Staying Tuned-In and True

A journalist’s romance with television
Staying Tuned-In and True
By Cheche Lazaro

IT’S BEEN 20 years since we first thought up the idea of putting together an investigative newsmagazine for TV. In those 20 years, the ride has at different times been uncertain and exhilarating, many times bumpy, but always challenging.
Our very first challenge in 1987 was how to get on the air. We had an idea and the determination to make it succeed. But it seemed like we were the only ones that thought we could make it work. What we wanted to do was unfamiliar territory and we were met with a lot of skepticism about whether there was an audience for an investigative TV newsmagazine as well as a potential to attract advertisers to pay for a show that dealt with issues.
We were like a bunch of amateurs trying to get into the big league. We set up shop in my eight-year old son’s bedroom, transcribed interviews by long hand, and doubled up as PAs  (production assistants),  inter- viewers, editors, and directors—all four of us (Lazaro, Maria Ressa, Luchi Cruz Valdes, and Angie Ramos) for our weekly show. Twenty years later, we are more efficient but what has not changed is the fire in our collective bellies that is still there. Now, the challenge is how to stay on air in the face of all the changes that have been happening locally and globally.
I would like to direct my attention to three points: the changing media landscape, the challenges facing us as practi-tioners and educators, and the best practices that we want to infuse into our fast-evolving industry.

Changing landscape
When we first started out in 1987, our main focus was getting a show together for mainstream TV, appealing to an audience whose main media source came from only three streams—print, radio, and TV. Of the three, TV was the baby, having been brought to the Philippines in 1953, a young medium at 34 years old.
In a way, I grew up with TV in the same way that many of you here today have grown up with the computer. It was the new toy in the store and the fascination with the new thing was evident. I remember being fascinated by it. Our family had a small, black-and-white TV set and programming was limited to re-reruns of I Love Lucy, Lassie, and Gunsmoke, canned programs that were imported from the US. For the newscast, we had Bob Stewart, the original owner of today’s Channel 7, reading news items off a newspaper as he sat behind a desk being shot by a single camera.
As I grew up, TV became more and more the medium to watch.  Black and white turned full color; local programs came on the air.  In 1962, Boots Anson Roa hosted a teeny-bopper dance show called Dance-O-Rama. Archie Lacson taught everyone to dance the cha-cha on Dancetime with Chito and even Gunsmoke turned full color.
Forward to 1987. At that time, the country was enjoying its new-found press freedom after the Marcoses fled. The programming diet focused on what I call the musical-variety tangga shows—mainly song-and-dance numbers. A smattering of talk shows suddenly found themselves free to talk about what they had tried to discuss with great caution during the Marcos dictatorship.
By this time, news had transformed from reading items from a newspaper to a formal newscast—but not in the way we know it today. For many years before 1972, the newscast was more of a gap-filler coming in only when time allowed or when all the choice programs had already run their length.
It was in 1972 during martial law when the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas under Teodoro “Ka Doroy” Valencia laid down a rule that all newscasts on all channels had to come on at 7 p.m. to allow advertising revenue to go to news since otherwise, no one would put their money on a newscast. If there is one thing that broadcast practitioners should probably be grateful for, it is this rule that finally put news on the regular TV programming schedule.

