Words by Cherry Sun
Photos by Jojit Lorenzo, I-Witness, Stand for Truth, Atom Araullo (Instagram)
" Somewhere off the coast of Aurora, circa 2005 (I think), before Instagram filters. Photo by @pinaytraveller :) "
-@atomaraullo (IG)
“When I was younger, I was more of becoming an explorer in a broad sense kasi nanonood ako ng nature documentaries noon.
"One of my heroes was Sir David Attenborough. So tinanong ko sa parents ko, ‘Ano ba trabaho ni David Attenborough?’ He’s an anthropologist. So parang, ‘Ah okay, I want to be an anthropologist.’ Or maybe a biologist or marine biologist. So nag-evolve din siya over time. And then you know I found later on na actually bukod sa pagiging anthropologist or marine biologist, 'yung gumagawa ng documentary mismo, trabaho din 'yun. So ‘Ahh, baka gusto ko maging documentarist or filmmaker or whatever,” he recalls his childhood dream.
The now tenured broadcast journalist further states, “You wake up one day and 10 years have gone. You tell yourself there must be a reason why I stuck around. ‘Cause the job isn’t exactly easy. There are many reasons for you to quit.
"If you do stick around, it kind of means something to you. The job is something that you feel is worth doing. I think that’s kind of rare. Not everyone is lucky enough to find something that they are very passionate about. So why throw that away?”
Atom explains that he doesn’t fret about it because he has found something he loves doing.
He says, “It certainly helps that I like this job and that I believe it has a potential to really contribute something to society. That’s why even when you do sacrifices parang you understand why you’re doing it and you don’t resent yourself dahil sa nawawalan ka na ng oras minsan.”
Being media man is more than just a job for Atom. For him, it personally means getting to play both the witness and the actor in the relevant and prevailing developments in society.
He says, “I just wanted to have a front row seat to history unfolding. Medyo na-excite ako kapag may mga nangyayari tapos trabaho ko na magpunta doon at alamin kung ano ba talaga ‘yung nagaganap. Parang ang galing ‘di ba? Sino ba ang merong ganung pagkakataon?
"Siguro ultimately if I really think about it, I want to make stories that make people think and encourage them also to act and to see the bigger picture and what their place is in everything.”
“Dahil there’s nothing quite like it. There’s nothing quite like journalism, or being a reporter. Like every day is something different. It’s challenging, it’s tiring, it’s stressful. But at the end of the day, it’s very fulfilling. So you keep doing it. There’s always something new on the horizon 'cause you don’t quite know what’s going to happen the next day. And yeah, obviously it’s a huge privilege to be able to talk to millions of people through the television. It’s good.”
Atom, along with other broadcast journalists, carries the weight of being a stalwart of truth and a responsible communicator of balanced information. And with the current political climate – reminiscent of the tumultuous period of his growing up years, this may appear as a burden, a Herculean task.