Practitioners in that sector of the media who consciously report and interpret events and issues of public relevance as a means of furthering their advocacy for change in Philippine society are not unaware of the possible conflict between advocacy and the fundamental responsibility of providing accurate and reliable information.
There are several hundred such media practitioners all over the country, many of whom work in community radio stations, video groups, local newspapers, and online news sites committed to providing media audiences the information they need to make sense of what’s happening in the increasingly complex environments of the 21st century. Still others who work in the large corporate media organizations, whether radio, television, print or online, are similarly committed.These practitioners constitute the sectors of the Philippine media most aware of the important role of information in any society, and are as a consequence the most concerned over the impact of their work on their fellow human beings. Among their most immediate concerns is the balance between ethical practice, the fundamentals of which demand accuracy and fairness, and the need not only for information but even more important, for interpretation, given the increasing complexity of events and the confusion they often generate.
During the October Congress of AlterMidya, a national organization of alternative media practitioners, among the more critical questions that were raised — indicative of a sense that the changing conditions of reporting government and governance as well as the emerging threats, opportunities, and promises of these perilous times demand sustained awareness of the media practitioner’s responsibilities — were the following:
• What skills should alternative media practitioners have?
• How can they fulfill their function as the people’s journalists without compromising the standards and ethics of journalism while providing quality reporting?
• What attitudes among alternative media practitioners should be combatted?
These questions are concerned with the relationship — the seeming conflict — between advocacy and the ethics and standards of media practice.
What skills does the alternative media practitioner need? The alternative practitioner needs the same skills other practitioners all over the country and indeed the world over must have.
He or she should be familiar enough with the particularities of the medium he or she has chosen as the vehicle through which he or she provides the media audiences the information, commentary and/or analyses the people need.
The differences between working in print, broadcasting whether in TV or radio, as well as working in film and video or online, are clear enough to practitioners. Each medium demands as well a different set of skills, although writing skills are basic requirements in all the media.
But in addition to these technical skills, not only alternative media practitioners but every practitioner as well must also have the capacity to do the research needed to enable him or her to ask sources intelligent questions, to expose their errors if any, to pierce through their pretensions, as well as to provide the context of events necessary for readers, viewers, or listeners to understand events and issues.
Not doing enough research or any research at all, and failing to provide the context of events is a common weakness in the media, which is why too many reports detract rather than add to the media audiences’ understanding of the conflicts that plague the country, its problems with governance, or, in more urgent terms the social, political and economic dimensions of the illegal drug problem — or the roots of the conflict between the National Democratic Front and the state, or the causes of and solutions to the country’s poverty and misdevelopment.
Implicit in the question on the alternative media practitioner’s function and the standards of journalism are reservations over whether advocacy and professional and ethical standards are at all compatible. The answer is yes, they are — but only for so long as one’s advocacy is in the first place based on factual accuracy.
Every journalist knows or should know that the journalist’s first loyalty is to the facts. That loyalty is implicit in the ethical principle of truth-telling and the professional standard of accuracy. Journalism presumes that the truth is discoverable: that it is not a mental construct, but an objective reality that awaits the practitioner’s detection, description, and analysis.
Unlike Pilate, who asked what the truth was, the authentic journalist assumes that through rigorous effort — through research, social investigation, and documentary and reliable human sources, he can find the truth and report it. Again unlike Pilate, he or she does not wash his hands of involvement in the struggles of his people, and is committed to providing them the most accurate, reliable and valid analysis of Philippine society available at the present time.
This is to say that the media practitioner is not a propagandist as that word has come to mean since Josef Goebbels perverted its meaning, but as a propagandist in the sense of propagating both the truth of that analysis as well as the most valid alternatives proposed for the present.
The alternative media practitioner reconciles this advocacy and the ethics and standards of journalism through his loyalty to the facts, which after all are the bases of his advocacy.
Above all are the facts, and if the facts deny the poverty spawned by one of the worst land tenancy systems still extant on this planet, by the economy’s being no more than an appendage of the so called developed countries, by a society in which a handful have everything while millions have nothing, as maintained and protected by the most vicious and least patriotic ruling class in Asia and its foreign patrons — if the facts should deny these, then the alternative media practitioner must yield to them and abandon his advocacy.
Truth-telling and accuracy is what journalism is all about, and they are both the basis of the alternative journalist’s advocacy as well as the continuing responsibility of every media practitioner.
From these the answer to the second question should be evident. The journalist’s role is to tell the truth in behalf of change, to arm the people with the power of information and analysis.
Finally, what is the point of being ethical and adhering to those standards that journalists all over the world and from different cultures after hundreds of years have established as necessary in the practice of the art and sullen craft of providing information, interpretation, and analysis? Without adherence to these standards the journalist is in peril of being ruled by such weaknesses as using journalism as a means of personal aggrandizement, treating the subjects of his reports as other than fellow human beings, and succumbing to the temptation to use the power of the press in behalf of the exploiters and despoilers of their fellow men and of the social and natural environments. The journalist who looks at journalism as just a job rather than as a human responsibility is not a journalist but only a technician — or worse.
(Portions of this piece have appeared in the AlterMidya Web site.)
Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro). The views expressed in Vantage Point are his own and do not represent the views of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.
www.luisteodoro.com
Published in Business World
Nov. 11, 2016
