JOURNALISM'S LITMUS TEST

( Pooled editorial for Press Freedom Week 2006, published by Cebu newspapers and broadcast in all stations. )

“Journalism should consider itself a service, rather than a power,” an El Colombiano editorial suggests. And this could help Cebu Press Freedom Week 2006 gird for challenges ahead.

A hired-gun killed Columnist Antonio Abad Tormis for exposing graft. It was the country’s first-ever murder of a crusading journalist. “Assassination is the ultimate censorship”. So, attention focused on the mounting number of slain journalists: 74 since 1986, some claim.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility trimmed that tally down to 54. In “The Danger of Impunity” report, CMFR dismissed the mere possession of a press card and included only “work-related” killings. Edgar Dalamerio of Pagadian and Marlene Garcia-Esperat of Sultan Kudarat, who were salvaged because of their exposes, fell in that grisly category.

This is 54 deaths too much “It’s one of the world’s worst records,” the International Press Institute said. But we did not come to this overnight.

As early as 2000, Cebu media protested the death toll had reached 32, It rose to 48 by 2004 -- and surged yet more. Inept law enforcers, linked to the underworld, meant few arrests and zero convictions of masterminds. This spawned a pernicious culture of impunity.

Most attacks were in the provinces, CMFR noted. And 54% of victims walk-in buyers of airtime or “blocktimers”. About 80% lacked Kapisanan Ng Mga Brodkaster accreditation. Few were trained in objectivity, balance, fairness, etc.

“Press freedom is more than just being allowed to call the President a schumuk” Jerry Lewis once noted. It is, above all, about service anchored to core values: “to inform, to entertain, to educate, to advise, to shed light in dark places”.

The KBP standards committee is tightening accreditation rules. It’s Radio Code forbids open-ended contracts for block timers. The Cebu Citizens Press Council and KBP seek to broaden self-regulation. The Supreme Court meanwhile moved the trial of Damalerio and Esperat to Cebu -- a tribute to the judiciary here

No one pretends this is enough. Where accountability remains fuzzy, abuses will continue. But it’s a modest start These may “help end the impunity that killers of journalists wield”, says the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

Internal reforms are the litmus test. “I’m not the editor of a newspaper, and shall always do right and be good,” Mark Twain once said, adding: “so God will not make me one.” Media in Cebu have their work cut out in three crucial areas:

First is to make “values that endure even after the sun goes out” operative in newsrooms. These codes of ethics, set standards for : fairness, accuracy, balance, respect for dignity, conflict of interest, and old fashioned integrity. These values anchor the social contract between the credible journalist and the public he or she serves, as El Colombiano stressed.

Internal mechanisms within, Cebu papers and stations, carefully ensure complaints are heard. The and right of reply is observed. And journalists court dismissal for dolling up political or financial benefactors. Nor can they doctor facts.

“I know how to report the news and how not to hurt people”, the grizzled editor muses in the “Absence of Malice” film. “But I don’t know how to do both at the same time”. Indeed, the best journalism often hurts someone without meaning to.” But values that endure offer the only basis for resolving such dilemmas.

Today, Cebu’s media increasingly pours resources and effort to probe what the European Union's founding father, Jean Monet, called : "deep running currents" -- developments underfoot that recast lives and communities.

There’s been a growth in hard-nosed reporting and analysis and less of trash. More journalists – younger, idealistic and often better educated than their elders -- report significance from a plurality of voices. A bumper harvest of awards attest to this service.

Superficiality, however, still hobbles some. Few read enough. Many remain parochial. Prime-time reports seem forever glued to police blotter sleaze “It’s easier to get on the front page ( or prime time ) with scandal than with substance,” editor Bernard Aronson notes. “It takes less work to mock the pretensions of public officials than to analyze their policies”

Shallowness sells our readers and audiences short. Worse it makes us vulnerable to manipulation by "special pleaders" : politicians or commissars who try to reshape our pages and programs to their graven images.

New information technology is recasting our newsrooms. Webpages today are “rematted” every 15 minutes. Editor-reporter links are thinning. The speed paradoxically increases the need for working at depth. The rush can compromise the press functions : “schoolmaster of the people”, watchdog and society’s early warning system.

Technology is made for man, not vice versa. All of us are in danger of standing that yardstick on it's head. “( Technology ) diminishes the importance of news which is the ultimate journalistic standard,” the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez Latin American editors. “Never has this profession been more dangerous.”

Danger, however, offers opportunity. This is a country where ‘the weak are trampled on and the needy bought for a pair of sandals’, the 1998 Press Freedom Week editorial pointed out. The press is tasked to use the latitude this freedom provides for the service of what is good and just…We are first and last stewards of this gift.”

That remains true for Cebu Press Freedom Week 2006. Indeed, “journalism should consider itself a service, rather than a power,” as the El Colombiano editorial suggested. ####