Volume 7, Issue No. 24
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 Monday, November 3, 2025
~ This is a proud moment for us serving and sharing knowledge and experience in hopes of elevating the Filipino community from the obscene situation it's struggling to breakout. Here at the Filipino Web Channel (now on its 15th year) and its allied news outlets, we care enough to do this challenging job of chronicling life, our way of life, and its ebb and flow, in the Filipino community.
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ROMAR MEDIA'S FILIPINO WEB CHANNEL
A Joyful Struggle Serving the Community
It's Been 15 Years and We've Not Wavered
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"That you have enemies you must not doubt, when you reflect that you have made yourself eminent." - Thomas Jefferson
TORONTO - Each year of perseverance is a struggle towards fulfilling a purposeful journey. No material wealth to aim for, nothing to satisfy the ego, nobody to exert influence on. Just an objective passion to perform grace and charity for the community.
From its inception, the driving force writ large is to serve, mainly, the Filipino community in the Greater Toronto Area, and wherever such community exists, and to advocate for the Filipino diaspora.
As the awareness expanded and the audience grew large, the coverage branched out to the multicultural public, and now, to countries Filipinos call home.
It's fulfilling to realize we - I myself personally - contribute something to inform and enlighten the community by sharing knowledge and experience gained from decades working as an international and domestic journalist.
A decade and a half it's been, and we haven't missed a beat, never wavered in the face of threats, never succumbed to fear. Our cup runneth over with gratitude for the goodwill and encouragement showered on us by subscribers and viewers alike.
It must be said, however, that along the way we created adversaries. Not of our choosing, just to make it clear, but because we've gone into something unheard of in the community - muckraking.
The Cambridge dictionary defines muckraking as "the activity, especially by newspapers and reporters, of trying to find out unpleasant information about people or organizations in order to make it public."
Some sectors in the GTA did not like the sound of it, much less its practice, because it aims to shine the light on criminal activities perpetrated on unsuspecting residents by people occupying positions of authority.
Some of the muckraking we did are chronicled in my Filipino Web Magazine blog (https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/). And it might astonish readers to learn that people we thought worthy of trust and respect are the very same ones engaged in skullduggeries.
Nonetheless, our heart is filled with joy as The Filipino Web Channel commemorates another milestone - 15 years - since we launched it in the fall of 2010 (exact date: November 15, 2010) to fill a gap in news coverage. (Video: Journalist Launches The Filipino Web Channel in Toronto).
Over the course of producing videos and writing the stories behind those videos, The Filipino Web Channel (YouTube has dropped the article The, thus Filipino Web Channel, or FWC) has amassed a following, either attracted by its contents, or repelled by them - a healthy exercise of one of our freedoms.
The number of subscribers (6.53K as of this writing) has grown considerably through the years. That's more than gratifying in view of the fact we had nothing but grit when we began. We aspire to reach at least a million subscribers, but that's not to say we're not happy with what we have.
More eyeballs trained on 1,586 videos we've created, surpassing our expectations with recorded views of 3,185,985. The numbers are dizzying and to us, it shows appreciation for our work.
FWC is an offshoot of my mainstream outreach, The Gotcha Journalist aka Currents & Breaking News (C&BN), which I introduced five months ahead of FWC, on June 12, 2010, which, significantly, is the same day in 1898 when the Philippines declared its independence from Spain.
There's so much news to report about the Filipino community in Canada, specifically in our home base in the Greater Toronto Area, so that a dedicated news outlet was needed. I saw coverage by local periodicals wanting and lacking focus.
For want of resources, then and up to now, to put up a business, I had to rely on social media platforms that are readily available for free, thus the birth of C&BN and FWC on the same year on YouTube and Vimeo.
The prospects were good, so that ten months later, in September 2011, I created two more channels on YouTube - Filipino Web Entertainment and Eats & Restos - in order for FWC and C&BN to concentrate on news and features alone. As their names implied they're devoted to their respective fields.
To articulate stories through photographs and the written word, I went to blogspot.com where I actually have two more - Time & Circumstance (https://timecircumstance.blogspot.com/) and Travels & Themes (https://travelsthemes.blogspot.com/, which is complemented by Toronto Travelogue at: https://www.youtube.com/@TorontoTravelogue). Both are transitioning from blogs to vlogs on YouTube.
All these platforms led me to establish Romar Media Canada as the overall organization for my outlets on both YouTube and Vimeo. (Related video: Romar Media Canada: Redefining Community News).
From the get-go, I didn't want my time, knowledge and experience in international and local reporting to become useless without doing anything, not for financial gain, but to advance the cause of the Filipino community.
Very little is said about folks among us who are real exemplars of virtue and accomplishments, like those we find in the Philippine Artists Group. (Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/06/pags-art-exhibit-celebration-of.html).
We readily believe propaganda being disgorged by human hype machines such as by (scam?) "artists" of a suspicious organization called SPARC which managed to beguile a "foundation" to bestow its questionable community service award to a former driver. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKviJ2tEn4&t=60s).
Moreover, pages upon pages of newspapers are generously devoted to social climbers, to movie stars and their low lives, to rumors than to factual stories, to lavish socials than to projects that enhance our well-being.
(Related stories:
2. https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2024/12/why-do-we-celebrate-mediocrity-instead.html
I thought our moral compass has sunk to depths from which it needed rescue, and in my own little way I had to contribute what I can to call attention to the many wrongs by exposing them.
(Related stories:
It's not just what ails us that I focus on, the challenge was why the wrongs were being committed with impunity and being tolerated by the community. Where's the courage that drove us to fight our ancient conquerors - the Spaniards, the Americans, the Japanese?
To my surprise, some individuals and their friends felt offended by my language, particularly the way I described wrongdoings by the usual scam artists and largely ignored by community media.
Well, despite the poison pens and the physical and legal risks, I am very much committed to what I had set out to do in November 2010 leading to the creation of my social media platforms.
I am inspired by what music artist Madonna said upon receiving the Woman of the Year award in 2016. Here, I am adapting it. She says: "Your resistance made me stronger, made me push harder, made me the fighter that I am today . . . " (Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved).
Sent by email:
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Romy, on 15 years of investigative journalism!!! Proud of you and your Filipino Web Channel. Please, could you continue with your indefatigable crusade? God bless. Warm regards, Tony A. San Juan, BSc., MA., CICM, OTC, OCT.