PJ partners and resource persons in a discussion.

As the social, political, and economic environment in many local areas throughout the Philippines dramatically changes triggered by the decentralization of governance, communities will be facing new burdens and challenges: that of making informed decisions but saddled with scarce resources.

The devolution of powers and responsibilities from the national to the local governments also marks a shift in how communities can begin to manage their own affairs, adding to the complexity of interwoven relationships and dynamics. For better or worse, good or bad, decentralized localities assuming greater powers and responsibilities are here to stay.

For the news media, the question is how to address these challenges and how to determine the track of the news that will lead to a better understanding by citizens of community issues. The demands will be great, as it is happening now, for media to clarify the stupefying range of issues and decisions that communities will face and should make. Will media begin to reexamine their roles in this kind of environment? Will journalists remain in their “comfort zone” and stand at a distance as communities slowly fragment and disconnect from public life? Will they continue to watch along the sidelines as measures of citizenship such as voting and participating in governance are corrupted by political expediency? Or will they catalyze community discussions, dialogues on how citizens can identify and begin to solve their own problems?

These are very hard questions to answer given that the media, in the words of journalist Malou Mangahas, “suffer from a poverty of purpose.”

Public journalism provides just that purpose because it reconnects the media with the public that the institution avowedly serves. Public journalism is a concept, an experiment, that says that journalism should not be cynical at all. It debunks the idea of many journalists that the purpose of the story is the story itself. Rather, public journalism invites a new approach to setting the news agenda and covering the news: by offering opportunities for public discussion and debate over what community issues should be top priority and how these can be solved or addressed.

It is a kind of journalism that encourages citizen participation in public life by providing them information that would help them make decisions in a democratic, self-governing social structure. It is a kind of journalism that helps readers, listeners and viewers understand the impact of the news on their lives and how they can actively participate in developing or building the news agenda.

As in any other form of change, public journalism is being debated not only by academics and intellectuals, but by journalists themselves. Some see it as a surefire method to losing “journalistic enterprise,” that quality among reporters sought by many editors. But, says Ervin S. Duggan, president of the Public Broadcasting Service in the US, “What seems to me the besetting sin of (journalism) today is a know-it-all cynicism that gets in the way of the story. The very accusation that the cynics make against the experiment of civic (or public) journalism seems to boil down to the fact that you may not be quite cynical enough.”

In the Philippine setting, many community journalists have shown that the concept is worth trying out in real time despite inherent challenges. One of these is how to tell stories differently, how to focus on the different layers of public life, how people are beginning to explore areas of participation, how they engaged both the media and other community stakeholders to arrive at common solutions to common problems.

Of course, the more difficult challenge is how to integrate this new thinking and perspective into the everyday grind of the news making process, into the writing and reporting of the news. It is too early to gauge public journalism’s impact on the work of journalists and on the communities that they serve. The concept is still evolving, but it has also provided a roadmap for journalists who are serious about their craft and are looking beyond the writing of the story, the airing of a program…to how their stories can help transform communities into self-determining ones.

As in any other kind of journalism, public journalism demands that the practitioner hold on to the basics: fairness, balance, accuracy, timeliness, objectivity plus, stewardship and humanity. It also demands of him a commitment over the long term because public journalism involves a continuing engagement with the community. It is not easy and it is something that journalists must want to do.

Ultimately, public journalism will be judged not on how it will influence the Philippine media landscape but on how it will impact on communities and on people’s lives.

To find out  more about Public Journalism, please read the article below:

• Connecting with Citizens: Public Journalism or Simply a Deeper Commitment to Craft and Community?