Manila skies

Keira Stephenson spent six weeks as an intern at the Philippine Star in Manila, with the help of an Asia:NZ media grant.

Sultry heat, monsoon rains, the smell of gorgeous food, the smell of decay, constant traffic noise, heartbreaking poverty, incredible wealth, much kindness, much faith, the spectre of Marcos, the reality of a slightly crazy Elizabeth Tayloresque Imelda still very much alive and kicking, joy in food, joy in debate, in discussion of their beloved but benighted city, so much news it makes my head spin, an anarchic Filipino spirit never truly conquered, but  sometimes hidden only to break forth in literal and figurative fireworks, so that at the same time as they yearn for the order and economic growth of their neighbours in Hong Kong and Singapore, they are jealous of the democracy exercising, airport closing, recent protests in Thailand.

Manila gets into your skin, opens your pores to its seductive realities and imbues you with that same free-floating equanimity which allows Filipinos to laugh in the face of poverty, corruption, and some of the world’s worst environmental destruction. Sometimes it’s a bitter laugh, but sometimes it’s just the happy laughter of being around friends and family.

I found myself in Manila on an internship at one of the country’s leading broadsheets - the Philippine Star, with the help of a grant from the Asia New Zealand Foundation. Most of the grant money went on flights,visas and insurance with a little pocket money left over for day to day spending. However I was very fortunate to have a friend of the paper, Ed Fuentes, offer to host me in Manila in his 32nd floor apartment and throw in some free accommodation at his resort on Boracay too. Actually the whole time I was in the Philippines, whereever I went I was treated like an honoured guest, no matter how rich or poor my hosts were. Breaking the laws of hosting is almost unthinkable there.

My stint as an intern got off to an inauspicious start when I was told not to come in for the first week after my arrival, as a precaution against spreading the swine flu which was occupying all the front pages at that time.
When I did eventually start work, they were in the process of giving out masks and hand sanitiser to all the staff.

I started out working as a “deskman”, editing copy alongside several other editors at the news-desk in a vast, open-plan, workspace where at least a hundred people from the various sections put together the “Star” everyday. It was good to spend time on the desk getting my head around Filipino news writing style and the plethora of acronyms so endemic in developing nations. Upstairs were the online editors and accounting/advertising people, while next-door was where it all got printed.

The only people missing were the actual reporters who worked in the field and sent in their stories from cafes with wifi plugins on their computers or worked at the press corps offices of various government agencies. At these offices reporters gathered from all of Manila’s many news outlets, waiting for press-conferences and releases and firing off stories in between laughing and eating. At any one time you could walk in to find someone sleeping, someone eating, someone frantically typing and someone recording a radio broadcast in their special announcer’s voice.
 
While I sometimes got frustrated at just going to press cons instead of being out in the field, the time I spent in the relaxed atmosphere of the Police Press Corps talking to other journalists and gaining an understanding of the socio-political landscape of the country and how the media fitted into it, was invaluable. While the police headquarters deals with straight crime they also work on policy and have stuff like bombs going off and free for all shoot outs in areas of civil strife to deal with. Unlike in NZ, “tagging” was never once mentioned. The police and the papers have bigger fish to fry.

The journalists’ stories of reporting under fire in the provinces or receiving death threats were fascinating as was their stoic “when your time’s up, your time’s up, so you may as well not worry about it”, attitudes. However, several of them also admitted to owning guns even though they “can give you a false sense of security”.

The woman I interviewed from Karaputan - a human rights organisation - told me that she wasn’t scared by the death threats they received because it only helped prove they were right. She told me this with a look in her eye which said “bring it on!”.

I did get out into the field with the Star a few times. Both by a happy accident. The first time, I went to interview another journalist for my dissertation and he offered to take me on his next trip to Mindanao to report on the handover ceremony at the military base in Zamboanga. The woman who had been organising my schedule at the paper had suddenly been invited on a junket to the Maldives and forgotten about me, but she said if she had been in the office she wouldn’t have let me go to such a kidnapping hotspot, even though I was perfectly safe on the base. We flew there with some other journalists on an air-force plane and were forced to stay the night at the base when it broke down. I got to contribute to the story about two recovered kidnapees whose hospital room was opened to all the journalists and photographers down for the handover. We crowded round them as they ate their first proper meal in three months, still linked up to rehydration drips.

I also got to observe the anti-State of the Nation Address rally through an administrative slip which worked in my favour. It got left too late to get me a press pass to get into the prestigious yet staid president’s speech. Fortunately this left me free to experience the raucous party that is a Philippine protest outside. I saw a man catch on fire as he was pouring petrol on a giant effigy of the president and the mad scramble of photographers descending on him as they tried to get their shot.

My favourite story I wrote at the Star I organised myself by getting in touch with the Institute for Popular Democracy and interviewing them. They orchestrate community-building projects in order to foster democracy. They later invited me along to see some of their projects in action on the weekend and I had 3/4 page story published out of it.

After the six weeks of my internship were up I decided to travel and do research for my dissertation on Philippines media. Interviewing different NGOs about their peace-building, poverty reduction and human rights work and how they intersect with the media was really inspiring and I feel privileged that they made time to speak with me. Interviewing a man who had been jailed for his political beliefs during the Marcos era was a particular highlight.
I also wrote a story for the lifestyle section on healing practices on the Island of Siqijor, famed for its witches.

One of the nice things about the Star was their enthusiasm for any stories I wanted to submit even after the internship was over. “Just send them in”, they said. I still have good intentions of writing something for them about the Mindanao peace advocates I met in Iligan City.

If I had to do it over again one of the things I would definitely do would be to bring over bags of lollies or boxes of chocolates from New Zealand. I was constantly being given food while I was there and it would have been nice to have something from NZ to offer round to the large groups of journalists in return.

Also instead of wanting to do just “hard news” I would spend a week on the lifestyle desk too as the chances of getting sent out on assignment and getting published are probably higher than just covering press conferences where you will have at least one other journalist writing the same story. It is also a good chance to learn more about the arts and culture of the country. Liaising more with my schedule organiser, no matter how busy she was, may also have paid off.

I would also look at the possibility of doing more than one internship while I was there. There are literally hundreds of NGOs who take interns but The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and the Institute for Popular Democracy are two that I know to recommend. 

One of the things I wouldn’t change was keeping up a blog. Taking the time to upload photos, research information through books and articles and clarify my thoughts for the day in “Livejournal” definitely enriched my whole experience.

I feel very lucky to have been given this chance to work as a journalist in the Philippines, to have been so well looked after and to have so many people both at the Star and outside take the time to answer all my questions. I hope to be able to return next year to be part of an international monitoring team in some of the election hotspots.

On my last night I went to Green Belt, one of Manila’s famous malls, to have drinks with two American friends on similar, year-long exchange programmes as me. Though all being fairly Asia-aware, we all sometimes felt a cultural dissonance and experienced similar bemusement or frustration with various Filipino ways of doing things, different from our own. We would get together to laugh at ourselves and lament what we perceived to hinder our progress here.

I hadn’t seen them for over a month and began telling them about what I’d been doing. Their enthusiasm for how much I’d achieved in my two and a half months was priceless. “You’ve travelled the Vasayas, published a feature article, been to Mindanao twice, done heaps of interviews for your dissertation, been invited back for the election and you saved a cat!” That sums it up really.