I also came away reminded that editorial writing asks something more difficult than having the correct enemy.

There was plenty to celebrate. Khayecel Mae C. Olmedo (Capiz) wrote “Beyond the Nameplates.” Irrah Romelle M. Gicole (Iloilo) asked, “Public Service or Personal Publicity?” Jerom Maximus M. Naldoza (Iloilo) wondered whether what we remember should be “A Name on the Wall, or a Service to Remember?” Dyanne Ellize A. Arguelles (Antique) gave us the deliciously pointed “They Built a Classroom, Then a Campaign.” Adelene Gwyn P. Cerbas (Passi City), John Nathaniel D. Avila (Antique), Lian Ayezel D. Pastolero (Iloilo City), and Yhona Mae De la Cruz (Iloilo) also emerged among the promising English editorial writers. On the Filipino side, Zyrelle Anne B. Mayuga and Anna Lea R. Macahilo, both from Capiz, led a similarly promising group.

What pleased me more than the rankings, though, was where some of the young writers took the issue. They saw that a government classroom is not quite the same as somebody donating a monobloc chair to the barangay. Public money complicates the thank-you. They noticed the difference between acknowledging an official and advertising one, and some pushed the question toward citizenship itself: If taxpayers helped pay for the project, why should its story end with one politician’s name and face? Others found an even more interesting question. If a name deserves space beside a successful project, where does that name go when the roof leaks?

That last question stayed with me. It is what happens when an editorial writer moves past the first available opinion. “Epal is bad” may be a position, but it is hardly an excavation. The harder work begins with the next question: So what? What does political branding say about ownership, gratitude, accountability, and the way citizens understand government? A school sign can suddenly become a lesson in civics. The writer has moved from object to practice, from practice to system, and from system to consequence. That movement is worth learning before DSPC, RSPC, or NSPC, whatever topic eventually lands on the contest table.

There is also a useful lesson in fairness. The easy editorial turns politicians into cardboard villains. The better one admits that public officials sometimes do real work to obtain funding, navigate bureaucracy, coordinate agencies, or bring a long-awaited project to a community. Recognition itself is not necessarily the problem. The DILG’s 2026 anti-epal directive draws the line more clearly: Names, faces, slogans, and other identifying marks of public officials have no place on covered government-funded project materials. But for an editorial writer, the better question goes further: What helps the public hold officials accountable, and what simply keeps politicians visible?

Evidence is where several promising pieces also reminded me that all of us can improve. Numbers have a strange power on a page. Add “according to a study,” a percentage, a memorandum number, or the name of an international organization, and a sentence suddenly puts on a necktie. Unfortunately, a necktie does not make the sentence true. Some workshop entries invoked laws, reports, agencies, percentages, and policy claims that would need checking before publication. I like that the writers went looking for evidence. Keep that instinct. But a statistic should do more than decorate an argument. It should survive somebody clicking the source.

The same discipline applies to anger. A politician’s photograph on a project does not, by itself, prove corruption, vote-buying, a ghost project, or a secret plan to manipulate voters. Those may be legitimate stories elsewhere, but journalism cannot use one suspicion as evidence for another. Nor can we casually claim to know what is inside somebody’s head. “They do this because they want votes” sounds satisfyingly certain. “Repeated personal branding can give an incumbent continuing public visibility” is less dramatic, but it is something a writer can actually defend. The workshop pieces gave us a useful rule worth carrying beyond this particular exercise: Never make the claim larger than the evidence.

There are smaller contest lessons, too, although they are not really small. Stay with the topic. A beautifully written editorial that answers another question remains a beautifully written answer to another question. Give the opposing side its strongest reasonable argument rather than a silly version that is easy to defeat. Offer something more useful than “Stop this now!” And watch the ending. “Vote wisely,” “The youth must stand up,” and “Together, we can make a difference” have probably worked enough overtime in campus journalism. Sometimes returning quietly to the classroom, the sign, the student, or the unanswered contradiction can carry more force than another exclamation point.

I say all this as someone still learning the craft myself. That may be why I hesitate to turn a workshop into a collection of commandments. Contest rules change. Topics surprise us. Writers develop differently. A Grade 6 writer with a rough sentence but an original question may eventually outrun the technically polished writer who merely repeats what everybody already thinks. The hundreds of young journalists from all over Western Visayas we met at InkSights deserve congratulations not because they have finished becoming writers, but precisely because they have begun discovering what their writing can do.

The medals matter. So do the certificates, rankings, and photographs. Celebrate them. But perhaps the better measure of a young journalist comes later, when there is no judge holding a score sheet — only a story that deserves telling, a person others have overlooked, or a powerful claim that needs questioning. I hope the young writers I met in Iloilo keep noticing those things. Keep the courage. Keep the questions. And whenever you decide to challenge power, do the homework first. Courage speaks louder when the facts speak with it.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions with which he is employed or affiliated.