On a learning curve in a world of change
Reporting environment
The annual Journalism Fellowship of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) focused on the Mekong River which traverses several SEA countries with the theme “Documenting threats to the rivers of Southeast Asia: Looking through the journalists’ lens.”
Eleven journalists from Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Vietnam were selected as this year’s fellows. The fellowship is a four-week program that started with an orientation program from June 20 to 23 with three experts on rivers and environmental conservation to help with the fellows’ stories.
The fellows featured issues affecting rivers in different locations in five countries. They said during the debriefing session from July 15 to 18 that the fellowship “allowed them to broaden their perspective on the region as well as learn how to work alone in a foreign country.”
The Journalism Fellowship is on its 11th year and this year’s fellowship is administered in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme to “promote increased awareness on environmental protection, particularly on the rivers in Southeast Asia and the lives that depend on them.”
SEAPA is a regional network of press freedom advocacy organizations established in November 1998. The CMFR is a founding member of SEAPA, along with the PCIJ, Thai Journalists Association (Thailand), Institute for Studies on Free Flow of Information (Indonesia), Alliance of Independent Journalists (Indonesia), and the Centre for Independent Journalism (Malaysia).
Legal competency
With support from Freedom House, CMFR engaged several journalists in the two-day Advanced Legal Competency Training on May 31 to June 1. Because of the continued killings of journalists in the country, the training was designed to help media keep up with the nuances of legal practice in courts, especially in the cases of media defense and the prosecution of murder suspects in journalist killings, including the trial of the primary suspect in the Ampatuan Massacre.
Two lawyers working on media cases served as primary trainors, providing a quick crash course in a two day course which included: an overview of law and ethics, the press and the law, the court and criminal law, and trial proceedings.
Participants learned about the different legal remedies that have been abused by lawyers defending suspect standing trial for journalist killings. They also realized how the limited coverage and low public awareness of trial proceedings contribute to the culture of impunity in the country.
Journalist participants volunteered to issue a statement on June 1 calling the “Supreme Court to review the rules of court that are prone to abuse in order to hasten the resolution of cases involving the killing of journalists and media workers and of other men and women from other sectors of Philippine society.”
Ethics
CMFR also conducted a values-based ethics workshop for journalists from July 5 to 7, using cases drawn from PJRR files to illustrate ethical violations. The participants did their own evaluation of the cases and were encouraged to present their experiences and their insights into ethical issues.
The cases discussed involved crime, environment, issues raised by the live coverage of the hostage taking crisis in Manila, calamities and disasters, and those related to news media reporting on religious, ethnic and lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders (LGBT) communities.
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