The path towards transparency and accountability in the media.

CEU Communication Arts Society Talk by Martin Andanar

Good afternoon Dante Cabao, Dr. Cris Cortado .....CEU communications arts society, organizers and students..

Today, it is with great pleasure to speak before the future of Philippine Media. The agenda for today, path towards transparency and accountability among communicators, cannot be more timely.

As the nation reels because of corruption in the executive, the legislative, the judiciary and the media, we are left to our own devices and the civil society.

What do we do when the government we voted, for its path to righteousness platform, refuses to heed our call for freedom of information and total abolition of pork barrel? Who do we lean on when the hands of the very institution, whose members represent our districts, are tied by the interest of another co-equal branch of government? How do we make sense of our democracy when a final interpretation of the supreme court, the third co-equal branch of government, is not respected because it does not sit well with another branch’s plans?

Where do we run to when the fourth estate, the media, the fiscalizer of the people, is embroiled in the same web of corruption? When do we give up, when corruption has overthrown the concept of checks and balance? Who do we trust now when the same civil society who placed the past corrupt administration is also partly responsible for the current administration?

These are the questions I started asking myself when I reached 15 years old in the field of news broadcasting this year.

Frustration is usually the answer from within and then I would look back and regret that I opted out my chance to be an Australian Citizen in 2009.

When I was starting out in News broadcasting in GMA 7, I remember always asking myself if the stories of abuse of government power and corruption will ever end. I recall wondering if the news about the poor Philippine society will ever be replaced by the progressive and developed Philippine society. Its been 15 years and the reports I read on the teleprompter now are the same reports we reported back in 1999.

Hopelessness. Is this what I get for being an idealistic broadcast journalist and media executive? It’s now clear to me why the diaspora of millions of our Filipino countrymen. The sadder part is, you usually only realize it when you’re old, jaded and have lesser options in life.

Good thing, that in the midst of hopelessness and corruption happening around us, at the height of my being stubbornly idealistic........I’m not yet jaded, I still have good options and I look young and still handsome! (Reax)

Seriously guys, the problem is the culture of corruption. I believe it will take one generation and a cultural revolution to completely wipe out this evil culture.

We cannot solve this now, tomorrow, next week or next year.

The evil system has become the establishment and it is larger than you and me. I believe it will take a lot of you and me’s before we can become larger than the system.

Its frustrating but before we can achieve a corruption free society we have to start somewhere. Fortunately that “somewhere” is ourselves. It starts with the individual who has the liberty to decide and choose the road to take.

As Austrian Neurologist, Psychologist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, once said “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

I do not want to cite facts and figures about corruption in the Philippines or ethical standard solutions to reform our corrupted media men and women. I am sure your professors have lectured about this already and if you want to read more about it I would recommend reading NEWS FOR SALE: The Corruption of the Philippine Media by Chai Hofileña.

Instead, I want to share from personal experience. My own path towards transparency and accountability. How was I able to resist media corruption in the last 15 years of news broadcasting?

Before we get there let me first give you a glimpse of how it happens.

I am well aware where corruption flourishes in the media industry. I dont have a power point with me but think of it as a value chain.

1. News is assigned by the newsdesk2. News reporter gets the assignment and writes the

report.3. The executive produer approves the report, it is edited

by the news editor and packaged as a news story

4. The news story is read by the anchorman and airs.5. Radio commentators pick up the story and talk about it

on air or newspaper columnists pick up the story and writes about it.

The advent of the internet made this more complicated

6. Serious Bloggers write about it, post it in their websites and share it on social media

7. The video gets curated and aggregated for video or audio on demand, shared on main website and different social media platforms.

8. When the story starts to damage or before it damages an individual, a group or a company, public relations companies move in to contain the damage. Money changes hands.

But when does one get tempted? Anyone?

The temptation is so great you gotta device ways to avoid it. Besides institutional solutions, from the personal level, there are 6 good ways to avoid it:

1. Plan2. Financial Foresight3. Education4. Clean Reputation5. Join Management

6. Live within your means.

You are in the situation where you cannot leave mass communication because you love it so much. The obstable lies in the low wages that most journalists get.

You want to be part of a plan larger than yourself. That plan is to build a nation that does not tolerate corruption, promotes transparency and equal opportunity to everyone. It is the job of the journalist to mouthpiece the sentiments of the public and make the authorities accountable. But your salary cannot even make both ends meet.This is how I did it.

