Category: Investigative Reports

Into investigative reporting? PCIJ offers basic IR seminar

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

Basic IR web photo

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) invites mid-career and senior Filipino journalists, citizen media, and bloggers to apply for a three-day training seminar-workshop on Basic Investigative Reporting.

Applicants from print, TV, radio, and online media are welcome.

A series of four three-day seminars will be conducted in Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao, and Metro Manila from June to September 2013. Fifteen participants will be invited to each of the seminars from across media platforms, gender, province of assignment, and media organization.

Through combined onsite and field learning sessions, the seminar aims to enhance the participants’ investigative reporting skills and practice and offer a framework for analyzing media killings and safety issues in the context of governance, the culture of impunity, and the presence of political clans and private armed groups in many parts of the country.

The seminar also seeks to highlight the role of the police and the Commission on Human Rights as vital sources of journalists. The seminar will feature lecture-discussions and workshops to identify potential risks and practical safety tips when covering dangerous assignments.

A Story Development Workshop will give participants an opportunity to pitch story proposals that the PCIJ may consider for fellowship grants and editorial supervision. Experts from the academe, national media organizations, the police, human rights agencies and organizations, and data repository agencies will lead the discussions.

The seminar graduates will be accorded priority slots in the subsquent Advanced Investigative Reporting Seminars that PCIJ will conduct in 2014.

This seminar series draws support from the US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Who Can Apply? Mid-career and senior journalists with at least three years’ experience – freelance reporters, contributors, stringers, researchers, anchors, producers, editors, and news managers of print, TV, radio, and online media may apply. Citizen media and bloggers covering public policy issues are also eligible.

Funding The PCIJ will cover: Round-trip transportation from the participant’s place of work and/or residence to the seminar venue. Board and lodging during the three-day seminar. The PCIJ will also provide a modest fellowship grant for story proposals that will be approved during or immediately after the seminar.

Application Requirements Completed application form with two references (see attached). One or two samples of work discussing public policy, development, human rights, or governance issues.

Deadline for Applications Applications must be received not later than May 10, 2013, Friday.

Selection process Applicants will be selected based on the following criteria:

  • Track record or experience in covering public policy issues.
  • Demonstrated interest in doing in-depth reports on governance, development, and human rights issues.
  • Potential for playing a key leadership role within his/her organization or media community.

Successful applicants will be notified by May 31, 2013. Only successful applicants will be contacted by the PCIJ.

Sending your application: By email: Email address: training@pcij.org

Please state ‘Application to Basic IR Seminar’ on the subject line

Note: We will acknowledge receipt of all submissions. If you do not receive any reply within three working days, please resend your application and move a follow-up email or call (02) 410-4768.

Questions? Please contact the PCIJ Training Desk at (02) 410-4768 or training@pcij.org

Have newsrooms given up on investigative journalism?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

“IS INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING in ICU?”

Columbia University professor and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) founding Executive Director Sheila Coronel asks this provocative question in her latest post in her blog Watchdog-Watcher.

Coronel, who now heads the Tony Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia, takes note of how more and more newsrooms are disbanding their investigative reporting units in a move to cut costs and change business models. Curiously, the moves come even as many newsrooms pour money into the production side of news, to make their newscasts more, uhm, glossy and modern-looking. The result is, obviously, glitzy, glossy newscasts that look more like Inside Edition – and sound like Inside Edition as well.

An interesting, if not morbidly amusing, reference would be the investigative satire done in Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, viewed below.

 

But before the eulogies start coming out, Coronel is quick to point out that many organizations, both big and small and both independent and commercial, are still keeping the spirit of investigative journalism alive – no matter how difficult it may be getting.

In fact, one should be careful not to wallow too much “in the narrative of investigative reporting’s slow and inevitable demise,” lest we end up only making our fears self-fulfilling.

While it is true that the digital revolution is upon us, Coronel argues, we as journalists should be far from passive watchers; in fact, we journalists must be at the forefront of making sure that we are the ones who transform the revolution, and not the other way around.

Read Coronel’s full blog post here.

Tubbataha, paradise in pain

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exploding colors

TUBBATAHA, the Philippines’ only national marine park, is home to about 600 species of fish and some 359 species of corals, or half the world’s coral species.

No thanks to a grounded US vessel, Tubbataha is now in terrible pain.

Efforts to extricate the minesweeper USS Guardian might not be completed until March 23, or in the next five weeks yet.

Last Jan. 17, the USS Guardian ran aground off Tubbataha Reef, damaging an estimated 4,000 square meters of the heritage site. That is more than a third of what until now seemed like a paradise called Tubbataha.

In July 2010, PCIJ Multimedia Director Ed Lingao and then PCIJ Multimedia Deputy Director Justine Espina-Letargo visited with the park rangers who are guarding 10,000 hectares of the Tubbataha coral reefs.

Thousands of years ago, these were really volcanic islands fringed by reefs. Over time, the islands sank and left only the reef formations that continued to grow upward, toward the sunlight.

Tubbataha is 130 kilometers from Cagayancillo in the north, and 150 kilometers from the provincial capital, Puerto Princesa, in the northwest.

The Reefs lie at the heart of the so-called Coral Triangle, a 647.5 million-hectare area spanning from the Philippines in the north to Australia in the south, and Fiji in east, which is said to have the highest diversity of corals, fish, crustaceans, and plant species in the world.

meeting a resident

A 2007 study by the University of the Philippines in the Visayas determined that the Tubbataha Reefs are “a major source of coral and fish larvae, seeding the greater Sulu sea.”

