Zamboanga.com Editorial: Journalists-Reporters are the #1 Cause of Terror in Zamboanga City!

Terror news of any type or hype are the #1 circulated news in the entire world, and national and international news wires sniff out those perceptively factual yet sensationalized reports like flies on stink and feed it to their nasal audience, who in turn digest their essence and pass the same aroma to any willing participant.

Responsible journalists/reporters know this all-too-tempting bait for the news wires that don’t care about scrutinizing how the news is presented, as long as it attracts their intended recipients.

However, there are those so-called writers of news who are either ignorant of well established journalistic code of ethics and professionalism or just willfully put on their shades of gray and intentionally incorporate their fly-traps with the tang of terror that almost always brings out the hordes of flies onto their plate of blood pudding.

The blood pudding writer may or may not make some extra income if the wire agencies pick up his terror report, but it nevertheless puts his name out there for all to recognize. An equal report of substance written by a more professional journalist may not get picked up because her style of reporting is based on her discipline’s code of ethics.

It’s the same unfortunate incident but with different outcome for their style of presentation and professionalism. The pay day would also be different.

There is a fine line between reporting the news as close to the actual event as possible versus the writer becoming the news!

Below are exaggerated examples of news that may or may not have happened in the exact manner that it did, but the consequences of improperly reporting them are, and have been, devastating for the statistically more peaceful City of Zamboanga. Of the top 20 highly urbanized areas and most populated in the Philippines, Zamboanga City is the most peaceful and with the least amount of killings per capita, per year, but you wouldn’t know it because of how the news is being eschewed by the reporters and their papers – but, we need to emphasize that it first starts with the reporter.

Below is a test for your visual memory and critical thinking. These news snippets are either real or exaggerated, but we want you to be judgmental of their location, as many are:

ZAMBOANGA CITY – A terrorist inspired fragmentation bomb exploded right outside a busy trash collection center in the nation’s capital city of more than fifteen million people, killing a young homeless child who was twelve years old, and five others who were seriously injured and rushed to a nearby Manila hospital.

ZAMBOANGA CITY – The Abu-Sayaff terror group attacked and killed two bystanders and caused severe injuries to ten other civilians nearby when a homemade fragmentation bomb device was found in the island of Basilan,

ZAMBOANGA CITY – A total of 3,357 murders have been committed so far this year according to the Philippine National Police representative Joseph Santiago, for the months of January 1 to June 30, for the entire region of the country.

Police statistics for the first semester show that Southern Tagalog (meaning: Luzon) had reported the most number of murder cases at 464; followed by Central Visayas, 321 cases; Metro Manila, 311; Davao Region, 292; Western Visayas, 252; Eastern Visayas, 231; Central Luzon, 228; Ilocos, 192; Bicol, 187; Northern Mindanao, 178; the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), 141; Zamboanga Peninsula, 140 (Zamboanga City, 5); Soccksargen and Caraga, 133 each; Cagayan Valley, 100; and the Cordillera Administrative Region, 54.

If you are an international reader, a potential tourist traveler to the area wanting to find out the latest news before deciding on making the trip, would something about the news report stick out in your mind? The answer has been definitely yes - ZAMBOANGA CITY! The bad news being reported is tied in to Zamboanga City, real or perceived, and the effects are devastating to the City of Zamboanga and its peaceful people.

The reporter/journalist and their editors/newspaper will have to shoulder the responsibility of causing those perceived terror (error!) reports. It would be prudent to help guide the readers properly by labeling your reports accordingly. We highly suggest you stamp your locations correctly, and if you are not on location and are reporting from Zamboanga City, then SAY SO:

If the entire news reporting cadre of journalists/reporters and their editors/newspapers were to do exactly as we recommend above in properly labeling your location, i.e: “Reporting from Zamboanga City“, the perception of ANYONE reading your report will be properly trained and informed.

As a result of all the reporters’ errors, they are considered the #1 terror group towards Zamboanga City and Mindanao Island, and not their readers or the news they are reporting about!

Here’s another example - If you were just skimming the news headlines and came across this actual headline from a local Zamboanga City source, be honest and make a prejudicial deduction from it:

In the fast-pace life of the internet, people searching for news online are on the average more current on the news and from many sources. In writing class, you are taught that your title of any story is the most important item of your article and should sum up everything that you write in the body of your following explanation, and in news reporting, editors try to emphasize that your first paragraph should be a cumulative explanation of the title. The rest of the story would pretty much cover the details of your report, ending ideally with a summary of your story.

Now that you read our preamble, what did you judge the headline above to be about? Below is the rest of the news report:

PAGADIAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 06 Nov) - Government soldiers killed a notorious member of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, implicated in a string of kidnappings, in a firefight Monday on the island of Olutangga off the southern Philippine province of Zamboanga del Sur, a regional military commander said.