When I realized that I did not want to pursue the Bachelor of Science in Agriculture in UPLB, a course that my father chose for me, and knowing that my ultimate dream was to become a DJ, I created my masterplan and executed it.

It starts with a plan. The plan was to practice doing voice over at home, in the malls, on bus, inside the toilet. Practically whatever I could see I would read aloud or whisper to myself. I also started hanging out with Dj’s of then Campus Radio 97.1 Fm. I knew that without a degree it would be difficult for me to break into the broadcast world so it was convenient back then to hangout with other students who wanted a crack at fm radio.

Knowing that it takes a lot of practice and confidence to speak infront of the microphone, I had to practice somewhere. You know where I started practicing announcing? Back then it was “in” to have Dj’s speak in clubs and discos, so I took a job in a disco bar and honed my craft there.

The opportunity to practice that I had in the disco + my network of dj friends in 97.1 LS Fm, the number 1 Fm station back in 94, led me a Radio DJ gig at 101.1 Kiss Jazz Fm, a newly formated radio station that was willing to take passionate dj wannabes. I was suddenly living my dream.

My starting pay was a very low 6,000 a month before tax. Realizing that the field was narrow to go up the ladder in the fm music world and after reading Alvin Toffler’s book on power shift, which talked about new technologies making old ways obsolete (in our case MTV taking over the music scene from radio) made me re-think my strategy.

Noli de Castro, Ted Failon were becoming big then. I observed Tv Networks investing big bucks for expansion. It was written on the walls that a career in Radio and in Tv NEWS were the next big attraction as compared to a career on music radio. But I also knew that in order to have an edge in the news, one has got to have a degree.

Hence I went back to college, while working part time as radio presenter, radio dj and chinese restaurant waiter. I was studying and I was financially self sufficient at the age of 20.

First Lesson: It starts with a plan

Second Lesson: Have Financial Foresight

I graduated at the Federal University Australia (as a 70% scholar) and went back home to the Philippines to try my luck in am news broadcasting at DZBB.

Remember I already had a network of friends in GMA? My degree + my network of friends + my radio experience = a job in dzbb and eventually gma 7.

My salary then was 10,000 per month. How do you survive with that money especially if youre married with a baby? You cant. What did I do? Easy to fall to envelopmental journalism if there was no other option right? I remember one of my former bosses, Milton Alingod, telling me na “at the end of the day, the only thing you have in this job is your reputation”. “Masira ka na sa lahat, wag lang sa pera.”

To cut the long story short, I partnered with a friend and set up a small car shop doing rustproofing and minor painting with a meagre investment of P50,000. That

autoshop operated for 11 years before we sold it out. During those 11 years the business sustained my lifestyle and job in television. (My news reputation helped us get contracts from insurance companies which made the business grow) It also allowed me to take up my masters in entrepreneurship at the AIM which led to different scholarship opportunities in NIU, Georgetown and eventually Harvard University.

Third Lesson: Enrich yourself by studying. Whether its a certificate course or masters degree, go improve yourself!

Fastforward 2009, I was already in abc5, when MVP bought the station. Because I already had a masters in my belt and I kept my nose clean all those years and somehow the new management noticed it, you know what happened next? I was offered a management position. Do you think Luchi Cruz Valdes would get me in her News Management Committee if i had a corruption record?

Fourth Lesson: Keep your nose clean. As journalists, “good reputation” are two big words we hold.

Fifth Lesson: Join management if you can. It will give you security and added salary apart from your talent fee.

Sixth Lesson: Live within your means.

No matter how much you earn, if you spend more than what you make, you end up borrowing. In this case, the temptation to envelopmental journalism will be inevitable.

It is about feeding the needs and moderating the wants.As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “If each retained possession of only what he needed, no one would be in want, and all would live in contentment. As it is, the rich are discontented no less than the poor.”

Having said that, when your means of living is based in honesty, you have nothing to hide and therefore it is easy to be transparent. On the other hand, when work in journalism is transparent for everyone to see, it is easy to hold anyone accountable.

This was how I avoided corruption and this is how it got me to where I am.

Before I entertain questions, allow me to leave you with another favorite quote of mine by George Bernard Shaw:

He said, "Some men see thing as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?"

End.