Sheila Coronel to mass comm graduates: ‘Speak truth to power’

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Sheila Coronel to mass comm graduates: ‘Speak truth to power’
'We need journalists like you to expose wrongdoing, especially in a country where democratic institutions are weak'

MANILA, Philippines – “The journalists who are remembered are the journalists who defend the public interest. Walang nakakaalala sa mga journalists na tumatabi lang at tumatanggap ng pera.” (No one remembers journalists who are uninvolved and receive bribes.)

In her commencement speech before graduating mass communication students at the University of the Philippines-Diliman on Sunday, June 28, veteran investigative journalist Sheila Coronel, Academic Dean at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, challenged them to choose the kind of journalism that they want to pursue.

“Some see the press as a defender of public interest. Others see the media as a stepping stone to political power or to money or influence,” Coronel said, noting that this is one of the many things that remains unchanged in the field of media. 

She added that while the Internet has made news production more democratic, ownership of Philippine media continues to be concentrated among the few. (READ: Buying GMA is not just a business deal

Nung 1960s, ilang pamilya lang ang nag-ko-kontrol sa dyaryo. Ngayon, ganoon pa rin. In fact, we see now cross-ownership of TV and newspaper,” Coronel said. (During the 1960s, only a few families controlled newspapers. It’s the same today.)

“When you go out into the real world, you will see that there is a disconnect between the high standards you learned in school and the real world out there,” she said.

Changes 

But Coronel noted, too, the many changes that have happened in news media.

For one, she said, technology has ushered in the “twilight of the newspaper.” To illustrate this, she asked the graduates who among them read the news from a newspaper in the past 3 weeks. Only a few raised their hands.

Coronel recounted how, as a young activitist during the Marcos era, she helped produce hand-made newspapers through silk screen. Today, with the rise of the Internet, she said, “journalists no longer have the monopoly of news creation, production, and dissemination.” 

Coronel called this a part of the long-term changes in post-industrial journalism. “News can break on Twitter by non-journalists or ordinary citizens,” she added. These changes result in a more involved, global, and technologically-savvy audience.  

Discipline of verification

In an era where anyone can produce and disseminate news, what sets journalists apart from ordinary netizens? 

“Everybody can be a journalist and tell a story. But not everybody can tell a story that is factual and true. Journalism is the discipline of verification,” Coronel explained. 

She stressed that journalists play a crucial role in separating facts from rumors.

Coronel cited the case of Rolling Stone magazine, which committed a serious blunder in its story on an alleged gang rape at a university in the US. Coronel was part of the Columbia University team that looked into what went wrong.

Coronel said the magazine erred on at least 4 things: 1) they relied on a single source; 2) they did not corroborate the facts of the story with other interviews; 3) they did not get the other side; 4) they let their sympathy get in the way of the discipline of journalism.

“The skills of fact-gathering, of verification, of corroboration, of information, of getting the other side of the story, are skills that citizen journalists do not have,” Coronel emphasized. 

She asked the graduates “to make sure that these new platforms that are emerging from these new technologies heed to the mission of journalism as watchdog of society.”

“It is our task to speak truth to power. Facebook will not do on its own. We need journalists like you to expose wrongdoing, especially in a country where democratic institutions are weak.”

Watch her full speech here: 

 

– Raisa Serafica/Rappler.com 

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