For Mareng Winnie, bawal ang pasaway

MANILA, Philippines - Winnie Monsod knows people are saying airing a public affairs show in the viewer-rich primetime slot where telenovelas reign supreme is quixotic. Fellow GMA News TV public affairs host Malou Mangahas agrees and calls the move “a big, bold push for journalism.”

So Monsod and Mangahas are pulling all the stops to make the pilot episode of their new hard-hitting programs, Bawal ang Pasaway Kay Mareng Winnie and Investigative Documentaries, respectively, a success. Bawal ang Pasaway premiered yesterday, March 2 while Investigative Documentaries debuts tonight. Both shows start airing 8 p.m. on GMA News TV.

“You don’t want to waste the audience’s time, you really don’t,” Monsod points out. “You want to know how you can resolve the problem. Everybody’s talking about corruption. Nobody is saying what’s behind it and what can be done. And that’s essentially what the public affairs program will be. It’s not just coming out with scandals. There’s got to be some meat there.”

Her show will bear the journalist’s stamp of fairness and a news analyst’s incisive views.

“We will present both sides of the issue, come up with a resolution in terms of an analysis and a discussion,” she says.

Monsod will moderate the discussion where the personalities involved will present their case.

The tenor of the show will be just as riveting as rival telenovelas in other channels, with the main protagonists being flesh and blood instead of make-believe characters.

“We reporters know what themes will attract the audience. Love, betrayal and power struggle are common in soaps as well as politics,” explains Mangahas.

But while telenovelas end with the lady in distress living happily ever after with her prince charming, public affairs shows are much less saccharine. They wrap up with solutions to issues, the hotter the better. Instead of tearful flashbacks to jumpstart the story, Monsod and Mangahas have piles and piles of research to bolster their premises.

“We tell the viewers, here’s the issue. Here’s what people say about it and here are the reports,” says Monsod.

After all, the top economist and UP professor doesn’t think the Filipino audience is dumb. They just get unclear explanations.

“If the explanation is clear, then they can make their decision. The audience is not dumb. They’re just being treated like idiots,” she adds.

As her widely-viewed pep talk to students of the UP School of Economics shows, Monsod is not your stiff, boring schoolmarm. She punctuates her sentences with exclamation marks, her voice rising and ebbing with feeling.

Monsod “completely forgets there’s a camera” while grilling guests on air. She will slap her thigh to make a point, call a spade a spade and rattle off facts when she’s excited. Which is often.

With her as host, there’s never a dull moment. And there’s never an unfounded argument.

“There’s no substitute for good research,” she intones. And because people have more sources of news that ever before — google, flixster, etc. — Monsod and Mangahas agree media must work harder.

“People in news media should be obliged to give better content, more insights. If you want to stand out, what you’re saying must be impeccable and unimpeachable,” they chorus.