“Baptism of fire right after college” — Regine Cabato
At just 28, Regine Cabato is one of the most influential, if relatively unknown, journalists in the Philippines. Covering both the Duterte and Marcos governments for the Washington Post, Cabato is read by political leaders around the world, not to mention embassies and key institutions that affect the Philippines.
Cabato talks to Howie Severino about her recent blockbuster reports, on the so-called “digital sweatshops” in the Philippines that service the booming Artificial Intelligence industry and the century-old remains of a Filipina teen-ager secretly used for controversial research in Washington DC.
She recalls the harassment she endured during her coverage of the drug war, and explains what it will take for journalists to push back the tsunami of falsehoods reaching ordinary people.
Cabato is also a Palanca awardee for her poetry, where she expresses emotions triggered by her reporting.
Even in a hostile environment for journalists, Cabato says, “I'm not sure that I can picture myself doing anything else. I've always wanted to be a journalist.”
At just 28, Regine Cabato is one of the most influential, if relatively unknown, journalists in the Philippines. Covering both the Duterte and Marcos governments for the Washington Post, Cabato is read by political leaders around the world, not to mention embassies and key institutions that affect the Philippines.
Cabato talks to Howie Severino about her recent blockbuster reports, on the so-called “digital sweatshops” in the Philippines that service the booming Artificial Intelligence industry and the century-old remains of a Filipina teen-ager secretly used for controversial research in Washington DC.
She recalls the harassment she endured during her coverage of the drug war, and explains what it will take for journalists to push back the tsunami of falsehoods reaching ordinary people.
Cabato is also a Palanca awardee for her poetry, where she expresses emotions triggered by her reporting.
Even in a hostile environment for journalists, Cabato says, “I'm not sure that I can picture myself doing anything else. I've always wanted to be a journalist.”
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Good morning, Podmates! Howie Severino here again, reminding you that long attention spans are smart.
00:07 I have with me a Filipino reporter, a young journalist, a reporter for one of the most influential news organizations in the world, Regine Cabato,
00:19 the Philippine correspondent for Washington Post, the newspaper that is read by presidents of America.
00:26 Good morning, Regine, and Buenos Dias! I know you're a Chabacano speaker from Zamboanga City.
00:32 Buenos Dias, Sir Howie. Thank you for having me on your podcast today.
00:37 Regine, your latest major reportorial project for Washington Post is about the so-called digital sweatshop in the Philippines,
00:49 where artificial intelligence or AI is the industry that is being talked about as a new game changer in the world of technology.
01:00 It's only now that this new angle has emerged in AI. How do workers exploit the AI industry and how did you discover this story?
01:14 It was a huge surprise for us at Washington Post when we learned about this.
01:20 The first lead in this story came from my boss, Rebecca Tanna, the Bureau Chief of Southeast Asia.
01:29 We are the only two people reporting in this region.
01:33 AI is a buzzword nowadays, it's the future of our economy, etc. It will change the face of work.
01:42 Actually, we are reporting in other parts of the world, like in Africa, Venezuela,
01:48 that there are data annotators or the workers behind AI, who help train AI.
01:58 But our report is the first exposé that there is such a job in the Philippines.
02:07 It's exploitative in nature because, based on what we got or what we interviewed,
02:15 most of the workers, at least for this particular billion-dollar AI company,
02:25 are not paid on time as well.
02:30 So there are potential labor violations, not just for US standards, but even for local Philippine law standards.
02:39 We think that AI just comes out of nowhere, that it's just advanced technology,
02:50 that we are in the future, but actually it is a very, shall we say, clerical work if you trace the supply chain of it.
03:01 Because AI's knowledge doesn't just come from anywhere, it's still encoded by humans.
03:08 That's the reason why our story is so important, that we don't know that a lot of the brains behind AI are also Filipino.
03:18 And this company that's supposedly exploiting these Filipino workers in these so-called digital sweatshops,
03:27 this is a US company, but it has affiliates here in the Philippines.
03:34 Yes, it has one affiliate here in the Philippines.
03:37 So its company structure is a bit complicated, Sir Howie.
