Nat’l TV reporter tackles challenges in journalism

ABS-CBN NEWS editor and reporter, Gigi Grande, held a talk on the challenges and role of media during her lecture last Feb. 24 at the university’s Multi-Purpose Room.

“Journalism is a profession like no other…it gives an opportunity to make a real and a lasting difference in other people’s lives,” Grande, the Marshall McLuhan 2016 awardee, said during her lecture entitled “Journalism in Challenging Times: Media as Guardian of Democracy and Watchdog of Society.”

She said that this is the age of social media where fake news, alternative truth, and bad news can spread like “wild fire in just hours.”

Grande also mentioned that “one of the most important things that a future journalist should be is to be a critical thinker.”

According to Grande, “we need journalists who will live by the values of truthfulness, fairness, and accuracy.”

The Marshall McLuhan Prize is the Embassy of Canada in Manila’s flagship public diplomacy initiative. It is an advocacy launched in 1997 to encourage investigative journalism in the Philippines “with the belief that a strong media is essential to a strong democratic society.”

The annual forum was held in partnership with the College of Mass Communication. It was attended by students from Silliman University, Metro Dumaguete College, and Negros Oriental State University, as well as by local and community journalists.

Alex Rey Pal, TV Station Manager of Peoples Television Network, INC., and Judy Flores Partlow, reporter and communications specialist, served as reactors of the forum.

Visiting the campus together with Grande was Canadian Embassy’s political affairs officer, Carlo Figueroa.