also truth coming among a journalists we
think about these two things all the
time and there’s there’s a synergy and
there’s a tension there’s a constant
tension between the two there’s a reason
why a lot of media organizations are
called time or the times liebe and
damage REO all over the world called the
times and this is my all-time favorite
newspaper the New York Times many of you
probably read it every day I’ve been
reading it since I was in college so you
can imagine the thrill that I felt when
a New York Times correspondent knocked
on my door to interview me about almost
twenty years ago I had just covered a
firefight between the Abu Sayyaf and the
military the Abu Sayyaf were holding
three Americans hostage and that’s why
there was interest by the New York Times
so you know I tried to remain very calm
and but inside my heart was thumping and
I was very excited about you know for
the very first time I would be
interviewed and maybe I would be
mentioned in my favorite all-time
newspaper so Muhammad Ali young
corresponding uh an American respondent
based in Asia and a couple of days later
she did come up with a story that
mentioned some of the information I gave
her it to Shah yet February 9 2002 and
sure enough she mentioned me she
mentioned me once there you go
she misspelled my name so that’s the
first and last time I was ever mentioned
in the New York Times but you will it
all right so what I basic point is even
the very best journalist very best
newspapers and publications in the world
make mistakes this is to me this is a
horrendous monstrous typographical error
but that’s the nature of our business we
are tasked with finding the truth very
often under extreme time pressure
extreme deadlines I’m never going to I
never mentioned this to Jane for less I
didn’t want to embarrass her she’s one
of my favorite journalist she’s probably
in her 70s now but she’s been covering
Asia she covers she’s in Beijing now and
very very good journalist but it taught
me a big lesson and on that you could
always make mistakes as a journalist
all right I’ve been in journalism for 29
years
Yamaha Millennial Tina Fogg na digital
natives well I’m an analogue native
that’s me
and sometime in the late 80s as you can
see I use I use the analog tools like a
film camera I don’t know how many of you
still remember film cameras before they
became retro then I also have a notebook
that actually has paper and I was in a
place where I was covering the place it
in if you go and I had to file a story
almost every day I had to travel I had
to ride a Jeep an hour to get to the
nearest telephone landline will happen
there were no fax machines then I would
have to call in my story and elsewhere
in the Cordillera very few thousand a
coordinator at that time had telephones
I had to go all the way to baguio just
to call in my story almost every day
so we were under extreme a deadline
pressure but at the same time there are
all kinds of physical and technical
constraints for why we couldn’t do what
is taken for granted today which is
journalism is expected to be extremely
fast and that’s our lifestyle today
everything has to be fast Wi-Fi has to
be fast our news our news is not just
fast its real-time its breaking it’s
tweeting it’s live-streaming it’s
Facebook live it’s real-time that’s the
expectation today but I think a lot is
lost when there’s so much pressure to be
instant my like like most couples you
know my wife and I used to eat a lot of
fast food and then when we got a little
bit older and we started feeling a
little creaky we decided okay we’re not
gonna eat any more fast food we’re just
gonna eat slow food there’s such a thing
as slow food there’s a slow food
movement well I like to think that
there’s also a genre in journalism that
is equivalent of slow food so there’s a
problem with combining journalism and
technology today and it creates this
huge tension between speed and accuracy
there’s a speed accuracy trade-off what
we gain in speed we often lose in
factual accuracy so it’s on all this
tweeting all this Facebook live instant
breaking and live reporting I would
withhold judgment if I were you when
you’re listening and do a little bit
more research because you make us happy
honey yeah it’s just the first draft of
history
kiba journalism is history in a hurry
it’s the historians who actually have
the luxury of combing through all the
newspapers that are coming that came out
years before and they’re being able to
corroborate them with a whole range of
new sources but we still need facts
okay because we need the truth facts are
the bedrock of truth in fact shocking
facts are then not gets in building
blocks of truth no and that even when
you get it right even when your stories
are factually accurate they are still
snapshots of the truth there are much
larger truths that I think journalism is
capable of doing your own truths that
give us a deeper understanding of our
world truths that show change over time
truths that contain context and present
the bigger picture these aren’t the kind
of truths truths that will come out in a
tweet they’re not gonna they’re not
usually going to come out in a facebook
live interview or a live stream or
something that had to be filed an hour
before so there’s a certain genre of
journalism that are assigned to do this
and they’re called long form there’s a
whole website called long form diba and
