The recent move of
a Laoag councilor to give cash incentives to Laoag City’s elementary and high
school students who participated in the Regional Schools Press Conference is a
step in the right direction towards helping further development journalism
locally.
Journalism has been dying a very slow death, not only here in our
locality, but also around the world. The advent of social media has both
sidelined and blindsided genuine journalism as everyone who has a camera phone
and an internet connection can now become a “reporter” by posting what they can
see and what they can hear. Unfortunately, this becomes more of misinformation
and disinformation, as regular people not trained properly in the way of
journalism often miss out on verification and analysis of issues and
situations.
A video of a road accident becomes a source of more questions
than answers, as uploaders or videographers do not bother to know who were
involved in the accident and what caused the accident. And as they say,
speculations often breed more misinformation and disinformation.
To combat these, real journalists need to step up and step out.
But as all journalists know, reports need to be vetted and verified before they
ever see the light of day. We can be faster but we should never sacrifice
getting the facts rights over speed. It has been often said now that
misinformation and disinformation are already halfway around the world while
the facts are still putting on their shoes.
And in this regard, the Laoag lawmaker is on the right path to
address this imbalance. Those successful elementary and high school students
may not go on to pursue journalism in their latter lives but they would
certainly know by then the basics of journalism; hopefully enough to both avoid
misinformation, or worse, disinformation, and to combat them instead.
Yet, we can only hope that elected officials would do this not
just because it is election season; but rather do it more regularly, or to be
more helpful in this area, to institutionalize it so it would really help all
budding journalists in the city—not just to win contests but more so to combat
all the fake news that come our way.