Glamorous job
When news became compulsory, it suddenly became a glamorous job. No longer relegated to the irregularly scheduled show, newscasters assumed a high profile; news anchors became the prime movers of news on camera. They were the only ones seen and heard on the air.
There was no such animal as reporters then. The “reporter” was a gatherer of news, going out to get the facts but not reporting it. The first batch of field reporters came from radio. If at all, they were only seen in video cutaways just to establish that the station had sent out a person to cover an event.  One of the first reporters on record is Orly Mercado who was then a radioman of the popular Radyo Patrol and Tony Lozano who continues to pound the beat to this day.
It was only in the early 1980s when reporters began to resemble what we now see on our screens. They were given stories to cover and went on camera owning the stories themselves. This was a welcome change. Reporters were empowered to go after the story as they saw fit.
As the viewer’s fascination for TV grew, so did its popularity. Today, surveys tell us that TV is now the main source of information with radio and print trailing behind.1 It has also become the most credible. The findings are interesting in the face of criticisms that TV has become sensational, arrogant, and biased. To be sure, the medium is faced with many challenges because of its changing landscape and the keen competition that keeps the gatekeepers on their toes to stay alive.
The obsession with ratings was not a major influence at the time we came on TV. Today, however, in some cases, it has become the be-all and end-all. When competition was narrowed down to two stations, it took on more prominence and per- formance trackers have since kept an eagle eye on the numbers. Ratings are a good indicator of who’s watching you and the profile of those viewers. As producers, the goal is to be watched by as many viewers as possible and ratings help you determine the direction you are taking. However, I posit that there is a downside to the obsession with ratings. If you get caught in the vortex of a ratings tornado, you end up producing programs and adding elements just to rate, sometimes leaving many good stories by the wayside.
They say that competition keeps us alert and on our toes. While that is certainly a good way to keep our adrenalin pumping, it also pressures us do things that under normal circumstances, we would find in poor taste. There has to be a consciousness about the effect of what we do on our audience. It is the other half of the race to be first. It is our obligation to be responsible.

Tabloid TV
More than any other time in our TV history, we now think in terms of exclusives. Our newscasts are punctuated by “exclusives.” Perhaps it is time to review what the intrinsic value of an exclusive is and more importantly, how our choices of exclusives affects the audiences we reach.
One vivid example is an “exclusive” about two women involved in a hair-pulling incident. It may be worthwhile to ask ourselves what value this has as a news story aside from the riveting human drama of two women tearing at each other’s hair. Or one story of recent memory is the continuing saga of the Ruffa (Gutierrez)-Yilmaz  (Bektas) break-up, which stayed with the major newscasts on a daily, telenovela basis.
What is the take-out of viewers? Are we doing this just to attract our audience, or to keep up with competition? Is there a lesson to be learned? Today, showbiz news is a part of every newscast. Admittedly, the bottomline is enhanced by showbiz news. While showbiz news is strong in form, it has to be given context and careful, responsible thought.
Just in this morning’s news, a newsreader from MSNBC, Mika Brzezinki, tore up the script for the news about the Paris Hilton story, demonstrating her disgust with the editorial judgment of her producers to headline the story again.
The advent of what we now call “tabloid TV stories” began in the western world sometime in 1987. TV programs like A Current Affair, Hard Copy, and Inside Edition changed the way they told stories. They focused on the details and blew them up. These programs were labeled sensational.2
Tabloid TV stories are always personal. Like the hair-pulling incident and the Ruffa-Yilmaz story, details were blown up and milked for all its worth. The tabloid newscast has become the norm. Fast cuts, stinger music to punctuate headlines, fast zooms-in and -out, and zingers criss-crossing the screen. Even the manner of delivery has been redefined. When reading the news, words are heavily punctuated in the same manner that you would announce a catastrophe, spiels are delivered at a faster clip, oftentimes with a sing-song pattern, the tone more racy, and the high tension palpable. I find it difficult to reconcile this mode of delivery with the basic characteristic of TV. Because of the intimacy of the medium, you enter into the private spaces of people. It is a conversation you want to engender, not a lecture or a speech delivered in an auditorium. I should like to think that TV is like talking to one person on the other side of the camera. It begs the question: do audiences want it or have they just gotten used to it?

Audience tastes
If tabloid journalism is here to stay, the challenge is to strike a balance. To acknowledge that audience tastes have changed, competition pushes us to revise our traditional views of how to tell a good story. The story has to progress faster, more dramatically by focusing on one person’s story to show the bigger picture. Take good elements and craft a new blend. Do away with the excesses and focus on what is important.
There is a new concept called “Me journalism” introduced by Fox TV. Studies show that today, viewers want TV reporters with an attitude, an opinion about the story they are doing, quite apart from the cold detachment of the traditional way of doing a story. We see shades of this in reports that are not just about a story but about the journalist as well. The guiding principle is that every element in storytelling revolves around the story. Now, the reporter becomes a selling point as well. It is a radical deviation from what we were schooled in. It blurs the line that divides fact from opinion and treads dangerously on misleading the public you are supposed to inform.

