Telecast news, with the aid of mobile technology and the Internet, is steadily turning consumer-generated, and more and more common folk are becoming dashing reporters in their own right. Hand in hand with this movement is the establishment of the Internet as usually the first repository and purveyor of news and information, among other media – broadcast, print, or otherwise. Whether this will redefine and reshape traditional newsgathering by professional reporters and broadcasters is an interesting phenomenon to anticipate.
After all, whereas stories are replete of journalists getting dirty on the field, zestfully entwined in adventure and suspense – even danger and cutthroat races to locate sources, to secure tips, and to get the latest, most sensational scoops first, the ABS-CBN News Channel now advertises TJ Manotoc as bringing to his viewers just the same brand and quality of news but now in elegant, refined fashion; that is, from a beflowered patio, with coffee and laptop, browsing the Internet throughout the day, sifting its ocean of information for whatever he might detect as newsworthy or savvy material. And if only to score the value-adding role of Internet in today’s news, Bettina Magsaysay sometimes ends with posts and tweets in her weather reports (hopefully not because of our weather bureau’s notorious unreliability).
ABS-CBN’s program, “Bayan mo iPatrol mo: Ako ang Simula” (http://bmpm.abs-cbnnews.com/), with its ever-growing number of “Bayan Patrollers” is a telling example of the rise of consumer-generated newsgathering and broadcasting. What began as a media campaign to cast a wider net in policing the last concluded national automated elections with largely cameraphones has fully blossomed into a steady stream of input on newsworthy occurrences nationwide. This might translate to a tapered need for field reporters, augmented by an army of informal or amateur reporters freelancing their output to the news channels.
In any event, perhaps the encouraging import of this phenomenon in terms of a narrow societal analysis is that we, as a people, are after all, vigilant, keen, and full of vitality in gathering and sharing what we perceive as newsworthy incidents, whether it be gossip or otherwise. In this respect, the public actually exercises “people power” in shaping and influencing its own opinion. Through a media that opens its channels for ordinary citizens to submit their own newsworthy material, we citizens become active stakeholders of an “in the know” society, not only as consumers, but now, also as suppliers of news and information.
With popular constitutionalism, Republic Act Number 6735 on a system for initiative and referendum, as circumscribed by the Santiago ruling, and other “people power” provisions in our Constitution and other laws, it should be high time that we the Filipino people, as in our news, robustly exercise what we are empowered to do as a body politic in our democracy – that is, for us too, not only the judiciary, to say with finality what the Constitution means to say; and for us too, not only the legislative, to pass laws that we intend to be governed with.
Raul Sy Grapilon
Blog Entry No. 10
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