AT THE VERY LEAST, it wasn’t even concocted from the pigment of my imagination or the imagination of The Daily Guardian!  At the very most, it was the truth, the ultimate truth.  That was, the photo of four students that appeared in the front page of this paper last Mar. 6. 

Imagine my shock when I received a text early Saturday morning informing me that I am being lambasted over a radio station for supposedly maligning students from a Catholic school in Jaro because of what was written in the caption. 

Let’s see, shall we.

The caption read: “From Protest to Malling:  High school students are in a hurry to leave the premises of the Iloilo Provincial Capitol to the nearest mall Wednesday after attending a protest rally against the proposed 164-megawatt coal-fired power plant.  Students from Catholic-run schools comprised protesters who numbered 800-1,000.”

By all means, it was what it was!  It was the truth – nothing more, nothing less. 

In my more than two hours of covering the anti-coal rally, I was there first-hand to know which students stayed on and which students left.  Those four students left early.  In fact, I was standing outside the gate facing the Arroyo Fountain when I clicked the shutter button and froze their actions for posterity.  Fact is:  they left.  End of story.

Making up facts is probably one of the most slanderous offenses in journalism. Let me reiterate.  I never made up facts.  It was the truth.  More than that, I never had the intent to malign these students.

I even went as far as interviewing a number of students who were present during the rally.  Some of the college students I spoke to said they came there on their own initiative while some of the high school students gave me the “kay ging pakadto kami diri” reason.  While their responses to my more in-depth questions were vague, I never wrote anything else that is slanderous or malicious.

If there is anything I do not want to compromise, it is my credibility.

I’ll end this brief column with what is written in the Journalist Code of Ethics, which the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) prepared and adopted by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP):

“I shall scrupulously report and interpret the news, taking care not to suppress essential facts nor to distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis. I recognize the duty to air the other side and the duty to correct substantive errors promptly. II. I shall not violate confidential information on material given me in the exercise of my calling.”

Leave a Reply