On teaching journalism
We are often reminded that with power comes great responsibility.  Media is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. And we make that decision every time we put a story together.
How well do we demonstrate this capability to wield this power given to us on a temporary basis? How prepared are our young journalists to handle this responsibility as they join the “real world?”
When I was a student, I had this funny thought. I told myself that if I ever taught Broad Com (Broadcast Communication), I would make sure that I practiced what I taught and passed on what I had learned in the field to my students… But unfortunately for my students, I became a teacher first before a practitioner.
That funny thought entered my mind because as a student, we were learning broadcasting through books with a very academic approach. I remember knowing the parts of the microphone but never having seen one. Not bad, but I felt that to really learn to be a surgeon, you have to experience what it is to be in the operating room.
In broadcasting, I felt that, like the case of a good surgeon, the real skill belonged to the reporter in the field who had to think on her feet, make decisions about where an interview was going, and craft a story on the run. It was a question of credibility and those stripes had to be earned in the field just like a soldier earned his on the battleground. The anchor’s job is glamorous and cushy but not half as fun or fulfilling.
One of the subjects I was asked to teach in UP (University of the Philippines) many years ago was Broadcast Performance. The syllabus indicated exercises in performing in a drama, lipsynching a song, and reading the newscast. I felt that there were more relevant aspects. Broadcast journalism is a distinct need in the industry that has to be filled competently and should be a stand-alone course. My belief has been reinforced now that I have 20/20 hindsight vision, having worked in the industry for a little more than two decades. There are specific skills that need to be learned for specific areas of performance in broadcast. I concede that it is a personal bias because I cannot sing and cannot act to earn a living.

A suggestion
I would like to suggest that the College (of Mass Com-munication or CMC) consider merging the journalism and broadcast programs. When we first offered broadcast journalism as an elective, it was refreshing to see the students challenged, focused, and motivated by the idea that becoming a reporter was THE glamour and real job in media.
It’s been said that TV is responsible for the idiotization of our generation. We admit that TV has many mistakes that need to be corrected. But there are rapid changes happening even as we speak. And as practitioners, we have no choice but to cope and improve.
What is happening to us today?
Today, TV, radio, and print are considered old technology. Critics say that we have now moved from the Age of Information to the Age of Empowerment.
We are all aware of the web and its wonders—from e-mail to blogs, to podcasting, to MP3, to text messaging, to uploading videos of your favorite pet, to YouTube, to Google, to instant research for a paper due tomorrow. The latest news is that sooner than later, all that will be available on your cellphone.