03:41 It's called a client-facing company, which is worth some $7 billion, and it's a big company in Silicon Valley.
03:50 It's called Scale AI, and it's run by a 26-27-year-old billionaire,
03:57 who is kind of like a Silicon Valley darling.
04:02 They have a lot of high-profile clients, including the US government, including Meta.
04:07 So what they do is they sell data sets to these tech giants, these giant tech companies,
04:15 that will train the AI that these tech companies develop.
04:21 So the data sets, for example, that's where footage, images, etc.
04:31 that teaches the AI what different objects are, the training data of the AI.
04:40 That's what they sell.
04:42 Scale AI has a company under it, or a platform under it, called Remo Tasks.
04:47 So that's what you might hear from your other listeners, Sir Howie,
04:51 because there was a time that it was very popular in the Philippines.
04:56 And it's like a competition for Upwork, if people have heard of that.
05:01 So many online freelancers get their work on sites like that.
05:05 So Filipino workers are sourced through this platform, through Remo Tasks,
05:11 and then the data sets are sold by Scale AI.
05:15 And they also have a local affiliate, Smart Ecosystems Philippines.
05:19 And you call them in your report, taskers, these digital clerical workers.
05:30 They're taskers who annotate data.
05:33 So I guess part of their task is to enable these AI language models to distinguish
05:41 between a tree and a pedestrian and their images,
05:45 and provide all this data that has to have some human intervention
05:50 so that the machines can process these more or less accurately.
05:57 So the bigger question here is, we've had troll farms, we've had BPOs,
06:05 and is this much worse than other aspects of the digital industry?
06:12 How would you compare this particular industry that employs a lot of Filipinos online
06:19 versus previous stages of this technology age,
06:26 when we've also had a lot of Filipinos working remotely for foreign clients?
06:33 It seems to be, sir, that every other year,
06:36 there's this new frontier of the digital economy in the Philippines.
06:42 A few years ago, like you mentioned, it was BPOs.
06:45 And then a little bit after that, it was content moderation.
06:49 It was a kind of BPO work where people filter the worst of the internet,
06:58 the social media, they clean up the gore and violent content that we see online.
07:04 And then now it's AI every year because I think of the nature of the Philippines.
07:11 First, a lot of us are young, a lot of us are digitally savvy in our workforce.
07:18 And not to mention, because we were colonized by the US,
07:23 there's a lot of English-speaking, so our workforce is communicative.
07:27 And that's what the global market wants.
07:31 So those are the reasons why it seems to be that this seems to keep happening
07:38 to Filipinos in one way or another.
07:41 Is this particularly worse? I'm not sure, but it seems to be a trend.
07:48 It's very important for us to report on it.
07:51 Like today, it's AI. Tomorrow, it might be something else.
07:54 Yesterday, it was content moderators. The day before that, BPOs.
07:58 So it's very important to bring these stories out to light.
08:02 And it's also very important for government officials to understand
08:07 the importance of the digital economy and the landscape of the digital economy.
08:11 Because our laws, obviously, have not been able to catch up to
08:16 these kinds of new innovations in our digital economy.
08:22 So I'm also very curious to find out how people will be responding
08:29 to our article in terms of policy, and hopefully it brings more awareness.
08:36 But just to clarify, Sir Howie, although this particular example
08:41 of this one company we found is exploitative, and it was potentially
08:47 exploitative because of the Oxford study that rated this company as low
08:54 in terms of labor fairness, there are other companies that do data annotation
09:01 that are okay to pay, at least according to the workers.
09:05 There are other companies that try to strive for some sort of ethical standards.
09:09 But because this is an underground economy, people are not aware
09:14 that these other companies exist. It's not yet mapped out in the public eye
09:19 the companies that have the best practices, the standard wages
09:27 for this kind of work. I'm not sure how it was when BPOs first came into the scene.
09:33 Maybe it was also like that at first, and then people started finding out
09:37 more about it and it was standardized in some way.
09:40 I think that's why it's so important to talk about it, so people will learn
09:46 that there are other companies that exist. This is too low of a price
09:50 to be paying for this kind of work.
