There is no denying that when Leonilo “Toots” Escalada, a radio station manager in General Santos City in Mindanao, talks about the reshaping of local communities he sounds more like a development worker, or a politician, rather than a journalist.

And he does not confine himself to the booth when airing his daily program, Barangay Agong, which takes its name after the station. He brings his program to where the action is --- the barangays (villages) of General Santos where Escalada actually facilitates discussions of current issues.

“It’s both encouraging and fulfilling when I see and hear ordinary people becoming part of the process of shaping the news of the day --- especially in remote barangays where access to information and grievance is not readily available and where people cannot relate with government," says Escalada.

‘It means they are thinking more critically and slowly looking within themselves for solutions to some of the issues or problems facing their community,” he adds.

By all indications, the disconnection between citizens and democratic structures noted by Escalada in the barangays of General Santos is seeping into the socio-political fabric of other local communities in the country. Journalists in the provinces like Escalada are realizing that people are not taking advantage of the opportunities for popular participation offered by the Local Government Code as a decentralizing and democratizing mode.

One probable reason is that critical information does not get to the communities or is to some extent flawed, resulting in a skewed understanding of local governance and the decentralization environment.

Many journalists admit to being partly responsible for such a situation because of their own limitations and constraints such as their incomplete understanding of local governance and autonomy issues which are at the heart of decentralization and the empowerment of citizens.

Argues one print journalist based in Cebu: “What we’re seeing are communities and people somewhat disdaining public life; they are not actively participating in democratic processes like volunteering and voting. Or when they participate in the latter, it is with the prodding of some materialistic stirrings. We’ve often asked ourselves why.”

This question was also raised by both non-government organizations and the media in Kalibo, Aklan a few years back when the influx of tourists grew tremendously. While there was increasing concern about incidents of pedophilia and child sexual abuse, nobody seems to know, or want to do, anything about it.

It took the Uswag Development Foundation of Aklan to convene other civil society groups and entice the media and the provincial local government unit to join a series of roundtable discussions about this concern. This led to the formation of the Citizens Council on Social Concerns, a multi-sectoral action group wherein the media played a very critical role in dispersing correct and accurate information.

Says Didi Quimpo, Uswag executive director: “It was difficult at first to engage the media because of their perception of what they ought to be. But eventually they felt that if they don’t participate in the project and look at events only from the periphery, they won’t have the same kind of impact on the communities.”

“We were actually looking for a reconnection with out communities. Our feeling was that merely reporting the news was not enough. We needed to know more, we needed to understand the issues better not only to make us better journalists but also in some ways help communities look at their own problems and begin solving them,” explains Jay Tejada, program manager of GMA

Super Radyo in Aklan.

Today, members of the Citizens Council on Social Concerns believe that they would not have been able to successfully implement their campaign against child sexual abuse without the media which catalyzed a number of citizen actions and facilitated dialogues between authorities and communities.

The Council has since expanded its thrust to cover other equally pressing concerns in the province. With the governor as chair, the Council is also working on it being institutionalized through local legislation.

Provincial journalists also feel that the disconnection with the communities affects media in many ways. When citizens disdain public life, they will have less use for the news media. But being able to see the broad picture from the outside has also given journalists a vantage point from which to reexamine their own roles and shortcomings as against those of the community’s.

As the socio-political landscape changed, and quite rapidly at that, journalists found themselves at the cusp of transformation. It also posed a dilemma for many practitioners of the craft: to sit back, observe, and report or to actively participate and provide the mechanisms for the articulation of community concerns.

“Besides, we feel we should be doing something more than just reporting the news,” says Agnes Lira-Jundos of ABS-CBN Bacolod. “That is one of the reasons why some of us here in Negros Occidental formed the Negros Green Corps to specifically address environmental issues beyond the scope of what we ordinarily do as journalists. We don’t want our communities to merely be sources of news; we want them to become resources as well.”

What is actually emerging in the local areas is a redefinition of journalism as journalists perceive it: that better journalism and connected communities will result to better or enhanced public life converging in a concept called public journalism.

In a week-long seminar workshop in Boracay, Aklan, journalists from Iloilo, Negros Occidental and Capiz studied the Aklan media experience and discussed what they can do to engage citizens and communities not only to reinvigorate their role but also to enhance public life.

The concept of public journalism in the Philippines has parallels in the United States where journalists at the beginning of 1990 began to reexamine their relationship with local communities which they perceive to have become apathetic and less participative especially in such democratic exercises as registering and voting.

Several cases of successful public, or civic, journalism as it is sometimes called in the US, have been documented by the Pew Center for Public Journalism and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. These cases reflect initiatives by journalists and media organizations to reconnect with their communities and engage citizens in the newsmaking process, as Jay Tejada in Aklan, Toots Escalada in General Santos City and Agnes Lira Jundos in Bacolod are doing.

These are not mere happenstances proclaiming a new fad among a different breed of journalists out there. Rather, it is a consciousness that is brought about by a desire to put power in the hands of citizens by providing catalytic avenues for expression and action.

Melinda de Jesus, Executive Director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and resource speaker at the Boracay workshop put it rather more aptly. Said she: “Public journalism, while totally new in the Philippine context, demands of the journalist a commitment, it demands of him a decision to step over the line between traditional journalism and public journalism or not.”

It may be too early to say that public journalism, given the rambunctious nature of the industry in the Philippines, could easily take root only to be repudiated as another aspect of the “developmental journalism” espoused during the Marcos regime. Observable trends, however, indicate an increasing awareness among journalists, at least in the provinces, of the need for media to not only engage citizens and communities directly to help them find solutions to their own problems but also for them to become part of the democratization process.

This may not sit well with purists who believe that the role of journalists is to merely report the news as factually and objectively as possible. Others tend to view the concept as coopting the media into the mainstream of governance itself which media are posited to view from an adversarial standpoint.

But as Melinda de Jesus said in one of the small group discussions in Boracay, while there is much debate about public journalism, journalists themselves are saying that they see their roles expanding beyond the usual norms.

The concept may have also triggered some introspection among veteran, Manila-based journalists.

“I don’t know if I can label it public journalism or not, but after I did a story for Probe about the plight of farmers in a small Quezon town, I felt I had to do something more…so I put the people in touch with the concerned authorities,” narrates Howie Severino of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and The Probe Team. Severino was discussing investigative reporting during the Boracay workshop.

What is really clear at this point is that public journalism could provide the mechanism for journalists to find that reconnection with their communities in helping them solve their problems and at the same time open windows of opportunities for improving and invigorating their craft.

A journalist-participant in the workshop perhaps provides fitting context to what public journalism is all about: “It is both a work ethic and principle of engagement and participation that redefines the role of media in the change process. It really boils down to helping communities articulate their views more effectively.”

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RED BATARIO is a freelance journalist based in Manila. He is also Program Director of the Evelio B. Javier Foundation, Inc., an organization working with media, civil society and local governments for good governance. One of its major programs is the Media and Social Infrastructure Development for Local Autonomy through which the Public Journalism Project is being implemented.

This article was first published in the Philippine Journalism Review.