A smorgasbord of technology
While teaching many years ago, I remember telling my class the story of my embarrassment when I attended a conference and a sheet of paper was passed around with the request to put down our addresses. When it got to me, I was ready to write down my office address when I saw all these one-liners with a funny letter “a” with a circle around it. Everyone had an e-mail address except me. In fact, I didn’t know that was an e-mail address staring me in the face! Today, I wager everyone in this room has an address with a funny “a” with the circle around it.
After having sufficiently embarrassed myself, I went on to share with my class the possibility that in the near future, we would be able to talk to someone through our computers, go shopping online, view movies, take virtual tours of anything hundreds of miles away without leaving your chair.
At that time, not too long ago, it seemed like the wild imagination of a mad scientist.
Today, however, that is already a reality. And we are caught up in the new technology that has opened up doors like in a game show with prizes waiting to be claimed.
What do all these advances now here with us mean for the traditional media? What are its sociological, political, and geo-political implications?
The smorgasbord of new technology offerings is the modern equivalent of the advent of television, or the invention of the Gutenberg press. But unlike TV or the first press, it is much larger and more pervasive.
Second, it has democratized the public space. Anyone can join. If, in the past, you needed a lot of money to set up your own radio and TV station, the new technology now available to us is almost free—about the equivalent of the cost of a telephone.
Third, it empowers the ordinary citizen, small groups, the disenfranchised, the marginalized. We have seen the power of a single text spreading rumors, newsbits, random information, urgent calls for help, calls to rally, greetings for all occasions keeping cellphones jumping to incessant beeps and ring tones. Our recent experience in the “Boto Mo, i-Patrol Mo” campaign of our carrying station ABS-CBN demonstrated how ordinary citizens could become on-the-spot sources of news using their telephones as cameras, making them instant one-man-crew reporters on the field.
However, unlike a TV station, the new technology has no single address, making it safe from being bombed. Our own Philippine diaspora of eight million Filipinos living overseas has utilized this new technology, connecting them to their families living abroad.
But while new tech is good news all around, there are some issues that have no definite answers just yet.
First, there is concern about the truthfulness of the content being served up by new media. Who vets the stories and how do we check if what is up there is true? What protection do you have under the law if someone maligns you on the web? Who do you go to to seek redress?
Second, there is also concern about technology being used by terrorists not only for propaganda but also for recruitment.3 People who monitor their sites report that their technology is only a year behind MTV.
For traditional media, it means that the formerly well-defined boundaries between the big three—print, radio, and TV—have now blurred. The buzz word is convergence. Stories that appeared only on newsprint now appear on the web by clicking a domain to access it. Radio that you only used to hear can now be seen on TV and heard on the web. Regular shows that you saw only on specific times according to a TV schedule can now be accessed on demand. Viewership studies show that less people are watching regular TV because they have now become their own TV programming directors, deciding when they want to watch it on their computers.

Staying relevant
There are new options and ways to access media. And our audience, once captive to us, is now faced with a multiplicity of choices. That’s where our current challenge lies; how to stay relevant in the face of these new options.
As educators, we are the industry’s primary source of warm bodies. It is not fair for us to criticize what we see or hear on the air without looking at ourselves and the manner in which we shape our contribution to the industry. The mindset and consciousness we encourage should focus on what is important—integrity, context, and relevance.
The basic need of journalism is to tell a story well. In the past, there has been too much emphasis on form. But it is really substance over form that counts. No matter how technologically advanced we become or how much access we have to as many options within our reach, the core values of fairness, balance, accuracy, and restraint—values that are as old as the Gutenberg press—overarches even the freedom of expression we repeatedly invoke as journalists.
These values need to be burned into the consciousness of each one of us in the practice of journalism. There are efforts to put these into concrete practice. Our carrying station, ABS-CBN, has outlined specific instances in a standards and ethics manual that anchors these values in the practice of journalism. It is important that we as viewers hold the gatekeepers accountable for what they expressly state to be their objectives: transparency, accountability, and fairness.
While the web is making inroads into our consciousness about our media options, the power to set the agenda of society still belongs to mainstream media. Its power to remain dominant depends largely on how credible, useful, and valuable we make our content.
I started out by saying that our 20-year ride as an independent production company has been very eventful. My life as a communicator mirrors that of an independent producer. It all started out as a dream, a wish if you will, to make a difference.  The one lesson I learned is that you must keep your eyes focused on a goal, hold on to your beliefs, and be willing to stand by your convictions. In the end, I got more than I bargained for.
This award today is testimony to the many people who have helped me get to where I am standing today. My teachers and mentors, friends and classmates, my students and colleagues here at the CMC, my colleagues at the networks, my team at Probe Productions, past and present to whom this accolade rightfully belongs, and last but not least, my home team—my family who has patiently endured the many ups and downs of this bumpy ride.  I thank you all for taking the journey with me.

Endnotes
1 “Sexuality and TV, Enlightening the Practitioner and the Viewer,” Probe Media Foundation, 2004.
2 Maria Ressa, “Challenges in Leading Asian Newsrooms,“ Leadership Issues in Asian Newsrooms, May 4, 2007.
3 Haroon Siddiki, AIBD Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May, 2007.

Cecilia “Cheche” Lim Lazaro is this year’s recipient of the Gawad Plaridel Award given annually by the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. This article is an abridged version of the lecture she delivered when she received the award on July 4, 2007.

Comments are closed.