'International Journalist' in Taste of Manila? Holy Moly!

Volume 3, Issue No. 45

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, April 20, 2022 

~ Should we exalt or should we be wary? Someone among the proponents of a new Taste of Manila festival is surprisingly an "international journalist", i.e. if we go by what a press card says. There's also the honcho of a purported not-for-profit to handle ToM who appears to be the principal of a non-existing (?) printing service that advertised itself in a ToM talk show. What else is there that the Filipino community doesn't know?

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IS THERE MORE WE DON'T KNOW?

Not-So-Secret Secrets of ToM Officials

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

“There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses". - George Bernard Shaw

TORONTO - The deeper I dig into the backgrounds of known personages involved in the proposed 2022 Taste of Manila (ToM) festival, the more I get startled by what I uncover. However slowly I lift the lid, what comes out reeks.

Forgive me for not knowing soon, but one eye-opener I found hiding in plain sight is Danna Luna aka Lovely Danna aka Lovely Luna who, according to a video, is the "marketing/logistic director" and "host" of Taste of Manila.

Lean, fashionable, always coiffed, and tall (because of stiletto), she's the one with a model's look, very much unlike the other women in ToM who, maybe due to physical inactivity, are plump and matronly.

Based on what she has posted on Facebook, Danna appears to be an "international journalist". I put that in quotation marks because I really haven't seen or read anything that would affirm that. 

Well, for starters, she could live up to that name by helping ToM untangle itself from the mess it has created in stealing film footage from my videos. Stealing is both illegal and unethical, isn't it?

She had a "Press Reporter Card" as of end 2021 issued by the "International Association of Press Photographers" (IAPP), apparently based in Miami, Florida, which, according to its account, "is an independent association of journalists which is not only internationally active, but also ranks among the largest associations in the industry".

Holy moly! How lucky the Filipino community should be! In Little Manila where she's based, people haven't realized that they have an "international journalist" in their midst. 

All these years, I didn't know she was a media colleague. Ano'ng balita Danna? as one associate would greet another. Instead of a hi, close friends say What's up, Dude? How is it going, Dude?

I learn from its website that IAPP charges US$96 for standard international membership and US$114 for professional international membership. How membership in each category is vetted, and by whom, is not clear; there's no information on that. 

The fee, however, is twice as much compared to the Toronto-based National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, the Reporters Without Borders, and the Investigative Reporters & Editors where I previously held membership.

My own experience with press clubs was much different. Aside from an editor's recommendation, one has to present a body of work (news clippings, photos, videos) documenting the journalism practice, the areas of coverage, expertise in a given field, specialization if any, and editorial positions held.

Those requirements would help establish the authenticity of one's claim as a journalist. The process makes sure no fake journalist gets an identification card that one can use to access areas and events usually denied to any regular guy.

Owning a camera or holding it in a community event does not make one a photojournalist. I mention this only because I am reminded of a former ToM official, a passport photographer, who had boasted of his membership in the local press club and weaponized it to threaten people. 

He was so emboldened to the point that he lured young women to his studio. Later, the police arrested and charged him with one count of sexual assault of a 28-year-old woman.

Anyway, technical advances in electronics gave birth to "citizen journalists". A fine example is that of a young woman who recorded on her phone the arrest and murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020.

This past weekend, I got tired reading this book, a collection of the finest stories in The New Yorker titled The 40s, The History of a Decade so I switched to watching a video on YouTube of a 2020 "Tinig ng Bayan" talk show of Rolly Mangante, the alleged founder of Taste of Manila (ToM) festival, and Cecille Araneta, the so-called head of the claimed not-for-profit International Entertainment Company (IEC).

The duo plus podcaster Ramon Datol and Danna Luna are the principals that call the shots in the coming ToM, if ever it will materialize in summer. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd02DO503DU).

I honestly wasted more than hour watching and listening to Mangante and Araneta chatted about what the "bayan" wanted to know, but I need to see what that program was all about. I said to myself that if this was the kind of programming being dispensed to the community, then we're all fucked! Is Datol not enough?

Well, I had to endure the nonsense to get an idea of what a ToM talk show is. During the commercial break, I noticed that one of the advertisers is a company called "iexcel media" or "iexcel printing services" or "iexcel media printing services". 

What really caught my attention is the name inscribed in the ad, which is "Cecille Araneta" with a phone number and an address at 3770 Bathurst St., the same area where three purported not-for-profit entities are quartered, namely, International Taste of Manila (ITM) under PESO or Philippine Community Events and Services Ontario, the International Entertainment Company (IEC), and "Taste of Manila 2021 Virtual Event Presentation". 

After exhausting my time looking, I finally came to believe that this, again, is a dummy agency. It's no different from the other enterprise Araneta supposedly heads, the International Entertainment Company (IEC).

Oh, by the way, did you know that the Philippines has already a "national car". It's the jeepney, according to Araneta. Whew! How can her brain fail her? (Copyright 2022. All Rights Reserved).