OFWs and Labor Migration: Anemic Reporting and Other Woes
By Kathryn Roja G. Raymundo and Edsel Van DT. Dura
LABOR MIGRATION, which began as a temporary solution to the country’s economic woes, continues to play a critical role in the Philippine economy. As the chief purveyors of information on vital matters in Philippine society, the media bear the necessary burden of providing the public it serves with the information it needs to enable it to understand the phenomenon of migration and to see it not only in the context of the personal lives of Filipinos, but in the life of the nation as well.
Ask any Filipino, and chances are, he or she is related to an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) or knows somebody who is an OFW. The Philippines is among the world’s top exporters of labor, with more than eight million Filipinos—or about 10% of the country’s population— working overseas. Filipinos dominate the global maritime industry, providing 30% of the world’s manpower supply of seafarers. Filipina domestics are everywhere on the planet, and the remittances they send to the country is the one single factor that has kept the foundering economy afloat.
All this has not been without social and other costs. The export of labor has become a major social, policy and economic issue, as has the “brain drain” and the “feminization” of migration.
Missed opportunity
In the last week of October, the inter-governmental gathering Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR), held by migrant organizations worldwide opposing the GFMD, provided two parallel events which discussed issues and problems of migration and development concerning different states, civil society groups, and migrant workers. The Philippines was the first Asian country to host the GFMD. The IAMR was the first convention of its kind organized by migrants and advocates to address their issues and oppose the GMFD.
PJR Reports monitored the Oct. 7 to 31 coverage by three major broadsheets—the Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and The Philippine Star; news programs 24 Oras and TV Patrol World; and online news organizations abs-cbnNEWS.com, GMANews.TV, Inquirer.net, Newsbreak, The Daily PCIJ of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), and VERA Files.
The press once again missed an opportunity to provide in-depth and contextualized reports about labor migration. Much of the reports generated were in the form of the he-said-she-said variety and were mostly focused on what happened during the two recently concluded fora. Instead of discussing the issues raised in the fora, the reports chose to highlight speeches such as the opening remarks of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during the second GFMD, which landed on the Oct. 30 front pages of the Inquirer, the Star, and the Bulletin, which gave it banner treatment.
To be sure, the effort to interview civil society groups on their thoughts on the GFMD and the IAMR provided more diverse views of labor migration in the country apart from that of the government officials who are the usual sources of the news in the daily reporting of the Philippine press. It was understood that both the government and these civil society groups want better migrant protection, but the media failed to explain why their views on labor migration policies and issues were often contradictory, thus demonstrating how limited the he-said, she-said reports are.
While the news organizations did report the differing views of government and non-governmental organizations (NGO), there was little effort to explain such basic concepts as “migrant rights”. Johanna Son, the Regional Director of Inter Press Service Asia-Pacific and a former foreign affairs reporter of the defunct Manila Chronicle, wrote in her July-September 1995 PJR article “OCWs and Philippine Media” that “…a person does not lose his basic human rights just because he is abroad, but then again, can or must guest workers be treated equally with citizens?” One would have expected some attempt to look into this question—and one would have been disappointed.
Neither was there any attempt to explain Philippine policies on migration, considered by the government as a model for other countries but also heavily criticized for its promotion of cheap labor. The local press also failed to examine if these policies were good only on paper but bad in implementation, as well as why migrants approach NGOs before they approach the government, as Department of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr. said in an Oct. 28 GMANews.TV report.
By focusing its reports on the immediate event, the local press left it to readers to piece together the bits and pieces of backgrounding in the reports themselves as there were no reports which comprehensively addressed the issues raised during the GFMD and IAMR on overseas employment, which has been institutionalized with the 1974 passage of the Labor Code of the Philippines as well as the creation of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration in 1982.
The “staple fare”
Jeremiah Opiniano, assistant professor of the University of Santo Tomas Journalism Program and founder of the OFW Journalism Consortium (OFWJC), said migration stories have become the “staple fare” of the mainstream media. OFWJC is a pilot network of media practitioners and civil society advocates formed to develop in-depth reporting and bring stories on Philippine migration concerns and issues.
Migrante International Chair Connie Bragas Regalado agreed, “Hindi nababakante ang isang linggo na hindi lumalabas ang sitwasyon ng migrants sa media (A week never passes that a story on the situation of migrants does not come up in the media).”
As the monitor showed, there were news reports on the different issues of migration almost daily. These reports dutifully updated the public on OFW remittances, kidnapped seamen on Somalia and Nigeria, job openings abroad and layoffs due to the financial crisis, government policies and actions on abused OFWs and their families.
But Opiniano asked, “Ano ba iyong nirereport at ano iyong quality ng reportage (What are being reported and what is the quality of reportage)?”
As past PJR Reports monitors have found, the reports on migration rarely land on the front pages of the newspapers and as top stories of TV news programs. The press does make exceptions in cases of the tragic tales of abuse, harassment, illness, illegal recruitment, trafficking, contract violation, illegal detention, discrimination, and death. Some stories are in the category of “good news” on successful OFWs—the “modern-day heroes”.
But the explanatory reports which could have shared light on why some OFWs have been sentenced to death or are on trial have been sorely lacking. Neither have there been in-depth reports on the impact of OFW deployment on their families, or on the difficulties of adjusting to other cultures OFWs face.
Media’s role
Regalado emphasized, “iyong media dapat ang nag-e-expose kung ano talaga ang nangyayari sa mga workers (the media are supposed to expose what is really happening to the workers).” She said the problems affecting undocumented migrant workers, equal treatment for the domestic workers, and migrant workers who are in death rows and prisons across the globe should be given priority by the media.
Eni Lestari, chair of the International Migrants Alliance, asked the media to expose the many aspects of reality, explain to the people the migration policies of the government, and educate the people on the impact of migration. Lestari recognized the importance of reporting what is happening in everyday life, and the problems of the people left back home.
Like Lestari, Opiniano believes that while journalists look at what is happening globally, they should never falter in writing stories that would improve Filipino lives here.
The underlying concern in labor migration is that after decades of a policy of exporting workers, the Philippines has yet to address the sense of desperation, and the chronic unemployment and underdevelopment that drive worker migration. The policies and trade relations between countries of destination and countries of origin are skewed—as one develops, the other fails. But that aspect of the OFW phenomenon has not been explored.
The challenge for the media is not to limit themselves to the usual kind of reporting. Rather, they should be able to find and discuss the political, economic, and social forces that contribute to the issues and problems of migration.
OFWJC in Philippine Migration Journalism: A Practical Handbook enumerated several stories which can be culled from labor migration and used for future reports.
Economic stories could include how the funds OFWs send home to their families are spent, the formal and informal channels used for remittances, the upward mobility of many OFW families, and how some fortunes have been made and lost.
For human interest stories, the situation of the spouses and children of migrant workers, their mutual loneliness, and the homesickness of those abroad could be written about. Unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases such as HIV-AIDS suffered by Filipino workers abroad could be written up as health stories. Most important of these possible leads are policy stories which include the civil and political rights of migrants in the countries where they work, and, at home, how government policy on migration is shaped, and how the policy-making process can be and has been influenced by advocacy groups and the media.
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