Brigadier General Raymundo Ferrer, commander of the First Infantry Division, said the fighting erupted after the militant, Tajajul Ampul, opened fire with automatic rifle, on soldiers who were trying to capture him in the village of Kaliran at around 9 a.m. "Tajajul Ampul is killed in the firefight. There were no government casualties," he told the Mindanao Examiner.

He said the gunman was involved in the kidnappings of dozens of people on Basilan island, including the Abu Sayyaf raid on a rubber plantation in 2001 in Lamitan town where eleven of the 15 farmers had been beheaded.

"Tajajul was one of the most notorious terrorist the Abu Sayyaf had on its roster. He was included in the military's order of battle and it's the end of the road for man who had no fear of God," Ferrer said.

Last week, two soldiers were attacked and wounded by the Abu Sayyaf in Jolo island, but security forces captured one of two gunmen after a running gun battle.

The soldiers were returning to their base from a humanitarian mission on a remote village on Saturday when they came under fire. Philippine authorities blamed the Abu Sayyaf for the string of bombings and kidnappings in the troubled region. (Mindanao Examiner)

Did any of you by chance or prejudice deduce that the news title was referring to Zamboanga City? If you did, you are not alone! A simple oversight of a critical detail caused a city of over 700,000 peaceful residents an improper judgment from readers. Most of them are foreigners.

Journalists/reporters need to be well-rounded and well-versed in factual details of place and history. If not, they need to do extensive research to support their articles. If they were and did their basic reporting requirements, they would have known that Zamboanga means Zamboanga City in an historical and current basis, and that the other Zamboanga related places are all provinces, namely: Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, and Zamboanga Sibugay. It is imperative for any reporter to make the proper distinction between ALL the Zamboanga places and spell them out clearly and fully.

It is not the position of any reporter to be judgmental of their subjects. Just report the news as it is, but DO NOT add your personal judgment into ANY description of the news, adjectively or objectively! A single judgmental adjective improperly used by any reporter can cause the entire news content to be flawed and cause for grief for an entire population.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Six countries pledge support for Mindanao peace, development
By Al Jacinto

AT LEAST six ambassadors have pledged support to the Philippine peace efforts in Mindanao and renewed commitments to help develop the troubled island, south of Manila.

The ambassadors -- Ryuichiro Yamazaki, of Japan; Peter Sutherland, of Canada; Kristie Kenney, of the United States, Peter Beckingham, of the United Kingdom; Tony Hely, of Australia; and David Pine, of New Zealand -- arrived here together and met with senior military commanders and local government officials.

"These six countries all support myriad development projects in Mindanao, focusing on education and job skills training, small business development, local governance, improved healthcare, agricultural sustainability, poverty alleviation, peace building and counter-terrorism," a statement released by the US Embassy said.

The ambassadors met with Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo, commander of the Armed Forces' Western Mindanao Command and were briefed about the security situation in Mindanao. They later met with Zamboanga City Mayor Celso Lobregat, who also briefed them about the city's tourism and investment program, before proceeding to the Islamic Institute of the Philippines in the Muslim enclave of Rio Hondo where they mingled with students and teachers.

Kenney also led the turnover ceremony of computers and Internet connections to the school under the program called Computer Literacy and Internet Connection or CLIC.

Sutherland said Canada is supporting the peace process and development efforts in Mindanao. "Our objective in visiting Zamboanga and Basilan is to demonstrate our support to the peace process and development in Mindanao," he said. "We have a collective interest in Mindanao to bring peace and development."

And Japan has also committed to support the peace talks, saying it already sent a representative to Mindanao to join an international group of ceasefire observers.

"We are also supporting the peace process. We hope to help in the development of Mindanao," said Yamazaki in Zamboanga City.

The group also flew by helicopters to Lamitan town in Basilan island to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a community learning center donated by Australia under the so-called Basic Assistance for Mindanao program.

The six countries, which are staunch allies of the Philippines, have provided funds to help the government fight homegrown terrorism.

(November 14, 2006 issue)

The above referenced reporter has a terrible habit of labeling Mindanao and Zamboanga City as “troubled” or something close to that description, and he is from Zamboanga City. He, singularly, causes an entire city population of over 700,000 people, and an island population of millions of peaceful citizens, the worst terror MIS-labeling that can be bestowed on a peaceful citizenry. As journalists/reporters, all of you have an ethical responsibility of policing your own kind.

You as journalists/reporters consider yourselves to be a union and as consequence, should bear the burden of being considered: The #1 Cause of Terror in Zamboanga City!

Editor’s note: We will continue monitoring the activities of all area news reporters.

