‘Truth is here to stay,’ says senior journalists on World Press Freedom Day

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Veteran journalists from national news organizations touched down in Iloilo City on Wednesday to impart lessons from their experiences on World Press Freedom Day.

The Dr. Graciano Lopez Jaena Foundation, Inc. held a journalism symposium in Iloilo City on Wednesday, to remember its namesake’s work as a journalist.

The symposium also aimed to inspire younger generations of journalists to continue seeking the truth, despite the challenges faced by the Philippines.

Graciano Lopez-Jaena is etched in national history for his participation in the publication of the pro-Filipino propaganda paper, La Solidaridad, during the near-waning years of the Spanish era in the Philippines.

Rommel Lopez, Associate Editor of PressONE.ph, discussed their organization’s history with fact-checking and how it has become more essential in recent times.

“If all politics is local, then all truth is personal,” Lopez said, citing a personal account where a neighbor died because of disinformation about COVID-19.

He said that fact-checking is not a difficult skill to learn, akin to reading reviews before buying products online or asking others’ opinions before going to see a film.

“You don’t have to get an [International Fact-Checking Network] badge. Media and information literacy is a life-long skill. When you get older and think about buying, you get to use critical thinking (sic) and it’s not just in social media,” Lopez said.

Lopez, who is also a professor of journalism, said that it was already innate to the news, even before fact-checks were separately made from regular news stories, and makes journalists distinct from bloggers.

“Fact-checking is just an aspect of the work of journalists, and journalism students would know this, because when we’re asked, ‘What really is the basis of journalism as compared to a blogger?’ Journalism is in the business of presenting contextualized, verified facts,” he explained.

He expounded further on the delineation between blogging and journalism, citing an experience where a business was offered a feature in exchange for a write-up.

“They told me that they have been approached many times by bloggers who were looking for free [food]. They added, ‘My business expanded without them, and that’s only P50, but there are people who make blogging a career,’” he narrated.

“We witnessed that […] a vendor was being pushed to give away [pancit] molo, and they didn’t want to. We, journalists, don’t do that because we want to seek something in exchange. We do that because it’s a very good story and you deserve that information,” he added.

BACK THEN, AND SO NOW

Inday Espina-Varona, Head of Regions online news organization Rappler and a direct descendant of Lopez-Jaena, narrated her history as a journalist, beginning with the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. dictatorship in Negros Occidental.

Her discussion included her humble beginnings as a local journalist covering sugar monopolies in Negros and their experiences under Martial Law.

“I grew up again in a situation where the power was so overwhelming, but for many Filipinos, the only alternative was to outright rebel in the sense, whether in writing, or by actually fighting, or going to the street. Choose your own way to resist. I was a child and came of age at a time when resistance was the honorable alternative,” Varona narrated.

The veteran journalist also shared her observations on how the same tactics were employed by those in positions of power, even after the Marcos dictatorship ended in 1986, but with an added challenge due to the emergence of social media accounts and encrypted messaging applications.

“In 1985, at the time of Marcos [Sr.], I walked into a Peace and Order Council meeting and I don’t know who was more surprised, the military officer or me, because I saw my name rolling up the presentation as one of the enemies of the state. In 2004 at the time of [President] Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the ISAFP openly called the NUJP an enemy of the state. In the time of Duterte, they also called me an enemy of the state,” she cited.

“Maybe [disinformation] gets out of social media accounts, and they are firmly now spreading it messaging apps, however, some tactics of harassment have never changed. One time, somebody asked me, ‘What would it take to silence me?’ I answered, ‘Nothing’,” she added.

“Graciano Lopez-Jaena, maybe he was set to exile but I don’t think even exile could silence him. Rights should be God-given and should not be predictable. But the truth is, for people across the world and not just in the Philippines, rights need to be fought for before they are respected before we can enjoy them,” she stated further.

She used this to impart to participants on the role of journalists, which she said also remained unchanged throughout history.

“There are times when we step back, and we try to be fair and kept other sides in a story. Journalists are not stenographers. They will not give balance [of] ‘two-column inches for you, two-column inches for you, one minute for you.’ That is not the work of a journalist. We should’ve just been court stenographers,” she stated.

“Journalists should verify, should contextualize, should use his or her critical faculties, to weigh what is being told by the news sources, because if there is a rule of thumb in this world, it is that all news sources, from the real evil to the even the noble ones, will always be with their goodness of heart,” she added.

Going further, Varona cited the choices made by Lopez-Jaena and his La Solidaridad colleagues Jose Rizal and Marcelo Del Pilar in going against the Spanish rulers of the country at the time.

“They didn’t do ‘he-said-she-said’ because it was impossible in a society that had the power of life and death over you. [Rizal], [Del Pilar], and [Lopez-Jaena] chose to be very clear, to stand firmly on their points of view because they knew what they were writing for,” she narrated.

“They were writing for the end of injustice and colonization in the country. They were writing for freedom, and there was no room at that time to play footsy with notions of ‘Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt,’ because it had been hundreds of years of giving [the Spanish] the benefit of the doubt,” she added.