Welcome back to Slow News Days, a now-and-then newsletter on journalism and journalism-adjacent topics in the Philippines.
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Corporate media is by now scrambling — as with eggs — to either validate or disavow the incredible but still potentially real story of Julian Martir, the Negros Occidental high school graduate who says he has received admission and scholarship offers at 30 colleges and universities abroad.
That it has been more than a week since mainstream media picked his story up from Facebook and the best we can do is “it might be true, right?” is really more on us now than on the kid, who may have embellished details for his social media post.
In these cases, blame will always be on how newsroom staffs are shrinking or are stagnant while targets — like engagement, with newsrooms gambling and selling off their brands for trending posts about politicians being silly and relatable and about whatever thing people on Facebook like at the moment — keep rising.
At a World Press Freedom Day program that I attended earlier this month, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility Executive Director Melinda Quintos De Jesus argued that journalism is different from content creation because it is an edited process.
She did not mean that pieces are checked for grammar and style, although that is also part of it. Rather: “There has to be an editor, the editor is the one that says this is the kind of conversation that you will get if you come [to this news outlet].”
“There is an editor that keeps a memory of past events and adds them as important context to current events. There is an editor who does not look only at issues of the day, but anticipates issues we will face tomorrow.”
This was, of course, disputed as soon as it went online — through Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism Executive Director Carmela Fonbuena, to whose tweets I have linked — and this Martir episode doesn’t really shift the argument in our favor.
I submit that there are editors — I am one, QED — but these editors are also writers, administrative personnel, ad hoc human resource managers and — as a senior editor I used to work with said, quoting an imaginary job contract — “all other tasks assigned.”
We really do not have the Beyoncé hours to do all that while also contributing to, as De Jesus says, “the conversation that keeps us working as a democracy” as much as we should be or want to.
Not if we can’t even properly gatekeep a story — and the questionable math — about a kid getting accepted to schools abroad.
A counterpoint from Bloomberg’s Claire Jiao, from whom I take journalism and career advice: “Mmm there’s only so much we can blame management for our own shortcomings.”
And that is true. Colleagues already got in touch with Martir and that they ran the stories anyway is on them, and on the editors who let that happen.
Whether the story turns out to be true or not matters to the audience — and, of course, to Martir — but will not change the fact that we ran with stories we weren’t sure about.
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Some drama at the House of Representatives this week and, by extension, the ruling UniTeam coalition: Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was demoted from being senior deputy speaker and Vice President Sara Duterte resigns from the ruling Lakas-CMD party in response (but to what, exactly?)
As allies rush to reaffirm loyalty to the president and to his cousin the House speaker, a reminder that lawmakers should be debating issues and not jockeying for position and advantage.As we coo and risk complacency at how the Marcos Jr. administration has been better at engaging media than the previous one, a reminder from Committee to Protect Journalists: In Marcos Jr.’s Philippines, milder tone belies harsh media reality
While we’re on that, despite rosy economic projections and reported figures, layoffs at the Wyeth Nutrition factory in Laguna hit 140 workers, among them 10 officers of the workers union there. More about that union, which has existed for more than 60 years.
For years, tech-voc was seen as something for people who couldn’t go to college, but the Philippine Institute for Development Studies finds views on skills training are changing.
With the government’s penchant to file cases against activists that eventually fall apart in court, lawyers are suggesting those who have been unfairly charged countersue to help curb the dangerous and traumatizing practice.
Harmless error. Major news outlets ran the story because it was the talk of the town (viral). Nothing wrong with that. No one got harmed. It was hilarious.
Naniniwala ako na isa sa mga "journalism" o "news" values na dapat taglayin ngayon - kahit sa isang panahong nagmamabilis at nagmamadali - ay prudence. Halaw man ito sa Cardinal Virtues, ngunit mababatid na sa kaibuturan nito ang isa sa mga prinsipyo ng pamamahayag: minimize harm. Taking a step back for one good step won't hurt us (well perhaps the KPI will suffer, lol). Karugtong ng usaping ito ay post na ito ng isang konsehala sa Quezon City: https://www.facebook.com/dorothydel/posts/pfbid02vnCDd9UwFstqqJJv6RJLyP2ENhRuwAfWm6S85SRjAWMm4ZiZDnPYkZRR1FuxGwPrl