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'Journalism, for me, has always been about curiosity. It is the deep humility to acknowledge what we don’t know, and the audacity to learn more about the world.'
It’s only the first month of 2025 and a lot is going on! You can definitely say this about the Rappler newsroom, always in a flurry of activity in the middle of the week.
For Rappler’s Community team, January was a way to begin the year learning from sectors we cover and want to write about even more.
This month, our team brought together Rappler staff from various units with partners from sectors we care deeply about: disability rights advocates and gender equality advocates.
On January 13, our meeting with gender rights advocates included representatives from Transmasculine Philippines; Philippine Anti-Discrimination Alliance of Youth Leaders; The Red Whistle; ASEAN SOGIE; UP Diliman Gender Office; pride groups from Cebu, Iloilo, and Metro Manila; and more. On the Rappler side, representatives from our production, editorial and reporting team, social media team, and more joined the meeting.
Over boxes of cheese rolls, a discussion flowed about gaps in our reporting, things we can do better, sensitivities about reporting on gender issues, and dynamics we should be aware about.
We exchanged ideas on strengths in our reporting and issues or stories that deserve more media attention. How can journalists tell stories in ways that help the public better understand the lived experience of people of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics?
How can Rappler be a platform for vibrant but respectful conversations about gender issues?
The day after, January 14, Rappler staff had a virtual call with Krissy Bisda and Erick Marco Ramos of Alliance of the Advocates Against Public Ridicule (A3PR), two accessibility advocates who I had worked with for past events and workshops.
The learning session was a deep dive into old and new perspectives on disability and how this could affect media representation of persons with disability. The Rappler team learned about the pitfalls of the charity or tragedy perspective, where persons with disability are portrayed as pitiful and lacking in agency. We learned about more contemporary perspectives, like the social disability perspective, which looks at how the built environment and societal norms are what disables and makes people’s disabilities a hindrance to reaching their full potential. (READ: How Metro Manila’s train system fails persons with disabilities)
A big part of the meeting was on inclusive language: person-first versus identity-first language, or something in between?
Krissy and Marco also talked about “inspiration porn” and how journalists can do better in depicting persons with a disability in accurate and more authentic ways, rather than ways that confirm the monolithic idea most people have of what it means to live with a disability.
These two meetings with groups outside of our newsroom, who represent communities who drastically need to be reported on, are first steps to build trust between journalists and the public.
Journalism, for me, has always been about curiosity. It is the deep humility to acknowledge what we don’t know, and the audacity to learn more about the world.
True learning goes both ways. I’d like to think the partners we met with also learned something from the Rappler team — the structure and workflow of newsrooms, the limitation on resources, the lines we cannot cross.
Here’s to learning!
– Rappler.com
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