We Get the Press That We Deserve
Mike Banos
August 05, 2006
It has been a constant plaint of businessmen and government officials, both here and in Imperial Manila, that media has been unduly harsh in its reportage of the daily state of the nation, to the point that our stories are scaring away investors who could have brought in much-needed jobs for our unemployed and underemployed masses.
Although I've been working in media (more or less) during the past quarter of a century or so, still I didn't get the sort of first-hand involvement with the industry that would have enabled me to make an objective assessment of that perception.
Initially, although I regularly wrote an opinion column with a local daily and sent stories regularly to a national broadsheet, I was also holding another regular job so it wasn't the down-in-the-trenches thing my colleagues in the local press were doing on a daily basis.
Even when I eventually changed that regular job to one in the broadcast industry, I was more the stay-at-home or bantay bahay desk man (believe it or not, the position I started with in another company barely a year after I started working) and not the regular reporter who was the industry's equivalent of the military infantryman.
Thus, when I started over again barely a quarter ago as a correspondent for a national broadsheet and an opinion column writer for a local daily, I thought I'd be finally getting a feel of what's it's like to be down in the mud of the trenches with my trusty M-16, five rounds of ammunition in it and a dozen insurgents armed to the teeth charging towards me.
St. Ignatius of Loyola wasn't the first romantic to be enamored with such tales of knight errantry and until today, many young and not-so-young journalists who should have known better and trust the wisdom gained from their bachannalian younger days still entertain romantic notions about this noble profession.
Take the "Mindanao as a war zone" complaint, for instance. Having just attended a seminar-workshop on peace reporting, I was entertaining notions of bringing the traditional protagonists in this issue, that is, business and government on one side, and the media on the other, to sit down for a day or two, and really dissect it for what it is and plan on what we can do about those issues which are within our power to address.
Alas, I can now empathize with that chicken in the immortal fable whom nobody would help plant the wheat, harvest it, mill it, and bake it, but everybody volunteers to help her eat it. Everyone thought a peace workshop a great idea but not one seemed personally interested enough to do anything about it, not business, not local or national government, not the police or military, nor the civil society whose supposed to be affected most by it.
So much for dedication to this noble profession. Just the other night, I asked my wife how we were doing with our monthly budget considering she was now our family's main bread winner what with the meager income I was getting as a full-time member of the Fourth Estate. She told me we were meeting about 50% of our average monthly expenses the way things were now.
But that was just half of the story, notwithstanding the coincidental 50% attainment of our expenses versus the family budget. Earlier that same day, I had what I can only define as a "career-defining" moment when the income from my two and a half month's daily dedication to a national daily was remitted to my bank.
A domestic helper employed locally makes even more than I do, and I consider myself already one of the more dedicated correspondents to a national daily, meaning, who conscientiously sends stories day after day after day, never mind if none of them see print. Never mind if stories about tree planting along highways saw precedence over what I, as a "veteran" journalist kuno, saw was important to the readers of our paper.
I was thinking, my late boss was right after all, when he told me there was no place for a "straight" guy like me in the business. For, how can many of my colleagues, who are similarly employed as "free-lance journalists" make ends meet for their households when they don't even cover a third of the stories I do? Or send a fraction of the stories I conscientiously email to my editors every day?
But isn't this a vocation one chooses regardless of compensation in the first place? Should I have continued my earlier paradigm of regular job as mainline and media sideline to continue discharging my duties as a guardian of the Fourth Estate? A free lance journalist who lives by his stories alone in the Philippines is a dodo. He is extinct.
Anybody need a domestic helper who can help their children with their essays in English?
I N D N J C -
Although I've been working in media (more or less) during the past quarter of a century or so, still I didn't get the sort of first-hand involvement with the industry that would have enabled me to make an objective assessment of that perception.
Initially, although I regularly wrote an opinion column with a local daily and sent stories regularly to a national broadsheet, I was also holding another regular job so it wasn't the down-in-the-trenches thing my colleagues in the local press were doing on a daily basis.
Even when I eventually changed that regular job to one in the broadcast industry, I was more the stay-at-home or bantay bahay desk man (believe it or not, the position I started with in another company barely a year after I started working) and not the regular reporter who was the industry's equivalent of the military infantryman.
Thus, when I started over again barely a quarter ago as a correspondent for a national broadsheet and an opinion column writer for a local daily, I thought I'd be finally getting a feel of what's it's like to be down in the mud of the trenches with my trusty M-16, five rounds of ammunition in it and a dozen insurgents armed to the teeth charging towards me.
St. Ignatius of Loyola wasn't the first romantic to be enamored with such tales of knight errantry and until today, many young and not-so-young journalists who should have known better and trust the wisdom gained from their bachannalian younger days still entertain romantic notions about this noble profession.
Take the "Mindanao as a war zone" complaint, for instance. Having just attended a seminar-workshop on peace reporting, I was entertaining notions of bringing the traditional protagonists in this issue, that is, business and government on one side, and the media on the other, to sit down for a day or two, and really dissect it for what it is and plan on what we can do about those issues which are within our power to address.
Alas, I can now empathize with that chicken in the immortal fable whom nobody would help plant the wheat, harvest it, mill it, and bake it, but everybody volunteers to help her eat it. Everyone thought a peace workshop a great idea but not one seemed personally interested enough to do anything about it, not business, not local or national government, not the police or military, nor the civil society whose supposed to be affected most by it.
So much for dedication to this noble profession. Just the other night, I asked my wife how we were doing with our monthly budget considering she was now our family's main bread winner what with the meager income I was getting as a full-time member of the Fourth Estate. She told me we were meeting about 50% of our average monthly expenses the way things were now.
But that was just half of the story, notwithstanding the coincidental 50% attainment of our expenses versus the family budget. Earlier that same day, I had what I can only define as a "career-defining" moment when the income from my two and a half month's daily dedication to a national daily was remitted to my bank.
A domestic helper employed locally makes even more than I do, and I consider myself already one of the more dedicated correspondents to a national daily, meaning, who conscientiously sends stories day after day after day, never mind if none of them see print. Never mind if stories about tree planting along highways saw precedence over what I, as a "veteran" journalist kuno, saw was important to the readers of our paper.
I was thinking, my late boss was right after all, when he told me there was no place for a "straight" guy like me in the business. For, how can many of my colleagues, who are similarly employed as "free-lance journalists" make ends meet for their households when they don't even cover a third of the stories I do? Or send a fraction of the stories I conscientiously email to my editors every day?
But isn't this a vocation one chooses regardless of compensation in the first place? Should I have continued my earlier paradigm of regular job as mainline and media sideline to continue discharging my duties as a guardian of the Fourth Estate? A free lance journalist who lives by his stories alone in the Philippines is a dodo. He is extinct.
Anybody need a domestic helper who can help their children with their essays in English?
I N D N J C -
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