REAL AND ETHICAL JOURNALIST

Genalli Francisco

What is a journalist? A journalist is a person whose job is to collect news and write about it for newspapers, magazines, television or radio. To basically define the article of Maria Ressa, “we are journalists first,” it means the main role of a journalist is to write.

Upon reading the article, I have pointed out three sentences that stood out for me and those three made the article more concrete.

The first one was – “Treat the story as if we aren’t ABS-CBN because we are journalists first.” The word “bias” does not exist in their vocabularies. And that is what a REAL and ETHICAL journalist must possess. Freedom is so much a part of the human makeup. We are made to have freedom of association, of expression, and of movement. And in so doing, we have the right to choose whether we will be stuck within the perception that in every article we make, we live under the name of our bosses and the company, or we will be as free as a bird to write whatever we want to write.

The second statement was – “Our interest is to get to the truth because we are responsible to the people.” As what President Noynoy Aquino has said, “kayo ang boss ko.” It also applies to a REAL and ETHICAL journalist. They owe the truth to the people not to their boss nor the company. The people deserve the truth for they are the ones to judge if you’re a credible journalist or not.

The last statement that caught my attention was – “if we do our jobs well, all Filipinos will benefit because we will help build a better nation with more transparent processes.” Building a better nation with the help of truth in writing will benefit not only the Filipinos at present, but also, the nest generation.

The main role of a journalist is to write. And in so doing, he or she must ne responsible and must be prepared to justify his or her actions.