Even in a freewheeling democracy like the Philippines, can a free press truly stand free? Despite the absence of censorship, many factors mitigate against it. Newspapers and other media outlets tailor the news to sell, and to advance the interests of their owners. Governments also seek to shape the news. So do politicians, tycoons, and the military. It is hard to stand free of such forces. Yet, SHEILA CORONEL believes the press must strive to do so. Philippine democracy needs an honest watchdog. As leader of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, she is strengthening her country's Fourth Estate.
Filipinos tend to agree that the press should be feisty and free. And so it was in the early decades of Philippine independence. CORONEL was only fourteen, however, when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and gagged the country's press. She took up political science at the University of the Philippines and intended to study the law, as her father had done. But instead she began writing for Philippine Panorama magazine. And when, in 1983, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., cracked the edifice of Marcos?s power and the Philippine press stirred tentatively back to life, CORONEL says, "It became compelling to be a journalist." She never looked back.
In the mid-1980s, CORONEL covered the movement to bring Marcos down and emerged as one of the bright young chroniclers of the EDSA Revolution. Afterwards, she sealed her reputation at the Manila Chronicle with probing stories presented in flawless English. Her work appeared in the New York Times and The Guardian of England. Growing frustrated with the constraints of a conventional newsroom, in 1989 she and eight like-minded reporters founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). CORONEL became executive director only by default, she says. Even so, except for one year, she has led the Center ever since.
Investigative journalism requires painstaking research. Reporters conduct extensive interviews and spend hours and days poring over government, bank, and court documents; business records; and electronic data bases. At the Center, CORONEL and her partners used techniques like these to develop in-depth stories of public interest and to probe subjects ordinarily held secret behind layers of power. They then marketed the stories through the mainstream press. Meanwhile, through fellowships and training programs, the Center mentored younger reporters in the tools of the trade.
Finding its stride under CORONEL, PCIJ plumbed the state of the nation. It probed attempts by military power-grabbers and their political allies to overthrow President Corazon Aquino. It exposed the role of officials and politicians and military men in massive illegal logging operations. It examined the suffocating grip of political clans and bosses on Philippine towns and provinces. And it exposed shocking corruption in the Supreme Court, in the president's cabinet, in government agencies, and in the country's newsrooms. The Center spared no legitimate target and, year by year, it gained credibility. This became clear when PCIJ's scrupulous reporting played a key role in scrutinizing the anomalies of Joseph Estrada's presidency and helped set the stage for the president's eventual impeachment and dramatic ouster.
CORONEL, now forty-five, avoids publicity and applies herself tirelessly to the work of the Center. Today, hundreds of articles and many books and documentary films and PCIJ's own magazine testify to the Center's remarkable productivity and influence under her management. They also reflect her hopeful commitment to Philippine democracy.
"We are not as cynical about our audience as many others are," she says. "We believe in the power of an informed citizenry."
In electing SHEILA CORONEL to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes her leading a groundbreaking collaborative effort to develop investigative journalism as a critical component of democratic discourse in the Philippines.
