Raul L. Locsin

"Eternal Vigilance is Still the Price of Liberty"

Locsin founded the Business Day in 1967, then Southeast Asia's first daily newspaper devoted to business. However, after 20 years of circulation, a labor dispute in 1987 forced the closure of the paper.

But when former employees pressed him to start again, he did so with one crucial change. He made the employees owners of the publication. Enhanced by computerized technology, the revived Business World flourished from the start.

Locsin is firmly against compromising his paper's editorial integrity. In the years that he has been publisher/editor, first of the Business Day and now the Business World, Locsin had shown that he would rather lose an advertiser than slant a story in its favor. The Magsaysay laureate simply says "editorial space is never for sale, advertising space is."

As an active member of the Philippine Press Institute, Locsin was at the forefront of programs and training designed to raise the standards and improve media's sense of responsibility. He believed that when a journalist is sued for libel, he is doing a sloppy job. In Business World, reporters and editors make it a point to confirm all sides of an issue before publishing a story.

Hence, the clich� that a journalist would never prove his worth if he is not sued for libel is pure fiction. Mr. Locsin is the third PPC Editors' Choice awardee since it started in 1998.

Excerpts from Philippine Press Institute: Press Forum Vol. XIV No. 3 3rd Quarter, Manila: Philippines, pp.2-3.

"Behind every good writer is a good editor. The anonymous mind that cuts and buttresses, and reorders stories, otherwise ponderous or bland or tortured, so that the reader may be better served"

So goes the Citation of Merit by the Philippine Press Council's Editor's Choice Award given to Business World publisher-editor Raul L. Locsin at the culmination of the Second Editors and reporters Forum on August 13-14 at the Century park Hotel.

Locsin sees profitability as a guarantee that his paper will be able to maintain its integrity and credibility. "I do not believe in subsidies. Any newspaper that does not make money has to be subsidized and owes its loyalty to the interests that subsidize it and, therefore, cannot truthfully and fairly serve the public interest," he said. Business World has demonstrated that a credible newspaper can establish a viable readership, which will attract enough advertisers to ensure its profitability that will, in turn, guarantee the paper's integrity.

The press in democratic societies, he said, is not part of government but serves as a check and balance against those that the citizens have voted into power.

He discussed Joseph Estrada's move to close a newspaper critical of the administration as a threat to press freedom. In his paper presented to the RMAF, Locsin said that eternal vigilance is still the price to prevent another "Marcos" regime. That lack of vigilance deluded us as a nation into thinking that a temporary surrender of our civil rights, among them the freedom of the press, was essential to the myth of national interest that would-be dictators use as a lure to the citizen."

"We endanger our freedom whenever we loosely sacrifice accuracy, and ethics, by using our deadline imperatives as the excuse. We become grossly amiss in our duties whenever we relax our vigilance against laws or regulations that diminish the income of our community media." The case he pointed out was the official ban on political advertisements which strangles provincial newspapers of such income during election campaign months. While some legislators are now talking of the need to lift the ban, some Senators appear to be determined to make it stick.

Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts for 1999, Locsin strongly feels that a newspaper's first obligation is to its readers.

"It must impart the truth. It must be accurate and objective. It must be fair and unbiased.

It must strive for excellence," he said in his speech at the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF) lecture-forum.

However, to be more effective, the press must also exercise the best of its professionalism. And a government that has sworn to uphold the laws of the land is going beyond bounds when it tries to intimidate the media. The publisher-editor of Business World admits that media people cannot be totally without prejudices and biases. But he wants his staff to contain their likes and dislikes and not allow these to color their reporting. "The exercise consists of shedding off as much of these biases and prejudices when writing a story," he said.

While other media organizations never quite resolve the issue of who should exert the greater influence on editorial policies (the reader or the advertiser) Locsin and the Business World rarely, if ever, find that a dilemma.

Corruption, or what the Philippine media euphemistically call "envelopmental journalism," is dealt with in most ingenious ways at Business World. When cash "gifts" are handed over to the company, it donates the money to a charitable organization. The person or organization that gave the money is sent a thank-you note for the donation.

This practice is designed to protect the integrity of the paper's staff members without embarrassing their less scrupulous colleagues. It also prevents public relations people, who are usually given to the task of distributing the "gifts," from pocketing the money while reporting that it has been given to Business World.

Excerpts from Philippine Press Institute: Press Forum Vol. XIV No. 3 3rd Quarter, Manila: Philippines, pp.2-3.