Q&A:

PECOJON Journalist: "Do you (Zamboanga.com Editorial) have other numbers beyond the no. of murders which validate your observation that Zamboanga is more peaceful than reported in the press?":

Zamboanga.com Editorial:

A human being’s killing – any human being – by any means whatsoever, should be no different than any other no matter how it was committed. To be so - to be different - would mean a value has been placed on that human’s life by another human being – an arbitrary, human, judgment! We're not religious, but in our minds, only GOD should be the judge of that – the Judgment Day!

No one has the right to judge that one killing is worse off than another killing by the level of violence that was attached to it. A life is a life, no matter how poor or rich it was. Humans have a great need to put things into levels or categories – to judge – because it puts them in place, a bias, where one level can be labeled higher or lower, better or worse, than the other. In the Philippines, people’s levels of living standard have quite a few categories, for whatever purpose the government and society gave them.

The same can be said with killings there. Killings in Luzon Island, where Manila is located, don’t get the same labeling as killings in Mindanao Island, where Zamboanga is located, do. WHY?

Killings in Luzon don’t even get the same level of detailed reporting as killings in Mindanao do! WHY?

There are a lot of violent deaths in Manila, the #2 killing field in the country according to government statistics, but they are hardly reported about. If they are, the details of their killing are not expounded on as they do in Mindanao and Zamboanga City. WHY?

Here’s another news quote from a Zamboanga City reporter: “More than 200 people had been killed in violent attacks and summary executions in Zamboanga City the past years“. He doesn’t even give the readers his source of information for the number of deaths he quoted. That is totally irresponsible reporting/journalism!!!

He should have said something like this: “According to the National Statistics Bureau, headquartered in Manila, more than 200 people have been killed in violent attacks from guerillas – about 80% of them are directly attributed to the Abu Sayaff terrorist group, and summary executions, in a manner attributed to gangs or guerilla-style killings that still remain unsolved by the police, in Zamboanga City the past years – four years in this article’s research.” (If you do the math, that’s about 50 people killed per year. It would have been more prudent and responsible – as PECOJON would probably agree - for the reporter to use the annual numbers instead and say something like: “at least 50 people are killed each year in Zamboanga from violent attacks,” but, that would mean he won’t be able to “hype” the facts and present Zamboanga to be auspiciously more “troubled” that it really is, in order to attract the flies!).

We are using the same numbers that other journalists have used in their reports (see reference below). It is not our responsibility to do the detailed research a journalist/reporter should be doing in order to contradict them – that should be their code of duty. We simply observe and take the same reference they use and put them into proper perspective and expose the bias that they use in mis-labeling Mindanao and Zamboanga City as “troubled” or “dangerous”!!!

The Peace and Conflict Journalism Network (PECOJON) is trying to do its best to educate journalists/reporters on the essentials of writing about the news, especially about conflicts. Their (Your) journalism group needs to understand this bias that has been going on for years and police those who are members or advice those who are not, when they make mistakes – especially repetitive mistakes. They hurt an entire population of peaceful people. We say peaceful because killings, in this case we're referring to “peaceful” Zamboanga, are imported into the city from outside “terrorist groups” and do not normally arise from within its population.

New York City can surely relate to that. However, if the rest of the world were to label “The Big Apple” dangerous because it is a continuing target of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and impose a travel ban on the big city (just as they have done to Zamboanga City!), how will its citizens and government react??? They would be angry of course for being unjustly labeled a terror city! Sadly, they are the victims of terrorism! Well, darn it, so is Zamboanga City!!! Touché!

In Manila, the killings there arise from within their homogeneous population, and not from outside “terrorist groups”, making Manila inherently much more dangerous than the much diversified Zamboanga! If foreign terrorists do not target their attacks at Zamboanga, there would hardly be any killings that arise from within their mixed population! That key distinction is the essence of a peaceful people!!! You need to explain this fact to all your PECOJON members.

Zamboanga City is a boring place to report about terror news because Zamboangueños hardly kill their fellow Zamboangueños! Filipino guerillas and terrorists from outside the city bring death with them when they attack Zamboanga, and so did the Philippine Military under the Marcos regime and martial law! If you remove the statistics of killings caused by terrorist groups who attack Zamboanga from their locations outside the city, Zamboanga’s killings statistics borne from within its residents is low. It’s quite uneventful for the media… and that’s why they spice it up, to put extra aroma on it for their nasal audiences!

Zamboangueños consist of Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Protestants, Buddhists and whatever religion they choose to be in or not. It has been that way for many centuries and they all have learned to live in peace amongst themselves. Zamboanga is arguably the most diverse and tolerant big city in the entire Philippines in terms of religions and the types of people who call this ancient place their home.

Editor’s note: We will continue monitoring the activities of all area news reporters.