In layman’s terms, it simply means that Tubbataha, Samal dialect for “long reef exposed at low tide,” is a giant fish factory that populates the rest of the seas around the Philippines and much of the region.

For those who love figures, it is home to about 600 species of fish and some 359 species of corals, or half the world’s coral species.

Read the PCIJ report, “Predators now protectors of Tubbataha marine park,” here.

tubba rangers

Sereno y Carpio: UP clams up for the chief, tales of Megatron

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IN PCIJ’s analysis, the biggest obstacles to achieving full transparency in the high court seem to be its top two officials: Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes P. A. Sereno and Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio.

The two were among the seven who did not respond to PCIJ’s clarificatory letters but whose SALNs invite the biggest questions of all.

In Sereno’s case, what happened seems to be either indifference or diffidence to PCIJ’s request for asset records she had filed in previous years that only she can actually decide on now. The matter has been awaiting Sereno’s action since last month.

It all started with PCIJ submitting a request last September with the University of the Philippines for copies of SALNs that Sereno had filed as a professor with the UP College of Law form 1996 to 2002. The documents are on file with the UP Human Resources Development Office.

But instead of releasing Sereno’s SALNs, the premiere state university, which is usually jealous of its academic freedom and avowedly as zealous about good governance, rushed to the Court en banc for an opinion.

According to UP President Alfredo Pascual, it was the advice of UP’s lawyers to get clearance from the high court before releasing Sereno’s SALNs in light of the high court’s Guidelines on the release of the justices’ SALNs.

Here’s the thing: the Guidelines, which clearly refer to SALNs of justices and judges, were issued in 2012, or 10 years after Sereno had filed her last SALN with UP as a law professor.

Last month, the en banc tossed the issue to the Office of the Chief Justice so Sereno herself could decide on it. So far, she has yet to take action in favor of transparency.

Carpio’s refusal to deal with what PCIJ found were apparent disparities in his SALNs, meanwhile, is totally inconsistent with his declaration that a new era of transparency had come upon the high court, when he became acting chief justice.

PCIJ’s clarificatory letter to Carpio raised the following concerns:

* His 2011 SALN lists the total amount of personal properties at P54,241,220.00, but PCIJ’s computation of the 23 properties that he declared he owns amounted to P58,425,914.00. There seems to be a difference of P4,184,694.00, which should make his total net worth P84,079,719.57 and not P79,895,025.57 as he said in his 2011 SALN.

* Carpio’s latest SALN enrolled assets worth P4,184,694.00, P552,500.00, and P10,000,000.00 representing “insurance” policies. He did not say whether or not these are the face value of his policies or just the premiums he had paid.

According to a tax lawyer, however, it is not exactly correct to say that the face value of one’s insurance policies are one’s assets. These do become assets of the filer’s beneficiaries after the filer would have passed on, says the expert. Interestingly, the amount of one of the policies – P4,184,694.00 – matches the discrepancy between his stated total net worth and PCIJ’s computation.

* The real nature and extent of operations of what Carpio disclosed was his family’s holding firm, Megatron Holdings, Inc. beg more explanation. This became apparent after PCIJ reviewed the corporate records of Megatron at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Megatron had filed certificates of non-operation for several years, yet still it continues to hold office at the offices, before and today, of Carpio’s former law firm, CVC Law, which is also known as “The Firm”. Carpio had reported in his 1992, 1993, 1994 and 2011 SALNs that Megatron’s address was 138 Bunga Extension, Ayala Alabang Village, Muntinlupa, Metro Manila. This is what Carpio has listed to be his residential address as well.

* Megatron’s corporate records, and the CVCLaw’s official website, enroll a different address for the Carpio family’s holding company.?In its 2006 General Information Sheet (GIS), Megatron said it holds office at the “5th Floor, LTA Building, 118 Perea St. Legaspi Village, Makati City, Metro Manila.” This building is owned by the family of former First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.

CVC Law had held office there for a long period of time, or until they moved to the CVC Law Center at the swanky Global City in 2009.

* In its 2010, 2011, and 2012 GIS, Megatron, listed its business address at: “11th Avenue corner 39th Street, Bonifacio Triangle, Global City 1634, Metro Manila.” This is exactly where the five-story CVC Law Center now stands.

To be sure, the amended articles of incorporation in 2001 and other records at the SEC of CVC Law reflected a divestment by Carpio from the law firm that he co-founded, within days after he was appointed associate justice by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. – PCIJ, December 2012

NOTE: This story was the sidebar to the last part of PCIJ’s special report on “The Wealth of the ‘Gods of Faura.’”

Fat allowances of Corona not taxed: Happy days linger at SC?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

IN THE SECOND installment of the PCIJ’s four-part report on the self-appointed perks and privileges of the “Gods of Padre Faura,” the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism looks at how special and redundant allowances and honoraria bloat the take-home pay of the justices of the Supreme Court.

More tellingly, this story by PCIJ Executive Director Malou Mangahas shows how sundry allowances, bonuses, and fringe benefits of the Supreme Court justices had not been not taxed — a matter that had been verified in the case of impeached chief justice Renato C. Corona.

This is according to the reports submitted to the Bureau of Internal Revenue by the high court’s finance and accounting office. But the situation seems to linger still for the most senior justices of the land who continue to receive an excess of extra pay, while other public officials and employee who don’t get as much, fork out more of their hard-earned money to the taxman.

Read Part 2 of the PCIJ special report here.