By Raïssa Robles
Veteran reporter and ABS-CBN-ANC anchor Christian Esguerra talked frankly to journalism students on how it felt like covering a ranting head of state up close.
Esguerra reminded journalism students at a Journalists Roundtable held Saturday May 20, 2017 by the University of Santo Tomas that the President and media are “natural adversaries”.
He said Duterte has an ongoing war against media.
He discussed with refreshing frankness the positives and negatives about President Duterte, based on what he saw when he covered the former Davao City mayor during the transition period after his electoral victory.
Esguerra also teaches journalism courses at UST.
My thanks to Prof. Jeremiah Opiniano for inviting members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) to listen in to the no-holds-barred discussion.
You can view Esguerra’s speech below.
Business Mirror editor Jennifer Ng also spoke in the same forum. She explained why she discourages reporters from tweeting bits and pieces of their stories.
The first part of the forum had Manuel Mogato of Reuters, Jennifer Ng of Business Mirror and Christian Esquerra of ABS-CBN-ANC.
To view Mogato’s presentation, click on this link.
john c. jacinto says
The Fentanyl addict has declared Martial Law in the whole of Mindanao. If there is no active resistance now, next would be the whole country. This mad man is bent on destroying our democratic way of life and replacing it with an evil dictatorship that kowtows to the Chinese and Russian governments.
canadadry says
Du30 goes crackpot, declares Fentanyl Martial law
finally, the end is near…
Faithandreason says
We should realize that there is an on-going spiritual battle in the world. There are leaders who follow the philosophy that ..’moral criteria does not need to be applied to politics…’ on the contrary it is the only way. What this president and the administration is doing is to sell to the masses pure humanistic solutions (i.e. we do not need a spiritual life to be happy, thus it is ok to kill, to curse to intimidate etc.). We should remind ourselves that we need courage to face the truth. Since our body is doomed to die our task on earth evidently must be more of spiritual in nature. The body and the spirit can never be separated.
greenpea says
For how long are we going to pretend that we are still a free people and that we function under a constitution where truth is honored and is the basis of our laws that guarantees our rights?
For how long are we going to accept that PDu30’s War on Drugs is real and not a cruel, murderous hoax? There is no War on Drugs. There is only a War on Truth, a war against the people. Our nation now is in the process of being dissolved.
We are not exactly blameless for we all have a part in letting matter happen this way. The task ahead is not just to resist. It will eventually be to remake our country.
It will be interesting to know how local journalists -by themselves and with the people – defend freedom under attack.