09:53 Your story, I had a number of anecdotal horror stories of these workers
10:01 not being paid, or they're being paid very low, or they're just being terminated.
10:05 There's no reason for that. Some of them really hate their jobs,
10:10 but they're still working for the same company because there are no options.
10:17 Your story ends without much hope, actually. It just seems like the exploitation
10:26 will continue because the government officials you had talked to
10:31 didn't seem to have much response. In fact, they said,
10:36 "We don't know how to regulate this. The workers are scattered.
10:40 We don't even know how many there are. We don't know where they are, etc.
10:45 The company that's employing all these people are overseas."
10:49 There are a lot of these big questions that are hanging over this whole industry.
10:56 Yeah, it's really sad. That's why it's important for DICT officials,
11:04 labor officials, to be ahead of the curve because this will keep happening.
11:09 We're in a new age of social media, of digital economy, etc.
11:14 With all of these new sorts of platforms, there are bound to be some new ways,
11:21 new loopholes to the law if it's not updated.
11:25 I really do hope something could be done about it.
11:31 You can tell us, Sir Howie, since you mentioned the anecdotes,
11:35 one of the things that really struck me when we were speaking to a lot of the workers
11:42 who were working in this job was that they knew they were being lowballed.
11:46 There were a few workers, for example, that were just doing it part-time
11:51 so they weren't really invested. But there were also workers who were aware
11:56 that even though they don't know who exactly the clients are,
12:00 they know that the company has ties to Silicon Valley,
12:03 they know the company has ties to big tech companies.
12:07 They were saying, "I know we're being lowballed.
12:11 We Filipinos are being lowballed because they view us like this.
12:16 They view us as cheap labor."
12:18 So it's sad, but hopefully there will be more awareness about it
12:25 so that policy can be changed.
12:28 Yeah, there's this large debate now between benefits versus harm and dangers of AI.
12:37 Of course, many of us use ChatGPT to help us in our work and research and even thinking.
12:46 So that's one pretty clear benefit.
12:49 But in all of the discussion about harm, usually they dwell on the bias of algorithms,
12:58 the potential for spreading disinformation, etc.
13:02 But only now have we read a lot about this in the digital sweatshops.
13:11 But I want to ask you, since you're also active in the journalism sector
13:17 as a vice president of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines,
13:23 what is the possible impact on journalism workers?
13:28 Journalism is also a labor sector.
13:33 We're workers and we do mind work.
13:37 And there's been a lot of talk about how artificial intelligence is going to make some aspects
13:45 of our industry obsolete as far as human labor is concerned,
13:51 or AI is going to displace journalists in a number of aspects of our profession.
14:01 What's your thinking on this?
14:04 That is the fear, Sir Howie.
14:07 So I'm actually quite curious also how the folks at GMA view it.
14:11 I think at this point in time, though, there still is a little bit more premium on the human touch
14:22 when it comes to journalism because we can't still fully trust AI.
14:27 I think when it comes to proper fact-checking, the rigor of the investigative process,
14:34 I mean, AI is a tool.
14:37 It's a tool. But I think for a job like journalism, it's a helpful tool,
14:41 but it can't replace the people who run the machine, at least not yet at this point in time.
14:49 So I think it's very important still to maybe for us journalists to start to maybe play around
15:01 with these tools, start to maybe use them so we don't get left behind and know what they're like,
15:06 know how to report on them.
15:08 Honestly, when we first reported on this AI story, I wasn't really that techy,
15:13 even though I follow social media stories and such.
15:18 I was very intimidated by it at first.
15:21 I thought that AI was a very high-profile topic.
15:26 But then when I realized that when you pull back the curtain, it's not just an AI story,
15:31 it's not just a tech story, but it's also a labor story and a human rights story.
15:36 That's when I really felt that, okay, this is why it's very important for journalists
15:41 to understand this so that we can explain it to people.
15:45 And also so that if the phenomenon catches up to us in our industry,
15:50 we can also understand it ourselves.
15:53 We can't allow ourselves as journalists to go obsolete.
