Today is December 1, and in 30 days I
may no longer have a job.
To make saying goodbye easier, I will start today: a
farewell letter to my life’s greatest love State
of the Nation with Jessica Soho.
To me, the program wasn’t just a job, it
was my life, I loved it passionately and unconditionally and this is just to
acknowledge that although I’m saying goodbye, State of the Nation was, is and always will be one of the best
things to ever happen to me.
To this day I’m still amazed at how blessed I am to have
landed this job. I knew nothing about Television, I didn’t know how to write a
TV script, let alone shooting, but I knew I wanted to tell stories – more than
anything in the world.
For only my second story as a TV producer, my bosses sent me
to Baguio to report on SM’s earthballing of 182 trees at their Luneta Hill lot.
I spent the weekend talking to artists, activists and environmentalists and
listening to Up Dharma Down, who joined the rally by staging a concert under
the pine trees up a hill. I went home with that story and another: that Baguio
was running out of land, resulting to problems of water supply and forcing the
local government to develop the Metro Baguio plan to decongest the city.
I was lucky to have stumbled upon some very good research
materials and even luckier to have been teamed up with a very good cameraman
for that assignment. Beginner’s luck, I guess, but my next segments weren’t as
spot-on. Some lacked research, some lacked good videos and others that just
weren’t executed well. But none that made me love storytelling any less.
It just took me into a journey of discovering which kinds of stories I wanted to tell, or which kinds I could tell better.
I found it difficult to shoot news features. Often, there is
no natural sequence so we always had to direct what we call in the industry as
“stylized scenes.” I also wasn’t good with “happy” stories, the running joke in
the Newsroom was that I should never be assigned to write a Christmas story,
unless they want to hear the Grinch version.
Together with my researchers over the years, I hunted for
policy stories. From school memorandums of banning the use of hijab, local
ordinances on community funds for funerals, to Department orders of removing
Filipino as a required unit in College. In the process, we found people who
were affected by the policies, who, in turn, brought the heart to the story that
I couldn’t otherwise write, or shoot.
But my bosses and colleagues know, I have a favorite:
Culture and the Arts. I did stories on Museum Tours in Cebu, Filipino Book
Stores in Baguio, Poetry Slams, painters who were also construction workers on
the side, and just recently, the Art of Angono, Rizal.
Nothing brought me more joy than seeing those stories air on
Television, and knowing that at least one person was being affected, or
changing her mind because of the story we told.
I owe it to my Executive Producer and Program Manager who
trusted me enough to give me that kind of creative liberty. I have aired
stories with boring videos, wrong soundbytes, wrong graphics; stories that were
2 minutes too long, even stories that failed to say what it was supposed to
say. But they still continued to trust me. The luckiest producers are those who
have bosses who believed in the same brand and value of storytelling as they
did, those who have bosses who gently remind them of the ratings game but
always end the conversation of why the stories matter.
“Find a story that matters and then find a way to sell it,”
was their formula for me.
I learned to appreciate that formula better when I started
writing News for the daily production. Every day we write about corruption and
abuse of power yet watch the Filipino people forget they have been wronged and
let the same anomalies happen over and over again.
Everyday we write stories about conflict and human rights violations
yet watch the victims be further victimized by the ignorant judgments of those
we try so hard to inform and educate.
So it was clear to me the importance of that formula: we
have to make them watch the News first before the News can start making some
real change, and the only way to do that is to make the stories more appealing.
Everyday is a struggle to work around that formula, I didn’t
always succeed but everyday is another day to try.
And there is no better motivation than the fact that we are
working for the one and only Jessica Soho.
I learned a lot from Ma’am Jess, sometimes I learned
embarrassingly; when she would cross out words in my script because no such
Tagalog exists, or when she would ask me basic research questions I didn’t have
the answer to. One time she asked me to compute the total pork barrel allocation
of the 12 Senators for a certain year – I fumbled over calculator keys on my
iPhone and still she finished before me just by calculating mentally. She would
re-write my entire script on my notebook in the span of 5 minutes, and when we
were pressed for time, she would directly record her voiceover editing my
script as she goes.
I had the privilege to have been put under her famous,
nerve-wracking “graded recitation.” “What was our GDP in 2012?” she asked me
one time when I wrote about the quarterly GDP report in 2013; she asked this
during the live broadcast, in between reports when she was off camera, so both
her and I didn’t have the luxury of time. I failed that test but learned to
always research everything there is to research about a story.
I could go on endlessly about the things she has taught me in
Journalism --- how to tell when someone’s lying and playing safe being one my
favorites --- but the most important things I learned from her: ethics,
humility and kindness.
Working with her has taught me that storytelling goes beyond
the story, a good part of the job has to do with treating your subjects and
sources with honesty and sincerity and to never, ever forget that being the one
who has the microphone and airtime doesn’t put you above the rest.
I was prepared to spend the rest of my life in GMA. I love
my job that much that I also risked so much fighting to keep it.
Now that I’m about to lose it, I’m reminded of the reason
why I wanted it in the first place – I want to tell stories and as much as I
have loved telling them from GMA, a new story has emerged: that the corporation
failed in its labor policies, and is refusing to change a system that has been
taking employees for granted for a very long time.
More than a hundred of us have stood up to tell this story,
and although it hurts to be losing the job we love as a consequence --- this is
a story that matters.
One that could hopefully change the media industry for the
better, so younger ones who have the same dreams as ours could experience
better labor practice.
I knew going into the job that I will never be rich in my
line of work, I will never be able to afford a mansion or a flashy car, but it
is the right of every employee to have social security.
Saying goodbye will be one the hardest things I will ever
have to do, God knows how many times I've went back and forth, but to not tell this story will be a betrayal of the craft that
I’ve loved with all my heart.
This letter is dedicated to all my bosses and co-staffers in
State of the Nation; to my co-producers who helped me improve my craft, my
researchers who are more deserving of credit for the stories we aired, the
masterful camera crew who made me look good through their compelling videos ---
thank you all for being part of the 4 greatest years of my life.
To my friends in the Newsroom, for being my sanity in such a
crazy world, and for the friendship that makes it all worthwhile.
But most of all this letter is dedicated to the hundred us
who risk to lose our greatest love, simply because we truly love it.
May ours be a story of justice and change, we have 30 more days to let it be heard, and our entire lifetime to make sure this story is not forgotten.
