Covering Camp Dangwa

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO
March Fianza

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet -- Many years ago when I still had the energy to be on the beat, Baguio’s police stations found in all corners were sources for fresh news. This was so, especially for radio reporters who are able to get raw information before this is “sanitized” by higher police offices.

For Camp Dangwa , one had to spend extra time there since the “scoop” would be spotted from more than a dozen of fresh and first-hand news that trickle in from the municipalities and provincial police stations. At the end of the day, a police reporter finds that while the waiting is the hardest part, it is worth it.

That tradition of being invited to a weekly news conference has stopped since then. This was so when the police offices designated their own press relations officer who talks about himself in the news and places his name as tagline at the end of the article.

But this did not work out right as some news outfits complained that they were not being furnished copies of the news that other correspondents get. In short, the police PIOs had favorite newspapers and radio stations.

For the head of an agency, he feels safer when newsmen are not hostile. Hence, the proliferation of press clubs that catered to “services” other than news gathering. Because of that, news correspondents and radio reporters got the idea of creating smaller press associations.

Today, newsmen, particularly the photographers, have a tourism press club. There is a Benguet Press Corps, as well as press associations in provincial government officers and other entities. Lately, a select group who acted as press coordinators in the Baguio Flower Fest was teasingly “christened” by their peers as the country club press club.

Aside from being unofficial members and officers of these clubs, they are part of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club, Inc., an association of members from the print and broadcast media that was re-organized sometime in the late 60s, and a successor to the Baguio Press Club.

Last week in a salo-salo, retireable police Chief Supt. Orlando Pestano thanked members of the media, particularly, the officers and members of the Cordillera PNP Press Corps for “being not hostile” to him during his stint as police regional director from February 22, 2009 to the present.

I agree with him but the reason for the PNP for “being not hostile” is because the more hostile members of the press are not members of the PNP press corps, much less invited to presscons in the camp. In other words, there are things that are news worthy but are kept away from the more hostile press.

In fact, some of us only came to know about the media night with Camp Dangwa police officers and staff through an exclusive text message that got out of hand. The text message said: “media nite with C/Supt. Orly Pestano, 5-9 pm. PLS. DO NOT PASS.”

I do not know where that message came from but I passed the message anyway, to Zaldy Comanda, speculating that as PNP press corps president, he may enlighten me on what this is all about. His reply: “Punta ka” meaning, I was being asked to go or I was being asked if I will go.

There is a problem if one does not know if he is being invited to go, or if one is being asked if he will go. Anyway for me, whether the “PLS. DO NOT PASS” invitation came or not, I would go anyway. Maybe not to visit RD Pestano in his last days in the Cordillera police command, but to be with senior police officers Sammy Diciano, Alex Pumecha, Donato Bacquian and other police officials, who in there presence, you find no room for hostility.

Pestano took the opportunity to thank members of the media. In his message he said that he “survived Cordillera because the media in the region was not hostile” to him. I guess, he should thank whoever was the guy under him who made no room for hostility between him and the media.

After Pestano’s speech, news columnist Ramon Dacawi delivered an impromptu response and said the incoming PNP press corps president now literally appears to be a “bagman,” referring to the part of the program where knapsacks and gifts were distributed to some members of the media.

Talking about hostility, it all depends on how that is treated or defined. There are media persons who are described as “hostile” just because their manner of questioning is “critical” and irritates their news sources.

There are those who are perceived to be hostile because they do not want to receive “gifts” from their police news sources. On the other hand, there are media persons who become too friendly to their news sources in the PNP and forget about their objectives as media persons.

Whatever it is, I still maintain that media persons and the police should always be critical to each other, not forgetting that their relationship is all about news gathering for one and information dissemination for the other. – marchfianza777@yahoo.com
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Joseph Zambrano of the Philippine Information Agency, through this column is calling on all graduates of San Jose High School, La Trinidad, Benguet to a grand alumni homecoming on April 9, 2010 at the SJHS gymnasium.

Registration starts at 8 a.m. of the same day. For more information, please contact Bernadette Lubos Berad at mobile phone no. 09202086153, or call land phone no. (074) 422 1816.