15:57 I want to ask you about another recent story that you worked on for The Washington Post.
16:03 It was a blockbuster, and in the opposite of futuristic, AI is a futuristic story.
16:12 This one reaches back over a hundred years in history,
16:16 "Searching for Maura."
16:18 Maura was a Filipina who was taken from her village in the Cordillera Mountains.
16:28 She was one of those Filipinos displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
16:33 This was at a time, of course, when we were still a new U.S. colony,
16:37 and the U.S. colonial government, I guess, wanted to show off the people from the new colony
16:46 and how exotic we were and how interesting maybe our customs and traditions were,
16:52 or their customs and traditions were in the Cordillera.
16:56 Anyway, Maura was a teenager.
16:58 She died of pneumonia.
17:01 The brain was separated from the rest of the body and then taken to the Smithsonian Institute,
17:05 which is a museum complex in Washington, D.C., with research facilities.
17:12 Her brain was one of those studied as part of this research project to see whether the brains of our race
17:25 was different from the brains of other races, and I guess in particular white races.
17:30 Anyway, you and your colleagues at the Washington Post broke this story about Maura.
17:38 Although I know that some Filipino-Americans had been writing about this issue for a while,
17:44 but it was interesting how you guys did it at the Post because it came out as an illustrated story.
17:54 It wasn't all text.
17:55 Much of it was actually illustration, kind of almost like a graphic novel, but it was nonfiction.
18:02 Congratulations on this story.
18:03 I know you worked on this with other reporters at the Washington Post.
18:07 So what else can you add about this story and why is it important?
18:12 Okay, thank you so much, Sir Javi.
18:14 I'm really glad that the story really hit home.
18:17 It seems not just in your book but also with the readership.
18:21 One of the reasons why it's so important is that it is the Washington Post's first Filipino language story.
18:30 When we were working on it, it took a team of up to 90 people supporting the project to run it.
18:41 But that's the whole project, and Maura's story is just one component.
18:45 There were 14 Filipinos also on the team, including Phil Ams.
18:50 I'm the reporter who was based here, although we do have the illustrator who's also based in the Philippines,
18:57 who is Pinoy also, and one other translator who is also here.
19:01 And then we have our Phil Am colleagues in the US.
19:05 So that's roughly what the team was like.
19:09 And our project head, KC Schaefer, she really pushed that this should be released in Filipino
19:17 so that it will be more accessible to Filipinos everywhere, really,
19:23 so that it can be read by older generations and also by people at home.
19:29 Because this is a project that, although it has been reported on to some degree before,
19:35 we've heard, at least history enthusiasts have already heard of the 1904 World Fair.
19:41 But this was the first time that we're really hearing about what happened to the remains of a lot of people who went to the World Fair.
19:49 We don't know that there were still some left, and were used for scientific research,
19:57 which was essentially white supremacist in nature.
20:03 So that aspect was very important for us Filipinos on the team.
20:10 We really wanted to reclaim the story from the Filipino perspective.
20:16 And Nicole Donca was one of the lead investigators, they were Claire Healy's two.
20:22 Nicole Donca is also Pinoy, and she's based there in the US, and she also roped all the rest of us in.
20:29 So I'm really grateful to have been part of this project.
20:33 It's also our first investigative comic.
20:37 Yeah, it's amazing. Imagine that phrase, investigative comic.
20:43 It shows how journalism is also being transformed.
20:50 This story had an impact because the Smithsonian responded almost right away.
20:57 How did your team feel about the reaction? Was it enough of a response by the Smithsonian?
21:03 I know that not everyone is happy about their response.
21:07 Well, for us at the Post, I think you might be referring to one of the activists we covered,
21:13 whose story and whose work prompted also this project, Joanna Anyo Nuevo Langholz.
21:19 She released a statement saying that she did not find the Smithsonian's response to be enough.
21:26 So definitely, I think that there are all these characters at play.
21:31 But as journalists, what we're really here to do is really just tell the story
21:37 and then see how people and the public also react to it.
21:42 I think what's important for us is how the community feels about it.
