Hold the line

It is such a feat for Philippine journalism that our very own Maria Ressa was given the Nobel Peace Prize. Heaven and earth moved for her to be able to fly to Oslo, Norway, where she accepted her award. She is regarded as the vanguard of truth, who held the line for balanced, fair, and critical journalism. We may congratulate her and feel proud of her feat because she is Filipino, but truth be told there was not enough support to begin with anyway.

We live in a time where it is unsafe to practice journalism. There are hundreds of them around the world who have been imprisoned, exiled, and killed because of their job to watch the government. Recently, Jess Malabanan, a journalist based in Samar, was gunned down. The suspect in his death is still unknown as authorities are still investigating, but if we trace it to his line of work, he did well in the reportage of the drug war.

On the ground today, there are a lot of cub reporters who are leaving their news outlets after a short period of immersing in the field. They are the ones who are still young, stellar, and have an ideal mindset but have found this dream career to be short of what they expected. The truth is, it doesn't pay the bills as much as their passion fueled their daily grind. In retrospect, that is why corruption in the media still exists because the wage just does not compensate for the daily hard work in the field.

Ethics and morals are compromised because we all need to survive. The past glimmer of this craft is now obliterated to a mere speck because social media fan pages do it better, at least for some. In some instances, the narrative has now changed. It is the legitimate media making up stories and being biased, while pages with a following reaching millions are what we should believe in. That's a lost opportunity to educate the citizenry. Media has lost itself to the modern world.

So when Ressa says we should hold the line, I could not help but ask myself if there was a line to hold. The audience has become so complex that it evolves every day. The attention span of an individual lessens each day and the engagement to hold their interest is lost somehow. Some find the way to get them back is through sensational posts or those that are trivial. None of these matter in real journalism.

While we laud ourselves for our performance in journalism we should also ask ourselves, have we been supportive of the watchdogs? Did we not resort to some PR releases by government agencies as a source of our daily information because it is easier and it feels good to digest? Did we not give up on listening to radio commentaries because on-demand music gives us a better mood? The list could go on. If the line still exists I'd like to grab it with both hands. We need to hold it well.