by Redempto Anda
Being a community journalist can be trickier than pounding the beat in the big city. Having covered the major beats for the Manila Chronicle back in the early ‘90s and now running a weekly paper in Palawan while writing for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, I have come to recognize the nuances.
One would think that the difference is just the geographic factor, when in fact the provincial milieu that a community journalist wades into is very different from the norms of the big city.
In the provinces, people generally know one another. It usually happens that you cover a story in the morning and then you bump into the person you interviewed in your favorite coffee shop or the town’s grocery store later in day. Depending on how you have angled your story, you end up either engaging in awkward banter or getting a nasty stare. I mean, I have had my share of covering presidents and several of their Cabinet secretaries, but I do not remember saying hello to anyone of them while shopping for personals in the neighborhood 7-11 outlet.
I once did a story on an expatriate who had serious legal issues with his government. The guy slapped me a libel suit that took over five years to finally get dismissed by the court. While the case was on trial, we got so used to bumping into each other in cheese club meetings and on the sidewalks that I do not know anymore if the case was dismissed because we sort of became friends, or if there was not a libel issue to begin with.
In many ways, the small town factor affects provincial journalists in both good and bad ways. I have always been very careful with my facts as I would not want to be harangued by local news sources about errors when we cross paths the next day. I tend to be more engaged in my stories, as opposed to being detached.
Hard stories that probe into issues of public accountability in the local setting are difficult for provincial journalists to grapple with. A number of people I know tend to shy away from reporting on something that they know will get the goat of the governor or the mayor or congressman, or an entity with deeply rooted economic interests. Either they would not prefer the aggravation, or they simply cannot hack it anymore because they have long compromised their independence as journalists. Or even if they file the story, the treatment would be bland if not totally skewed. Sad but true, but I know self-censorship happens in the big cities too.
As a basic tenet in media goes, no story is worth dying for. Reason enough why recently I have become picky about reporting controversial mining projects in Palawan after I started receiving nasty and threatening text messages on my phone.
Mining stories in particular are interesting to cover because they tend to be laden with conflicts and oddities. Government corruption and irregularities, or at least the evidence of it, leak out of many mining projects. A lot of mining companies tend to do short cuts in the permit process or apply unusual tactics in meeting their goals, but are bad at hiding them from prying eyes.
Perhaps like reporting on illegal gambling and drugs, or even covering war-torn areas that expose a journalist to physical harm in a more direct and evident way, writing about political and social controversies in general can be bad for a journalist’s health, especially in the provinces.
As soon as I decided to pick up on such topics again, I realized I still had the fear factor to shed. Yes, I should just arm myself with a handgun and run after stories like I used to. No, I can just concentrate on writing about the wonderful flora and fauna of Palawan. Then, when you sit down and write, you realize that everything that happens in your beat is interrelated in context.
The cold statistics seem to support this assumption. Nearly all of the journalists who have been killed in the exercise of their profession are based in the provinces. That should say something about the risks faced by those in the profession who have to practice their craft in an objective and detached manner in a physical and cultural environment where they are virtual sitting ducks.
- Redempto Anda is editor of the weekly Palawan Sun and is a correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. |