21:47 I know that in Suyuk, because Jessica Soho went and covered, and she interviewed the community there.
21:54 They're pleased to hear the news that the remains are being planned to be shipped back.
22:04 They plan to set up a memorial also.
22:08 I think, hopefully, that this could give at least some people some closure.
22:13 Because it happened more than a hundred years ago, we might think that it's an old issue.
22:20 But I think as long as there are communities for whom the subjects of these stories matter,
22:26 it's really still important to hear them.
22:29 Hopefully, we'll see how things pan out.
22:31 We're still monitoring because the National Museum said that they're coordinating along with the DFA.
22:38 So we're still waiting for the process of the repatriation of the remains of the Pinoy.
22:46 It's interesting because it coincided with the publication this year of a popular young adult novel in the UK about the same event.
23:00 It was fictional, of course.
23:03 I'm sure you've heard of Wild Song, the novel by Candy Gorlay, a Filipino-British author based in London.
23:12 It has a fictional account, but based on a lot of research about the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904,
23:21 and how the people were trafficked there, and their experience, and how some of them died.
23:27 So this issue is very much in the public conversation from two different directions, from fiction, and then you guys are doing investigative comics.
23:40 Of course, this is about the Philippines, it's about Philippine history and an emotional issue between the US and the Philippines.
23:50 But it's not the only story about the Philippines that has come out in the Washington Post and will not be the last.
23:59 That's why you're here, that's why you're covering the Philippines for this very important newspaper.
24:05 So for the same reason, will your stories now be translated into Filipino language so that Filipinos can also have access to future Philippine stories?
24:20 Or is this an exception?
24:23 Well, this is a first, so it's very experimental in nature, as you can tell.
24:29 So we're hearing out all the feedback.
24:32 I think standard procedure would still be definitely to stick to English, unless there are big investigations maybe in the future.
24:44 Not necessarily with the Post in particular, but other Western publications when they have reported major stories out of the Philippines,
24:53 sometimes they do get a translator.
24:57 I know that the New York Times before had a drug war story that they translated to Filipino as well.
25:06 And there was also another viral story some years back of The Atlantic, written by Alex Tizon about their family slave,
25:21 their grandmother who was legally brought to the US and who was not paid apparently for all these years.
25:28 That was also translated into Filipino.
25:31 So it seems to be that in Western publications so far, the translation treatment is given to really big stories.
25:41 I think it's important to let these Western publications also know that there's a demand for these kinds of stories.
25:49 But for sure, I think that's also why local media is there then, to help us be able to cascade these stories as well,
25:57 where the foreign publications can't reach.
26:01 Well, I have access to The Washington Post because I am a paying subscriber.
26:07 So that's one barrier to access.
26:12 I'm saying this in the context of what somebody told me about the huge disadvantage of quality journalism versus disinformation
26:25 or these websites that spread falsehood or hate, etc.
26:30 It's all free. You don't have to pay for it. It's all free.
26:33 Versus quality journalism, of course, it's expensive to produce quality journalism.
26:37 But charging people subscription fees also becomes a barrier for people to know the truth.
26:45 So I know that you were just overseas and you studied disinformation.
26:50 I mean, share with us. Give us some good news about it.
26:54 I mean, is there hope out of this dystopia of fake news, disinformation, and how it's affecting our politics and how people view journalism in general?
27:05 I mean, give us reason for optimism.
27:10 Is there? Let me think.
27:14 Yes, sir. I was in Oxford for a while and I worked on a project about how Filipino reporters and journalists can better tackle disinformation
27:30 or report about disinformation and respond to it.
27:34 So hopefully that paper will be published within the year. It's in the editing phase now.
27:40 Well, there's good news and there's bad news.
27:45 And I think you might know this already that Filipinos generally are aware of disinformation as a problem.
27:51 And I think there was that SWS survey earlier this year or was it late last year to say that Filipinos are aware that it's a problem.
28:00 But the bad news or the flip side of that is that some Filipinos think that journalists are to blame for this problem.
28:09 I think definitely one of the challenges for us, well, finance, like you mentioned, this is one,
28:17 because it's expensive to have to fund good journalism and have to pay for the labor of these journalists.
