Learning to CommYOUnicate

You're on your social media feed and scrolling through an onslaught of cute animal videos, badly-angled selfies, a text-filled post full of grammatical errors and misused #hashtags, and this month’s trending meme. It was a usual day on the internet world.

You stopped your thumb over ashared news article link claiming that a famous celebrity just died from a terrible accident. 

You were shocked. Without a second thought, you shared the post and expressed your condolences with a lot of crying emojis.

Minutes later, your friend sent a private message, telling you that the celebrity didn’t die. You didn’t double-check or even read the whole article itself before sharing it.

Oops, you just contributed to the spread of misinformation. 

What you just read is my feeble attempt to apply what I learned about feature writing during Cemex Philippines’CommYOUnicate Workshop on News Writing and Photography in the Era of Fake News.

With fellow public information officers like the staff of PIA-7 and communication students, we had the pleasure to learn from independent journalist and 2014 Persephone Miel Fellow Ana Santos and award-winning photojournalist Raffy Lerma.

Eyes were glued on one of the resource speakers, Raffy Lerma, as he discussed about photography basics.

I've attended quite a number of seminars since college days but this was one of those that kept me awake and made me regret every bathroom break. 

Among the workshop freebies were these fantastic(ker) stickers! I love the puns.

THE MORNING SESSION: Feature Writing and Fake News

Early in the first session, the charming and eloquent Ana Santos let us close our eyes as she read excerpts from different feature articles.

Fromthe mountains of Kalinga with a century-old tattoo artist and to the war-torn Marawi alongside soldiers, it felt like I traveled through the stories. She said that’s how you can tell if it’s a good write-up: the writer should be able to take you there.

The exercise helped usunderstand her points that feature articles should be captivating, poignant, and moving. In writing a great feature article, it has to be deeply rooted and carries weight.

“It should move you. That’s the power your writing should have. You get a lot of these from closely-observed details,” she shared.

She differentiated news and feature articles, gave feature article examples and creative tips and techniques.

Ana Santos give us tip and techniques on creative writing.

There were other fun exercises throughout her session such as writing our individual stories in ten words or less and identifying fake news from real news.

It was also a pleasure to hear her many insights and colorful behind-the-scenes from her experience as a journalist.Her energy was infectious.

 There were good questions from the audience like on writing features on marginalized sectors or sensitive topics, or interviewing people.

“Be respectful in how you frame the narrative. Be a person first," she answered.

On the second part of her session, we identified fake news and its different faces. Since it’s already a challenge to point out what fake news is, giving them names is a start.

I particularly kept in mind her differentiating misinformation and disinformation. You can tell them apart in the intent. When you unintentionally share false information, it’s misinformation. There is still room for you to correct that. However, when you deliberately share fake information, knowing fully well that it is false, it falls under disinformation. The latter is what generators of fake news intent to do.

Why do fake news exists? Fake news happen because people make money from it, said Santos.

It also has grave affects or implications. Santos explained it with one of Mocha Uson’sposts. You can get the gist of ithere. (insert hyperlink https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/186105-pcoo-mocha-uson-misleading-marawi-photo)

If the Marawi refugees, who have been stuck in evacuation centers for the entirety of the siege since May 23, read that post and think it’s true, they will feel excited and want to go home. What if they try and find a way to sneak in past the military? She raised that this is very dangerous since there are still undetonated bombs and remaining rebels hiding in the city. Movements are still limited and some soldiers have accidentally set those bombs off.

I realized from her insight that fake news can deeply and negatively impact on real people and cause potential harm.

Santos imparted the5 Cs of Fact Checking: Context, Credibility, Construction, Corroboration and Compare. (insert link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf8mjbVRqao)You can take these five points in mind to analyze the information if is fake news or not. 

AFTERNOON SESSION: Basic Photography and the Power of Photojournalism

Raffy Lerma shared his adventures as a photojournalist.

Raffy Lerma began with his beginnings on the photojournalism journey and his experiences. He worked at the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Manila for 12 years and recently became an independent photojournalist focusing on documenting the Philippines’s war on drugs.

He showed us the basics of photography and even opened up his cameras to show the internal parts.

Seeing him expose his camera to us was quite a distressing sight for me knowing it could cause damage to it! He assured us that it’s fine (well, he’s a professional after all) but he still warned us that we shouldn’t expose the camera like that especially under direct light.

He showed his shots during the 2015 SEA games to show how we wonderfully worked out the shutter speeds. He also presented photos by other journalists so we can further understand how the aperture, depth of field and ISO worked.

Later on, he discussed on the power of photojournalism like how it build the opposition that lead to US withdrawal during the Vietnam War.

He also showed his photo entitled,  “Lamentation” showing Jennelyn Olaires holding her husband Michael Siaron. The viral photo that looked like Michelangelo's Pietà bannered on Philippine Daily Inquirer last  January 24, 2016.

He told us about the night behind this emotional photo. This lead to his sharing on his first six months coverage on the war on drugs and his perceptions of it. Many still bash this photo for allegedly being fake or staged to Lerma’s frustration.

The Code of Ethics by the Photojournalists Center of the Philippines was also brought up. One of the attendees raised the ethical question regarding showing faces of children or the dead. Lerma answered that photojournalism ethics can sometimes be restrictive and ‘we have to challenge that.’ He explained further that it sometimes not to shock people but to go for the reality and expose those things.

There is a thin line between ethics and good intentions. What I understand from Lerma’s insight is to show truth and human emotion that will spark action and dialogue through photojournalism.

We learned further on photo elements and photo captioning.

The rich and productive session ended with a little photography workshop in groups. We were asked to take

One of the photos our group showed was of me flipping my hair. We got insights on this from the speakers like how the background is very distracting and that we could have found a better angle. Shot by FORWARD Publications Editor-in-Chief Delta DyreckaLetegio 

photos that are overexposed, silhouette, graphic, action, and has a depth of field and put captions. Outside our venue was a pool with a great view so it was a good place to take great photos!

Each group presented it and Santos and Lerma gave constructive criticisms on how to make the photos or captions better.

I really appreciate the workshop and it’s one of the best ones I’ve joined. Cheers to Cemex Philippines for holding the workshop and for the eloquent speakers for the amazing experience!

by: Ayin Visitacion