MONTEREY, California — It’s a matter of perspective, Laith Agha, one of the Monterey County Herald’s reporters, said as we drove back to the newsroom after making two unsuccessful attempts to find out more about a murder victim. I had gone with him to see how a US reporter works, and as it turned out, there are both similarities and differences with Pinoy reporters, particularly those from Davao. For one thing, Laith and the other reporters drive their own cars, a necessity that not many of us have. But, as Laith said, it’s a matter of perspective: here in Monterey, it’s impossible to move around without a car. There is little public transportation to speak of, and everyone has no choice but to get a car. Meanwhile, Pierre Kattar, a video journalist in Washington, DC who spoke to us participants of the International Journalism Exchange (IJE) last week, decided not to buy a car because public transport there is so good that he can travel anywhere by subway, bus, or taxi. It’s the same with the Philippines, but in our case it’s not a matter of choice but of survival: if we don’t take a jeepney or bus or tricycle or trisikad or habal-habal or, when we’re feeling galante, a taxi, then we won’t get anywhere, and we won’t get the story. Big news organizations have service vehicles, but the rest of us make do with whatever we can hang on to.
As I said in a previous post, the issues here in Monterey are far removed from what we have to face in Davao City. Here the main issues are development, the environment, the economy, politics, and the like, while back home we deal with these as well as peace and order, crime, drugs, mudslinging, and those daily summary killings that have taken the lives of hundreds and hundreds of people. I’m sure there are many other cities in the US that face these, but here in Monterey, things are more, shall we say, benign. But it’s not our place to say that things are easier here or there, or people are better off here or there. It’s a matter of perspective: the important things in Monterey are not important in Davao, and vice versa. It’s apples and oranges, and there is really no sense in comparing one with the other.
Of course that doesn’t stop me from regaling the people here with what he have to deal with back home. Laith was surprised when I said there have been hundreds of killings in Davao, most of the victims being drug pushers and other criminals. He was also surprised when I said that more than 60 journalists have been killed in the Philippines since 2001, and that save for a few cases, no one has been arrested for any of the murders. These are realities that we face, but that is not to say that American journalists are better off: these days, many of them are hanging on for their jobs as the newspaper industry gets beaten down by a bad economy and declining readership and advertising. At least we still have our jobs.
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