Veteran Journalist Reflects on Career Covering Philippines' Turbulent History

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Veteran Journalist Reflects on Career Covering Philippines' Turbulent History
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This article features an interview with a veteran Filipino journalist who has covered the country's most significant events, including the military coups, the EDSA Revolution, and the drug war. He shares anecdotes about his experiences, the challenges of reporting in a corrupt environment, and his reflections on the state of humanity.

along with 2 other Reuters journalists, Andrew Marshall and Clare Baldwin.It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in JournalismMogato told Rappler, he wanted to “write it all down before I forget and impart my knowledge to the youth, young journalists, so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did.”The Manila Chronicle, The Manila Times, and Rappler. Outside of journalism, he also serves as a consultant for Cignal TV.

How did your reporting style mellow, or did it grow? Did you become more curious or did you become less curious? Over the years as a reporter, did you become more or less interested in what was happening around you? How would you describe your process then?Curiosity is the word I would use. So, from the start until now, I am still curious about things happening around me. Exciting things, interesting things.

Reporters in Zamboanga were kind enough to lend me T-shirts. They also bought me underpants. I slept in the headquarters crisis. And then later, restaurants. Alavar is a very popular seafood restaurant in Zamboanga. I slept there. So when the crisis was over, I came back. At that time, the Chronicle and ABS-CBN were sister companies.

You have to gain the trust of the soldiers of your sources. And if you don’t have trust, writing a story is impossible; it becomes a motherhood statement. But if you go deeper, dig deeper, you make friends, they trust you, you get more stories, you get the inside story, you get the background story, you get the top secret stories.

With everything that you have seen in your career, what do you think is the actual state of humanity? Because you’ve seen hideous things, I’m sure. And very corrupt things. What do you think of people? Well, I can speak of the Filipino people. The Filipinos are selfish. They are only after their own welfare. There is no humanity in the Filipino mentality. They’re pulling each other down all the time.

But the thing is, you have to travel light. There are relief goods for the victims and other needs. When we arrived at the airport, we were shocked. Everything was destroyed. So we had to stay in the airport for the night and sleep. The story is about the Philippines and the drug war. And we didn’t expect a lot of interest in that kind of story. So perhaps we were just lucky that we were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In the Society of Publishers in Asia, in Hong Kong, the same stories were also nominated for investigative journalism. So we were not expecting that Pulizer would pay attention.

He had a report made for Catholic bishops. There was a plenary in January 2017, and the bishops wanted to find out. So he made the report. His report was based on 17 active police officers who are still in active service. So when he gave me this report, I showed it to my editors.

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Politics Philippines Journalism Philippines Military Corruption Drug War EDSA Revolution Humanity

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