BMPM: Helping the people tell their stories

Their nerves are taut like guitar strings at breaking point. I don’t need to see them to know their hearts are pounding as they talk to me. It’s in the pauses, the hesitation to proceed speaking.

Their voices tremble, they sometimes whimper. At some point they cry as they tell me things they saw or experienced, events that made them e-mail or text or send voice messages to the Boto Mo, iPatrol Mo: Ako ang Simula (BMPM) in the first place.

I am referring to citizen journalists — Boto Patrollers — who have untiringly sent thousands of reports, tips, pictures, videos, voice messages about or related to major news events and stories that ABS-CBN’s News and Current Affairs programs and platforms helped tell the Philippines and the world this year.

 These citizen journalists commiserated with the rest of the mourning world when former President Cory Aquino died in August — sending pictures and videos of their “Cory moments.” Weeks after that they sent out frenzied text messages and e-mails about the twin disasters Ondoy and Pepeng — sending in images and directions of where people are getting trapped by rising waters or of communities getting inundated by flashfloods (when some of them were themselves climbing roofs of their homes to save themselves and their families from the devastation).

 BMPM is ABS-CBN’s election-focused citizen journalism project. While it has at the top of its objectives helping strengthen Philippine democracy by encouraging and empowering citizens to guard their votes in 2010, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the kind of response Boto Patrollers would have to calls for them to tell their stories as these unfold in their communities. The idea was to encourage people to share what they were witnessing, and have the media – like the ABS-CBN journalists – help them tell it. But these Boto Patrollers have defined the Philippine citizen journalism landscape in ways different from how their counterparts in South Korea or Iran or China are doing it. These Pinoy citizen journalists have taken the BMPM project as their own, and molded it in the way they see fit, taking it to the direction they see would be helpful for their communities.

 It’s been an amazing year for BMPM. Statistically, “amazing” means 59,868 registered Boto Patrollers, 18,562 fans in the “official” Facebook page (some BMPM fans have created unofficial pages on their own; astonishingly, these pages count at least 6,000 members), and another 3,000 registered members in the BMPM Multiply site. Submissions and online comments and posts between July and now run to at least 200,000.

Towards the end of October, in another display of enthusiasm, Boto Patrollers barraged the BMPM online sites, email and phone numbers with messages about how voter registration is dismally proceeding in their areas.

 These citizen journalist submissions of photos, videos, voice messages and text messages were being picked up ABS-CBN news programs and platforms. The submissions were aiding storytelling, helping professional journalists tell news with “local” and first-person accounts from communities.

But when the Maguindanao Massacre happened on Nov. 23, 2009, a seismic change began for the citizen journalism movement as we’ve been doing it in BMPM. All of a sudden, Boto Patrollers were not just citizens playing journalists. All of a sudden, they were stakeholders in a life-and-death situation in their communities, demanding change. All of a sudden, we saw the rise of opinionated Boto Patrollers saying “enough,” putting their foot down on things they think are objectionable and unacceptable.

It was a Boto Patroller that gave the world the very first picture from the massacre site. Ignoring personal safety, the Patroller (who remains anonymous to this day) alerted ABS-CBN about the unfolding massacre. Later, the same person sent out a picture that would go down in history as the very first known visual ever to have emerged from the carnage.

Not more than 24 hours after the Massacre, Boto Patrollers were tipping ABS-CBN about more dead bodies, about more buried guns, about more hidden wealth.

Boto Patrollers then began speaking about what appeared to be a widespread and systematic scam involving recruitment of policemen and teachers in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, describing what now looks like a breakdown of the bureaucracy, and subsequently the failed delivery of basic social services in the country’s poorest region.

 Boto Patrollers are also speaking about private armies, unabashed efforts by local politicians to corrupt voters or rig voter registration. Lately, Boto Patrollers are crying foul over state workers’ undelivered Christmas bonuses.

And they sometimes do it in voices that tremble, sometimes whimper, telling you their nerves are taut, like guitar strings at breaking point. They, the people, are speaking. They are getting nearer the tipping point: they realize it is time to stop weeping.