A Thin Line

A nephew of mine once asked me, that if media knew where to find the likes of Commander Bravo and Umbra Kato, MILF rebel commanders — known to have committed numerous atrocities and crimes — why don’t the reporters just inform the AFP soldiers and get it over with? That way, my nephew said, the atrocities would stop, and probably the conflict would, too. How does a journalist and news presenter like myself, answer such a question? Do journalists go back to the old reliable: that the people have “the right to know”?

Since this age old conflict between journalists, their sources and “the law” has once again come to bear with ABS-CBN’s airing of its interview with MILF Commander Bravo, it is as good a time as any to explain how journalists respond to an issue that is resurrected every so often.

It is the job of every journalist to look for a story. A good story — a story that both catches the interest of viewers and, more importantly, informs the people of a current, running issue and, most importantly, concerns the people and their safety. An interview with a person wanted by the law is and always will be a good story. How many of us have said that the dream beat would be an interview with Osama Bin Laden himself? Who wouldn’t want to interview the Ayatollah Khomeini or Saddam Hussein in his heyday, Muammar al-Gaddafi or Howard Hughes when they were recluse, or an interview with even less sinister personalities who are just as elusive? What journalist wouldn’t want to tell their stories, air their sides, their views and opinions? After all, there are always at least two sides to all stories. It is the duty of a journalist, a reporter but not a commentator, to air a side and not to take one. Commander Bravo aired his side, his opinions, his ideology, his threats. Reporter of ABS-CBN Jun Lingcoran did not take a side, he simply reported one side of a running story. ABS-CBN no more allowed Commander Bravo to use the network to air his threats to the government than jailed mutineer and Sen. Antonio Trillanes, for example. ABS-CBN gave Commander Bravo no more airtime than it gave government — who have spoken their minds out over and over against the MILF on the network news platforms. And to answer my nephew’s query, journalists do not give up the locations of these criminals because of the same ethics that is accorded to all other sources of information.   By the same courtesy that they have been granted the interviews, the same is given regarding a source’s requirements.    Does a priest, after hearing the confession of a serial killer, immediately report to the authorities? Perhaps the conclave is still out on that one.

It might be more understandably and potentially protracted to argue a case wherein a journalist is informed about an actual attack or ambush on lives and joins a rebel group to cover the ambush. This was an issue decades ago when a news photographer joined communist rebels as they staged an ambush on AFP soldiers enroute to camp in the mountains. The photographer stationed himself with the Communist group to get “the best shot” of the ambush. Lingcoran’s interview of Bravo, by far, is different.

In this time of embedded journalists or “embeds” riding inside the armored personnel carriers of the US and British forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, journalists have provided the public with a style of news that has never been done so before – being right there where it happens. People got to see the action as it happened and not just at prime time. And while there remains a thin line between reporting and giving too much away or even interfering, for as long as it is not crossed, it remains one, as it should be and probably always will be. It is a thin line, but a delineation nonetheless.