Readiscover: A new generation of truthtellers
MANILA, Philippines — Launched in 2023, The Philippine STAR’s READiscover Program brings journalism and truth education to elementary and high school classrooms across the Philippines.
While it began as a simple initiative to bring newspapers closer to younger generations, it quickly evolved into a profound advocacy fostering media literacy and responsible citizenship.
Empowering learners early
Schools may partner with The STAR through one or all of the program’s components: the Media Literacy module, e-paper access, or guided tours to the printing presses.
The flexible media literacy program, anchored on the Department of Education curricular objectives, comprises training for teachers and individual copies of the Media Literacy module with creative activities.
Annual access to e-paper includes a searchable database of the issue archives. In guided office tours, students get firsthand knowledge of the work that goes into each copy of the newspaper.
Learners are also invited to quarterly writing workshops led by the paper’s esteemed journalists, with the unique opportunity to enter competitions and see their own work published in the e-paper.
Most importantly, participants are empowered with essential modern skills, including critical thinking, research, and detecting fake news.
Last school year, with support from Ayala Multi-Purpose Cooperative, the program extended these services for free to 781 learners and 82 teachers in 13 schools in Metro Manila, Northern Luzon, Western Visayas, and the Davao Region last school year. Among them were a last-mile school in Mountain Province and a school in Iloilo Province reachable only by boat.
An antidote to the fake news epidemic
READiscover is a response to a culture of rampant information disorder, where a Social Weather Stations survey revealed that more than half of Filipinos face difficulty in identifying false information on television, radio, and social media.
It echoes back to the paper’s beginnings, as The STAR was envisioned not just as a publication rooted in truth, justice, and freedom, but a way to significantly contribute to nation-building.
Now more than ever, we see with clarity the media’s social role: it sifts through information to deliver only the most accurate and relevant, and it holds institutions accountable, thus preventing abuse of power.
Newspapers in particular enhance vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension, and they expose readers to diverse perspectives helpful in developing critical thinking.
By the end of the program, several partner schools earned placements in the annual Division and Regional Schools Press Conference. Others created their own campus paper for the first time, using the provided copies of The STAR as a basis.
True to its name, READiscover encourages young Filipinos to reconnect with truthtelling: its value in their daily lives, the media institutions that made it their mission, and the ways they can carry on that legacy. In return, they document with fairness and accuracy their personal and campus histories, helping truth prevail at every level, as early as now.
