Pia Ranada named Marshall McLuhan Fellow in JVO Journalism Program 

JOURNALIST PIA Ranada of Rappler is this year’s recipient of the Marshall McLuhan Fellowship from the Embassy of Canada. Her selection was announced at the 34th Jaime V. Ongpin Journalism Seminar held by the Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility (CMFR) on November 19, at the AIM Conference Center in Makati. 

CMFR established the Jaime V. Ongpin Journalism Seminar to recognize journalists for the quality of their work in the context of best practice and media ethics, featuring them in a panel discussion on current issues affecting the media and its autonomy. This year the panelists included with Ranada were Jane Bautista of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jairo Bolledo of Rappler, Cristina Chi of Philstar.com, and Kurt dela Peña of Inquirer.net.

The panelists exchanged views about the decline of legacy media, the impact of attacks against journalists and news organizations during the Duterte administration, the challenges confronting community journalists, and the need to find new ways to tell people’s stories while upholding the core values of journalism.  

The seminar serves as a living memorial to the late Jaime V. Ongpin, a business and civic leader in the 1980s who established the alternative newsweekly, Veritas, to provide news which Filipinos could not get from the mainstream media. He also served as President Corazon Aquino’s secretary of finance. 

The Embassy of Canada has worked with CMFR to choose the Marshall McLuhan Fellow from among the panel of journalists. 

The seminar was attended by journalism students and faculty from 12 colleges and universities in the national capital region.

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For more information on the Jaime V. Ongpin Journalism Seminar (JVOJS), please contact the Center for Media Freedom & Responsibility (CMFR) at staff@cmfr-phil.org.

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