Outside the Box: Journalism as if it mattered

In the shadow of a courier shop that had closed for the night, the old man was carefully washing a white shirt, totally oblivious to the vehicles rushing along EDSA. A row of fresh laundry was drying on a clothesline attached to street posts, not really a rare sight in the urban blight of Manila, except that this was just a few meters away from the country’s police headquarters and mere steps from a busy highway. The bright red fake poinsettia tucked into the plants along the pavement completed the sad tableau. As a journalist, I often find myself wondering about such incongruous scenes. Why was the old man washing clothes on the sidewalk? Where did he get water? Was he thrown out of his house?  Where is his family? Why is he alone? Unfortunately, the laundry man’s story would never make it to the news, unless of course a wayward truck driver lost control and slammed into his basin of soapy water ... you get the picture. Sometimes, it feels like there’s nothing except violence, intrigues, and weather reports in the media. There are other times when a single incident gets magnified to undeserved proportions. One of them was last month’s uproar over a campus journalist’s protest stunt at the Hillary Clinton forum, which became fodder for shrill exchanges on the role of journalism. As a former Philippine Collegian news reporter, I can understand why Marjohara Tucay behaved the way he did, and as I wrote in a news feature later, it was oh-so-predictable. After all, Kule staff used to cover rallies and labor strikes in the ‘80s where raising a clenched fist while singing Solidarity was just the thing to do. In fact, I would have been disappointed if no disturbance occurred at the Clinton forum, knowing that the audience invited by the US embassy was composed mostly of student leaders and campus journalists. It’s heartening to know that a hint of youth activism remains in the mind-numbing environment of violent videogames and sappy status messages we have today. What was surprising was the online debate that followed, with opposing sides engaging in an ideological battle and muddling the function of journalism with the role of youth activism. I can forgive the bloggers (more on them in my next blog) who dismissed the partly GMA News-sponsored forum as mostly fluff and praised what Tucay did; after all, they are not trained in the craft and were not really expected to provide a well-informed narrative. But it was disappointing to read a senior journalist’s opinion piece that could not even distinguish between a press conference and a forum, and failed to acknowledge serious questions such as the European debt crisis and human trafficking that were raised during the event. Let’s be clear about one thing: what Tucay did was an expression of student activism. It was certainly not journalism, not even campus journalism. A journalist’s role is to tell the story, not to be the story. Of course, there are bad people in this country who have the habit of making the latter happen, but that’s another story for another time. What matters in the aftermath of Tucay’s youthful outburst is not to confuse activism with journalism. This is not to say that activism does not exist in journalism. Many of us, after all, espouse various causes outside of our day jobs. But those of us who have been trained by serious mentors certainly know better than to cross the line between advocacy and reportage. It takes experience, but it is possible to strike a balance in our often conflicting endeavors. And one good thing about caring deeply about something is that it helps journalists in their job of telling the public what’s really happening in the world around them. It would be nice if there are more socially conscious journalists who will not immediately point to poverty as the cause of every imaginable problem in society, and recognize instead that it is merely a condition that any hard-working person can overcome. It would be interesting if more intrepid reporters will break away from the pack and explore fresh news angles. It would be great if more editors will take note of trends that can be turned into news stories, instead of just waiting for events to happen. In the end, it’s really a sense of wonder and limitless curiosity that will inspire journalists to produce the best stories for their intended audience. These are the qualities that are needed to make journalists think about how homeless people celebrate Christmas in the absence of family and a sumptuous Noche Buena, beyond the much-photographed sparkle of fireworks and the shopping frenzy. There are so many stories out there if we only know where to look, and how to turn them into news.