Deep in the south of Egypt a young woman once told me, “Being a journalist at a local newspaper has given me the opportunity to discover and assert who I am. What my community is and what it needs. Not be told who we are and are supposed to be.” As we near World News...
Tag: media
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Journalism is society’s safety net
A record number of newsrooms have signed up for World News Day 2024, recognizing the positive influence of journalism the world over. More than 600 newsrooms and media associations across all continents join to bring awareness to the purpose of journalism, a trade that is under constant attack. It’s a day to pause; and reflect...
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First, Choose Truth
Journalism has long been, first and foremost, a calling to seek and report the truth. “Truth should be their idol, their first and last consideration always,” stated an 1853 article titled “Truth in Journalism,” published in Scientific American Magazine. “Seek truth and report it,” states the first ethic of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code...
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2024 World News Day: Joy of shared truth, sacred bond and democracies’ self-evident values
(Editor’s note: CoverStory.ph is uploading a series of articles in support of 2024 World News Day, a collective action of hundreds of people, news organizations and associations from more than 100 countries, aimed at improving understanding of news media’s central role in modern societies. Conceived by David Walmsley, the Globe and Mail’s editor-in-chief, the campaign...
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Assessing the global state of climate and environmental journalism
Censorship and misinformation take many different forms. When it comes to climate and environmental journalism, censorship can be enforced by governments or state-controlled media and mis/disinformation actively spread by bad actors. But good information is also skewed by self-imposed censorship in the face of threats, and journalists’ misguided efforts to produce a “balanced” story. The...
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Media criticism linked to low trust in news—Digital News Report 2023
An overwhelming majority of adult Filipinos have come across people criticizing journalists or the news media in the country, with nearly half of them tagging politicians and ordinary people as the leading sources. The high level of criticism is associated with low trust in the media in the Philippines and several other countries, according to...
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They also deserve press coverage
It has become a joke in local show biz—a film suddenly being shown in movie houses without so much as a word about it and its content, or its cast, or its director, to inform viewers and stir their interest. When a producer screens a film without the necessary drum-beating, the biz is abuzz with...
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Independent media’s critical role in social transformation
Remembering the Edsa people power uprising that toppled Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship 37 years ago—on Feb. 22-25, 1986—must include recognizing how the independent media played a key role in providing facts on the ground, which the people at large used to become proactive in molding their milieu. Ninoy Aquino’s assassination at the then Manila International...
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‘On the Job: The Missing 8’ is not a sequel but an altogether different story
I’ll cut to the chase. John Arcilla does more than a good job in “On the Job: The Missing 8”; he gives nothing less than a masterclass in acting in the role that’s front and center in a sprawling sociopolitical dramatic thriller about the labyrinthine corruption in Philippine politics and media. If that sounds like the...
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Why agree to compromise on award-winning pork barrel series?
Late in 2014, GMA/dzBB broadcaster Melo del Prado filed a libel case against five Philippine Daily Inquirer journalists—myself as then managing editor, then news editor Artemio T. Engracia Jr., then associate editor Abel S. Ulanday, and then reporters Nancy C. Carvajal and Christine O. Avendaño. In his lawsuit, Del Prado tagged three “libelous” Inquirer stories...