I was in Dumaguete City, particularly at the Southsea Beach Resort, recently for the 1st Multi-sectoral Media Dialogue on the Peace Process, a media forum and consultation on Peace Journalism organized by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process or OPAPP (my friend Felix from West Leyte Weekly Express has a funny meaning of OPAPP, but I won't tell you).
OPAPP Undersecretary Santos talked about the importance of Peace Journalism in effectively resolving conflicts and war. OPAPP is reaching to media men to report the correct, positive side of conflicts and not just the morbid, violent details of a war or insurgency.
Everything went well. Media participants understood the message of OPAPP. Until Mr. Dejaresco (I forgot his first name), who claimed to be a mediaman himself but I'd rather consider him a newspaper businessman, talked about OPAPP spending millions of pesos in media advertisements in exchange of getting their peace message in newspapers or broacast stations.
Whaatt?!!!
"If you commit budget, if you advertise with our newspaper, we will publish your press releases or messages," I remember Dejaresco saying, though not in those exact words. Of course, USEC Santos was clearly uneasy when Dejaresco unleashed his unethical, out-of-the-topic, solicitation of money in exchange of having OPAPP's messages printed in his newspaper.
What a shame. I admired Dejaresco before for his newspapers and other media outlets. But I trashed everything to a dark pit full of garbage when I heard Dejaresco uttered those words.
Yes, media is a business. But why do we always have an editorial office and an admin office in every media outlet? Because there is a need to separate journalists from businessmen. Dejaresco was on a wrong forum, i should say. He was soliciting ad spaces, which would have been nice if he was in a gathering of media account executives.
But por dyos por santos, he was in a forum of practicing journalists and editors. Journalists report and write what is news-worthy and not because the news source has committed to place a full-page ad in the reporter's newspaper. News sources send us press releases, subject to confirmation and further investigation, and we write a news story about it. Account executives sell ad spaces. Journalists and account executives seldom talk about who are the current advertisers.
Yes, advertisers' money comes into our paycheck. But we don't write news for the reason that the source is an advertiser. That sucks. That's not journalism. And Mr. Dejaresco, at his age, I think knows about that. He's clearly a businessman. Not a media man.
Anyway, it was my first time in Dumaguete and i could say that the place rocks. It's peaceful, clean, orderly. People are friendly. Although I still have to see the proof of development in the city, I could say that Dumaguete is one of the best places to be if you want peace, quite, and a good break from the bursting, busy city life in Manila or Cebu.
More about Dumaguete in my next post.
