16th Thought: Seminar on Media Literacy

November 25, 2015, Wednesday, yet another day of classes... I was pretty much drowsy on that day. But who would have thought that all we got to do is attend a seminar and make a reaction paper on it (in GRAMCM) and a blog post about it (in EEP)? Now this is a change of course! (Of course in terms of daily life, not course as in college course lol)
So this seminar we attended is about Media Literacy with the theme "Mobilizing the Millennials as Socially Responsible Prosumers." This seminar is conducted in celebration of the fifth anniversary of The Rampage, the Asia Pacific College's (APC) official news magazine. It aims to develop sense of social responsibility among the attendees, and to create a discourse on media literacy among the APCians.


This seminar had a film showing before the organizers gave the stage to the guests speakers. It was a film of Baron Buchokoy about Marcos the dictator's presidential term, and a documentary film about the said video which the people branded as viral back then. Those videos were presented to us to make us wary of the things we should believe on and the things we should share.


After the film showing, the guest speakers had the stage. Miss Hon Sophia Balod shared ways on how to effectively write news stories. She also shared with us the do's and don'ts in interviews, specifically on being an interviewer and conducting a good interview. Though I'm not into news writing, her talk was interesting to me, and I learned a lot from it.


Miss Lian Nami Buan, an associate editor of Subselfie.com, talked more about the internet being a medium for news. She emphasized that the media writes articles and news about what the public wants. What we prioritize as consumers of information is what matters to the media, and the media feeds us with it. She also made us realize that we fail to hear certain voices due to what's viral or due to the one-sided stories we read. Here is a quote she used for her eye-opening talk.



Lastly, Miss Edmallyne Remillano talked about advocacy journalism. Yes, it's something about what the writer believes on, but it still follows one of the standards of journalism: fairness. Though this kind of journalism is based on the writer's advocacy, it still listens to all sides of the issue. According to her, media practitioners are people with beliefs that affect the news stories they write. That's true, and that's why we have the editorial section in newspapers (lol).



APC was honored to have experienced news writers as guest speakers in this seminar. They are ladies from the news department of GMA Network's State of the Nation with Jessica Soho, one of the most awarded news shows in the Philippines. So APC is somehow big time for the privilege of having the presence of experienced journalists. Not to mention, they are from one of the biggest TV broadcasting networks in the Philippines.

This seminar is one of the best seminars I ever had. It's loaded with information and realization about what really happens to the media we have today. It also showed us that today's generation have such great power, and that is the internet medium. However, as what people say, with great power comes with great responsibility. And this seminar taught us to be more responsible on what we post, like or share in the internet.