Media Studies Students and Educators from all over the country gathered last November 27-29 at St. Scholastica's College, Singalong, Manila for the Pinoy Media Congress (PMC) Year 4 sponsored by the Philippines' Largest Media Company ABS-CBN.
Being a first timer delegate, I can't help but be overwhelmed by the mere size of the delegation - the St. Cecilia's Hall, an elegant auditorium was jam packed with over nine hundred (900) eager audience of Media Studies teachers,students and practitioners. Not to mention the amiable presence of ABS-CBN's top executives and personalities:Ms. Charo Santos-Concio, President, Ms. Cory Vidanes, Managing Director for Entertainment, Ms. Maria Ressa, News and Current Affairs Head, Ms. Charie Villa, News Gathering Head, Mr. Peter Musngi, Radio Head and Official Voice Over Announcer, Direk Laurenti Dyogi, Vivian Tin, March Ventosa, Raul Bulaong, Maria Java-Cuizon, Pinoy Dream Academy Season 2's Big Four (4): Liezel, Miguel, Bugoy and Laarni and even one of ABS-CBN's Senior Correspondent, the valiant and elegant Ms. Ces Orelia-Drilon.
The two and a half day conference consists of lectures and presentations on Latest Audience Measurement System, Ethics in Media Research, Role of research in Changing Newsrooms and Challenging Assignments, Evolving Media, Emerging Markets, Exciting Times, What's New with Women and Children in Philippine Media?, New Faces of Philippine Radio, TV going Digital, Corporate Communications: Effective and Inexpensive, etc. Plus panel discussions on Conflict - reporting and Independent films. Best of all is the open forum after lectures, presentations and panel discussions.
We, the students and future Media Practitioners in turn grabbed the rare opportunity to ask questions up close and personal from the Media icons of ABS-CBN, quite enthusiastically that the queue of half excited and half nervous students behind the four (4) microphones of the auditorium's balcony and orchestra was always longer than the allotted time for every open forum. Thanks to the quick- witted Ms. Maria Ressa, who came up with the simple, yet brilliant suggestion of letting the inquirers ask first and answer it later. But I really wonder where she got that mini notebook and pen that materialized on her hands right after that splendid idea.
Indeed the 2008 PMC experience was amusing, enriching and invaluable enough even without my sheer dumb luck and chance of asking challenging questions from Ms. Drilon, Ma'am Charo, Ms. Vidanes and Direk Dyogi and of course, the superb performance of my fellow Atenean, Ms. Jetty Laquindanum in the two (2) minute speech which made her one of the two winners, along with the female speaker from the Central Visayas region. I must say it was worth all the effort that the two of us (I and Jetty) exerted for that speech and the migraine caused by sleep deprivation.
But what struck me most about my PMC experience is the comforting fact that most, if not all of us in the Academic delegation are very reactive and critical to what we see on television and what we hear from and what we read in Mass Media in general.
"Don't lose hope in Philippine Media, because if you do why bother being here in the first place?" this is the closing line of one of the speakers in the two minute speech and I never could have agreed more. Indeed, there's hope for Pinoy Media because all 900 of us came there, most left their comfort zones, traveled far and wide and made ends meet with a modest budget. But at the heart of our consciousness, we know that our lives as future Media practitioners will ask relative and even greater demands from us. We know that in the end, we will be faced with the same dilemma of whether to give people what they want or what they need to see, to hear and to know. But in the meantime, I guess we can all start making a difference by making our lives consistent with the proverbial "The Greater Scheme of things”.
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