Volume 2, Issue No. 1
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .
Our latest as of Wednesday, July 15, 2020
~ The period of more than four decades has produced a wealth of experience in journalism. Nearly half of them were gained in North America. From old-fashioned cut and paste to the modern gizmos that replaced it, truthful, honest journalism is very much the same as it was many years ago. Its progression has produced subsets, specialties necessitated by advances in technology and changing world views.
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COUNTING CONTENT, NOT YEARS
Milestone for Real Journalism
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“The swiftest hours, as they flew.” - Shakespeare
Nonetheless, without fanfare, I celebrate my newest blog, which is essentially my online archive - the Filipino Web Magazine (https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/) - to complement my flagship social media outlet, The Filipino Web Channel, on YouTube.
I can't seem to divorce myself from the media even as I have accumulated more than four decades of working in various capacities - as a foreign correspondent, editor, publisher, reporter, photographer, videographer, proofreader, and paste-up artist. (Related article: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2001/jun/14/cover-sinister-hero/?page=1&).
Those years involved arduous work that also had its rewards, that of being brought to foreign lands in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Honestly, as penniless as I am, my journalism journeys were above and beyond my expectations. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0AXXyPXaE).
Having this blog and my other online vlogs under Romar Media Canada is a milestone of sorts for me. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42YXRLqaQYA). They fill in the vacuum and provide the continuity necessary to keep one's sanity in times when greed overtakes principle, when compromises are set aside in favor of the truth a journalist is sworn to uphold.
A year older, and fifty-four articles later, I commemorate the birth of my blog. This month, I also mark the 27th year of my newspaper column, Prerogative, which came into being in San Diego, California when nobody in the Filipino community dared spoke and exposed the truth regardless of how painful it was.
So as not to cause confusion on where it's published outside California, I retitled the column to Password, which ran for years in Chicago and Arizona. The contents were basically the same.
I haven't missed a beat since Prerogative begun in 1993 right after I ended my work with a major foreign news agency. My journalism from print to online to print and again online continued in Toronto in 2010. Ten years later (it's now 2020), I'm doing both print and online.
The print part has been compromised, however, by the coronavirus pandemic. It seems newspapers have become outdated. Reader preference has shifted to social media where interaction is immediate and expedient than in newspapers whose frequency - monthly, fortnightly, weekly - work against being an effective medium of communication.
According to a survey that I read somewhere, people are now migrating to social media (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) to get news through their computers and smartphones than reading newspapers. That sounds like a death knell to local news publishing.
Community journalism is more impactful and personal than, say the more prestigious and financially-satisfying job as a foreign correspondent. Admittedly, writing locally pays peanuts. The edifying part, for me at least, is in being able to disseminate accurate information and help people understand issues relevant to them. That's an invaluable community outreach.
The launch of Prerogative in Toronto has caused, unsurprisingly, a backlash against my journalism. I was a marked man the moment a so-called writer called me "journalist daw" (journalist allegedly), which was echoed by his left-leaning minions. That was fine with me. I knew where I stood.
And I also knew I was courting adversaries who would discredit me. I wasn't cowed nor frightened nor rattled. Instead, I dug deep into their background and found them to be a bunch of fakes, pretenders basically, and their claim to being writers spurious. In fact, the promoter of the remark turned out to be a computer thief!
It was their ignorance that betrayed them. I knew that in the Filipino community, nobody has ever heard of the foreign news agency that I worked with some time. I knew many members of the community were so used to meaningless entertainment news and endless variety shows promoted by docile media to distract from the daily grind.
Well, I said to myself, the problem is not my reporting; rather, it is the readers' lack of understanding. The fault lies with their unfamiliarity with real journalism which, in Toronto, is aggravated by the presence of a number of newspapers publishing the same inane content.
Real journalism, and in my case, investigative journalism, is journalism on tenterhooks, an edgy venture not for the spineless and weak of heart. Its practice invites legal and financial troubles as proven by the number of lawsuits filed in court against me.
But that's exactly the point of journalism. Dissent, name-calling, threats, lawsuits only mean one's reportage is having an impact. That's gratifying enough even when the peanuts come in trickles. (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).
I agree with you a 100%. You are a true and talented Filipino journalist in this world. I never fail to read your column that you post here. Okay, buddy, you take care now.
ReplyDeleteJesse Jose