it’s nonfiction we’re used to long form
in fiction we’re not used to it in
nonfiction and with Twitter and with
social media and technology there’s a
danger that long-form might disappear
but luckily I think people are realizing
that because of technology long form has
acquired new value so one of these long
forms is called documentary and that’s
what I’ve been doing since the late 80s
I’ve done my share of breaking news I’ve
done my share of live reporting tweeting
but every month at leat for the past 15
years I’ve also been doing documentaries
now there’s a limitation to doing
documentaries for television because we
usually have just a few days anyway
that’s the nature of the beast if you do
produce content for a program you’re
part of an assembly line whether it your
work is ready or not
it has to air and that’s where mistakes
can also come in and that’s where you
can also fall short of the truth but my
colleagues and I have found a semi
solution we have decided to follow some
subjects over time and I want to just
show very I want to show a five minute
montage of one of those subjects a blind
child if you can just play the video
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[Music]
[Applause]
all right thank you
what will she do next
well she’s currently 14 and she’s
turning 15 next week and there she is
Illya please stand Illya she’s with her
sister aya and then her mentor and artsy
anyway it’s just five minutes out of
four documentaries that I’ve already
done on alia and other blind children
I’ve been following several of them as a
not just because I’m interested in their
lives but because I see them as a social
window that’s their wider relevance as
themselves they’re very interesting but
I think they’re also interesting in what
their lives their experiences in their
situations say about how society is
changing how society is progressing or
not progressing and I tell my colleagues
you know alia were probably far outlive
me and I’d love it if some of my
colleagues my younger colleagues
couldn’t continue documenting her life
and the lives of other blind children
that we had already started documenting
just to show how society has has changed
and still needs to change alright from
just documenting a person and a subject
over time and this particular person I
came across some large truths not just
facts but large truths one of them is a
blind person can aspire to be a
journalist a Liat you well I showed we
showed her interviewing but she is
actually a campus journalist in her
school in Marikina she she she joins and
wins in journalism competitions she she
has talked to me at length about how to
inter
you about how to put information
together I mean she is on her way to
being a journalist I don’t want to say
blind journalist she says on her way to
being a journalist reciate art
previously she said before she she met
the Sajid she said you know she didn’t
feel art in her heart but then Sajid
said you know you don’t have to see art
to appreciate it
and Sajid actually makes art that you
can feel and there are other senses that
you can use to appreciate art a disabled
child with grip and social support can
thrive obviously someone like alia and
other blind children that we’ve been
documenting they have a lot of strength
of character and they wouldn’t be able
to achieve without that because they
were born with certain disadvantages and
you have to have grit to be able to
overcome those but grit is often not
enough and we saw in our documentation
that social support family supports
school support societal support are also
very very important and a disadvantaged
person can inspire and be an example
when we showed whenever we show a
documentary about alia we always get the
feedback about from people who say man I
I shouldn’t be complaining about
anything I should be thankful for for
everything that I have because here is
this person who has probably many
reasons to complain and yet you never
hear her complaining you know very often
I I get I am approached by students who
have to do their thesis you know these
days anybody can do videos people have a
cactus tick not to technology that
enables them to document just about
anything unlike when I was growing up
and then there some of them come to me
and they say you know I want to I want
to go to Mindanao and an interview you
know the malf for the Abu Sayyaf and you
know these are students you know they
want to they want to imitate people they
see on television I say start with your
families
find all these members of your families
these people are founts of stories
memories truths and you won’t get killed
interviewing them okay start with your
family start with your communities start
with just the people that you know and
then you work from there because
everyone is a story everyone has stories
you don’t have to talk to anybody famous
okay and that’s how you learn and you
know I tell these kids it’s great to
have fun but the older you get you the
more you realize that time is short so
always have a mindfulness the time is
Swift but there are still some things
that are worth devoting a lot a lot of
time to and always remember Yolo
and I’m constantly reminding them to
spend time spend enough time and the
more time you spend looking at a subject
researching a subject the closer you
will get to the truth I mean my name is
Maya
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]