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.
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Eyes were glued on one of the resource speakers, Raffy
Lerma, as he discussed about photography basics.
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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.
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Among the workshop freebies were these fantastic(ker)
stickers! I love the puns.
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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.
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| 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.
AFTERNOON SESSION: Basic Photography and the
Power of Photojournalism
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Raffy Lerma shared his adventures as a photojournalist.
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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
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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
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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.
by: Ayin Visitacion
