Sheila S. Coronel

A graduate of the University of the Philippines and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she obtained a Master's degree in Political Sociology, Sheila S. Coronel has written various books on investigative journalism, politics, media and the environment. A respected author and editor, Sheila Coronel's articles on these subjects have been published extensively in both local and international newspapers and magazines.

Despite an atmosphere of political authoritarianism and suppression of the mass media in the early 1980s, Sheila Coronel started her career reporting on political affairs for the "Philippine Panorama Magazine". Even then, she displayed extraordinary courage in writing about sensitive topics of the day, unveiling unusual talent with the grit of a true-blue journalist.

With the return of press freedom after the first People Power Revolt at EDSA in 1986, Sheila Coronel wrote special reports for "The Manila Chronicle". Again, her articles, written in lucid and engaging - always straightforward - prose, showed a remarkable perceptiveness that was heightened by exceptional eloquence.

As the country, and with it the Philippine press, struggled under the weight of an economic downturn in the late 1980s, Sheila Coronel bucked the inclination to succumb to yellow journalism - shallow but relatively well-paying - by organizing the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). In the company of a few like-minded and talented colleagues, the PCIJ under Sheila Coronel's able stewardship conducted research and wrote about socially relevant and politically sensitive issues that very few newspapers or magazines back then had the temerity to investigate, much more publish on their own. By sourcing its own funds, however, PCIJ was able to independently produce and publish many of these special reports. Most often than not, these materials produced a backlash of lawsuits and threats, but at the same time generated enough interest to prompt concerned agencies, mainly private, to conduct follow up studies and in the process, bring the matter to the attention of a larger public.

In so doing, PCIJ thus gave birth to investigative journalism in the Philippines. Indeed, for the past eleven years, the PCIJ has become a veritable source of the country's most reliable and incisive studies on some of the most serious ills that plague Philippine society.

Source: Search for Outstanding Journalists 2001 (Souvenir Program)