28:27 Whereas in disinformation, it's a whole cottage industry which has a never ending well of money and funds that are untaxed, undeclared in campaign finance.
28:39 So the money is not quite with us.
28:44 But I think that there's a challenge on the part of journalists that we have to start rethinking our business models, I think.
28:52 And we have to start getting, I guess, more creative.
28:57 It's been interesting for me to be a part of these recent investigations.
29:02 Now we have our investigative comic on Maura, the AI story as well,
29:07 because I also get to see a little bit of the PR that goes into the marketing of these stories to make sure that they're read.
29:15 So in the Philippine context, I think that maybe we should also be actively planning to market our investigations also as journalists.
29:26 I mean, not to say that journalists themselves should do it, but the newsroom should be doing the marketing also of these investigatives.
29:35 Especially now that we know that the investigative stories are not being read much anymore, right?
29:41 Not like in the early 2000s, where an investigative story could decide, could rattle the popularity of a president.
29:52 It's not like that anymore, right? A lot of stuff doesn't stick anymore.
29:58 So I think it's one of the things that I learned was that it's very important to produce a lot of content regarding the deep reporting that we do
30:08 on TikTok, on YouTube, different formats, short form, long form, and not just text, so that it can reach as many people as possible.
30:17 And hopefully not just in one language. We should also be producing this stuff in various languages.
30:24 Because that's how this information works. It is now targeted towards a lot of communities.
30:32 It's now micro-targeted, unlike in 2016. Now we have all these micro-influencers pirating this information.
30:41 So hopefully journalists can also build a similar type of network so that we can make sure that our stories get out there and are read and hopefully also appreciated.
30:53 Well, obviously, one of the reasons why we entered this profession is we want to have some kind of impact on public conversation, if not public policy.
31:08 Most Filipino journalists work for Philippine media. And as you mentioned, in a previous era, Philippine media was taken a lot more seriously.
31:23 It was much more influential. Leaders, political leaders, would respond right away. They would even promise to reform, or they would even say sorry because of exposés or investigations that come out in Philippine media.
31:43 Now, more often than not, political leaders will just ignore the negative news about them that comes out in Philippine media, mainstream media.
31:58 Because they feel that we've lost influence and they're able to have big social media operations that can counter any negative information that comes out in the mainstream media.
32:12 So that's our situation here in the Philippines. But you're in the Philippines, but you have a different situation.
32:18 You work for The Washington Post, which is, I guess, one of the top three or four most influential publications in the United States.
32:32 Do you feel that because you work for The Washington Post, you still have influence?
32:37 The US Congress will read you. You're probably one of the few sources of US political leaders, or even the US Embassy in Manila, or credible sources about the Philippines for these people.
32:53 And these people influence Philippine politics. So in a roundabout way, you can exert a lot of influence on Philippine politics simply because there's a big presumption that US political leaders and political establishment in America will read your reporting.
33:13 First, I've got to say, it's a huge privilege for me to work here. I really love my job. And I think it's great that Filipinos are also well represented in a paper like The Washington Post.
33:26 This would not have been the case, Sir Howie, I think, 20 years ago. And for sure, the impact of journalism overall on the public awareness, it's dwindling not just in the Philippines, but everywhere around the world.
33:46 The trust in news is kind of going down. But that being said, since you did mention that The Washington Post is one of those publications that is "safely up there," quote unquote, thankfully because of the legacy also that the paper has built for itself over the decades.
34:11 It is a huge privilege for me to work here. And I really hope that I'm stepping up to the plate and that our investigations are useful and will be helpful for people who are observing the Philippines.
34:30 In the day to day though, because I do live here in the Philippines, I don't always feel every day that we have an impact. I still feel like every other regular Filipino and every other regular Filipino journalist that sometimes you feel like you're shouting into the void, and then it doesn't necessarily make a difference.
34:49 But every now and then there might be that one story that people will give a shout out to, that people will give credit to. There have been a few stories like that over the years. And sometimes it's just, you know, in the form of a reader email, people who want to, for example, one story that we did was about a Jamaican pilot
35:16 who was doing airlifts for medical evacuees during the pandemic. And then a lot of people reached out to want to help him. So there are still those connections, at least that our stories make.
