Ayee Macaraig

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About Ayee Macaraig

AYEE MACARAIG

Follow her on Twitter via @ayeemacaraig
Email her at: ayee.macaraig@rappler.com

Ayee Macaraig, born in Davao City, covers and analyzes politics, foreign affairs and the media focusing on the Philippines and Southeast Asia. She currently reports on the 2016 presidential campaign of Vice President Jejomar Binay. Her interests include geopolitics, press freedom, women's rights, freedom of expression and Internet freedom.

She has covered major national news for Rappler, starting with the first impeachment trial of a Philippine Chief Justice, Renato Corona, the death of Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, the passage of the landmark Reproductive Health law, the pork barrel corruption scam, the 2013 senatorial elections, and now developments in the run-up to the 2016 presidential polls.

Ayee first gained international experience as a 2013 fellow of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA). She produced a series of stories on Myanmar's transition to democracy, focusing on the struggles of journalists and bloggers for free expression. She also covered the 8th United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia in 2013, tackling surveillance and privacy in the post-Snowden era.

Ayee reported about the 2014 Indonesian presidential elections for Rappler Indonesia. In 2014, she went on a 10-week reporting trip to New York to cover the UN General Assembly under the prestigious Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists fellowship program.

She recently did a series of stories on Singapore's 50th anniversary. She also covered the world's largest anti-corruption conference in Malaysia as a Young Journalist of Transparency International, the 2015 APEC leaders' meeting in Manila, and the 2015 ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.

She began her training in political reportage as a writer and executive producer for ANC, the ABS-CBN News Channel. For 3 years, she was behind programs focusing on media critique, campaign platforms, and social commentary.

Ayee was News Editor for Ateneo de Manila University’s official student publication The Guidon and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Communication from the Ateneo de Manila University. She is passionate about humanities and the arts. She pursued a minor degree in Philosophy also at the Ateneo, and was a member of the Company of Ateneo Dancers.

Ayee is perhaps one of the most recognizable of Rappler’s reporters. She is a constant news source on Twitter, a co-anchor of The wRap newscast, and a speaker on multimedia reporting. She is also Rappler's first employee.

She calls herself Rappler's resident showbiz reporter. She has reported on presidential lovelessness and blockbuster crises, congressional catfights and castration, and continues to follow the real-life melodrama of the nation’s glitterati.