It is with great disappointment that I read a column in Philippine STAR by Victor Agustin last Friday titled “Foreign funding now welcome, thanks to ‘manangs’ in media; donation box is now open.”
Yes, I called some of the PCIJ journalists “manang” (or “manong, as the case may be) the way I called with affection some of the industry’s more senior editors, beginning with the Inquirer’s Great Ilokano editor who died a few years back editing another paper.
But where did my former Inquirer colleague get the idea that money matters split the PCIJ? How could I have told him that foreign funding split the PCIJ into two when I didn’t know? How could I have given him an information I didn’t have? Until now, I don’t know. That column is unfair, untrue and unfounded. He has long been writing about the foreign funding of PCIJ, but he was largely ignored by the men and women behind it. Because he wouldn’t be given the benefit of a denial, much less attention, he would now like to see what he wants to see?
When word broke out about the split and reached the Inquirer’s story conference, I could only theorize the editorial and personal differences the PCIJ people had, no different from the Inquirer newsroom in our time when there were too many discordant voices.
I have not talked to Vic for almost 10 years now since I left the Inquirer, except for some perfunctory encounters in another newsroom somewhere in another city. I see him only from a distance, only because he still writes a column. Time and distance, it seems, have only added disenchantment to my view.
As ever,
Gerry Lirio
Manila, Philippines