35:32 And sometimes that's really what I enjoy as a journalist, like knowing, like you said, that hopefully these stories make a difference. But also, I guess maturing in the profession is also coming to an understanding that not every story will stick.
35:51 Hopefully, though, I think the watchers in the US and elsewhere around the world will find informative stuff about our reportage here.
36:05 You've been working at The Washington Post since 2018. So you covered the Duterte administration, you did reporting on the drug war. I know you have spoken about being trolled, receiving a lot of hate for your reportage.
36:25 So how did that make you feel about your choice to become a journalist? Because you're still pretty young, no? You graduated in what, 2016 from Ateneo?
36:40 Yes.
36:41 Yeah. So just a couple of years out of college, you were in this vortex, let's put it that way, reporting for this very influential newspaper on this very controversial administration in the Philippines.
37:06 So how did you take that as a young journalist, recently out of college, doing this major reportage for The Washington Post and then getting all of this pushback from all of the fans of former President Duterte?
37:24 It's definitely, sorry, Howie, like a baptism by fire, no? Direcho out of college. And when we were in college, I was a student journalist at Ateneo.
37:37 And we were that kind of generation that we grew up reading the big investigative stories of the 2000s as cases, no? Like, we grew up to corruption investigative cases, like actually making a difference in local politics.
38:01 And then suddenly, we graduated into this new administration, which was suddenly like a new norm. Institutions were being questioned and basically the strengths of these institutions also were being tested.
38:23 And for a lot of my batchmates, when we were journalists around people my age, the first assignment for young reporters was the police beat.
38:39 Tapos ipapasabak sayo, drug war na agad. Like when I was in my first two years with the local media, I mostly covered from desk, although we did have a few parang fieldwork, no?
38:51 And then when I moved to the post, one of the very first stories that I did was to trace back a drug war case, which made the front page of The Washington Post.
39:00 And that was one of the first instances that I was really met with something of a harassment campaign. And it was hard, like I have to say, pero it was also clear to me even then that the people who were behind this campaign,
39:19 that it was manufactured, that this was not necessarily an organic hate. Alam mo na sketchy siya because people would message from sketchy looking accounts, people would message at odd times of the night.
39:37 And this was a trend that I'd seen in quite a number of the harassment campaigns that I got to experience, especially when I was covering the pandemic later on and then the elections.
39:50 But Sir Howie, I also don't doubt that there are for sure people who are real also who have sent me hate mail and stuff. It's also because the information atmosphere that we're in is just so polluted already.
40:09 And I guess that there are some people who out there who really think that it's okay to message people things like that, to message people threats, to be completely mean and online.
40:24 I don't know how we should go about it really, but I think that all of us, not just journalists, but everyone, we all have a bit of a responsibility to reclaim our shared humanity so that sana hindi naman magiging ganito ang norm natin forever.
40:44 But that experience did not make you want to quit. Kasi you're still fairly young and you could actually shift careers and do something else that will kind of, where you don't have to deal with that harassment and even danger, 'di ba?
41:02 Yeah, that's true. But here's the thing Sir Howie, I've always wanted to be a journalist. I'm not sure that I can picture myself doing anything else.
41:16 Well, honestly now, maybe I could now. Nowadays, I'm a little older and I realized that, okay, maybe my skill set is a little more transposable than I thought it initially was.
41:27 But the thing is, even until now, I still like the work of journalism. But also, I don't begrudge our colleagues na umaalis because, let's face it, it's not also the dream job that we were once sold when we were still students.
41:49 There's a lot of harassment, and in a way that was not present a decade ago. It's always been something of a dangerous job in the Philippines, but then suddenly it's also very invasive because of social media.
42:09 I'm not sure Sir Howie, honestly, the stress is, it gets bad, I will admit. I have had bad days because of the harassment campaigns that I've experienced.
42:26 But I think one of the things that also keeps me in the profession, apart from the feeling that I actually like the work, is also the community that we have. I quite like the people we work with in our industry, actually.
42:44 It's an honor for me to work alongside a lot of great Filipino journalists. And parang hindi nawawala sa akin yung idea that etong privilege na makapag-report tungkol sa Pilipinas, it did not come from anywhere.
43:04 It was inherited from journalists who came before me, who pushed for our industry to have the freedoms that it has. So it's very important to me to be able to tell stories that will try to keep that space of freedom for us in the industry, even if it's constantly dwindling.
43:24 So as long as I can, hindi ko na siyang rinna-romanticize Sir Howie, I gotta say. Kasi in my early 20s maybe, or siguro when I was a college student, parang like, you know, gung-ho, excitable about everything.
43:38 But now I don't romanticize it. It's a job like any other job, but so far, I can still stomach it and it's not too bad.
43:48 Well, as an older journalist, that's really heartwarming to hear that someone like you at your age still wants to persist.
43:59 Because I do remember that when I entered journalism around your age, back in the 80s, it was still considered a noble profession and nobody hated you, even if you wrote critical stories.
44:14 I mean, some people would, but in general, the average person had a high respect for you and for what you did. And it's just changed a lot.
44:25 But you mentioned earlier that you can't imagine yourself being anything but a journalist, but you're a published poet.
44:32 I know that's not a profession, not your profession, but I recall reading one of your poems, "The Happiness Index," which was not a happy poem.
44:45 Is there a connection between your mood there and your being a journalist? I mean, I guess it would be understandable for you to have that tone and be experiencing harassment at the same time because of your job as a journalist.
45:01 Actually, Sir Howie, now that you bring it up, maybe you're right. It's not entirely true what I said earlier that I can't imagine doing anything else.
45:09 Because when I was younger, when I was a kid, I wanted to become a writer in general, but not necessarily a journalist.
45:19 But it just so happened that in the Philippine context, I guess it would be, journalism is easier to sell, or that's what would give you a day job if you're a writer.
45:33 Poetry can't put food on the table. So I joined the school paper. But I've always been fond of creative writing, to be honest.
45:45 So I still try to practice it here and there a little bit. I think my poetry and my journalism complement each other a bit.
45:57 There are some stuff that don't make the editorial cut, which stay with me in the form of images, ideas, and I play with them in the form of poetry.
46:11 I guess, the Happiness Index, this is one poem that was published in Talentod.
46:18 It was basically about happy economies and stuff. But I feel like Filipinos are, like we have branding as happy people, but deep inside, we're not very happy.
46:33 That was the idea that I wanted to play with there. Because, look at our traffic, look at our new climate crisis here in our country.
46:43 We just slap on a smile and then push through, but that doesn't mean that we're actually happy.
46:49 So it's very hard to talk about these things, I guess, in the form of news reports, it's boring.
46:58 But if you play around with imagery, I think poetry is another way to talk about it that hopefully also tickles the minds of whoever reads it.
47:07 Yeah, you're also a Carlos Palanca winner.
47:10 That was for poetry back in 2019. I had a suite of poems that was mostly about Mindanao and growing up in Mindanao and the 2013 Zamboanga siege, which happened when I was a college student.
47:25 So it was mostly in a style that was a little reportorial in its voice, actually.
47:35 So that's where the persona of a journalist and poet plays.
47:40 Some poems are probably up online if people want to read them.
47:46 Thank you for sharing your observations and insights today. And thank you especially for your dedication to our profession and to coverage of the Philippines.
47:58 Regine Cabato, Philippine correspondent for The Washington Post, published poet and Palanca Award winner.
48:06 Mabuhay ka!
48:08 Thank you so much, Sir Howie. Mabuhay ka rin po. Thank you. Thank you.
48:13 Hi, I'm Howie Severino. Check out the Howie Severino Podcast, an original for GMA News and Public Affairs.
48:20 New episodes will stream every Thursday. Listen for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and other platforms.
48:28 The views expressed by guests of the Howie Severino Podcast do not represent the podcast or GMA Integrated News.
48:37 [ ♪ Upbeat music ♪ ]