UST’s Corona defense turns into absurd attack on journalism

SAN  FRANCISCO—At the end of the day, how  Chief Justice Renato Corona got his doctorate degree is a minor issue compared to the serious accusations he faces.

And as a private academic institution in the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas could certainly make — and change — its rules on who should get to claim to have earned a doctorate degree.

But in a perplexing twist, UST’s defense of Corona’s degree turned into an absurd attack on journalism. More specifically, online journalism.

That’s the fast growing segment of media which has, over the past 2O years, revolutionized the way news is reported and shared.  Every major news organization in the world uses it. And the Web has spawned new, dynamic news organizations on the Web, including some in the Philippines.

But UST  doesn’t get it.

Which is surprising – and unfortunate.

After all, UST is known for producing some of the country’s best writers and journalists, including my late professor and mentor Roger Sikat and my friend Glenda Gloria, one of the editors of Newsbreak and the new online news site Rappler.

Glenda  Gloria is also a colleague of Marites Vitug (also a friend), one of the country’s best investigative journalists who has done an incredible job reporting on the Philippine Supreme Court.  The Gloria-Vitug duo also produced the most authoritative account of the Mindanao conflict with their book “Under the Crescent Moon.”

But to UST, these are all irrelevant.

The university with supposedly one of the best communications programs in the Philippines argued that it did not respond to Vitug’s request for information on Corona’s UST career because it  didn’t know how to respond to “online journalism.”

“Does anyone claiming to be an online journalist given the same attention as one coming from the mainstream press?” UST said in a statement, as quoted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “We understand that while Miss Vitug used to be a print journalist, she’s part of an online magazine, Newsbreak, which has reportedly been subsumed into ‘www.rappler.com.’ What’s that?

“Is that a legitimate news organization? What individuals and entities fund Newsbreak and Rappler? Do these outfits have editors? Who challenged Miss Vitug’s article before it went online so as to establish its accuracy, objectivity and fairness? Why was there no prior disclosure made? What gate-keeping measures does online journalism practice?”

Huh?

UST could have simply responded with a clear-cut denial or defense:  “Ms. Vitug was wrong — here’s the dissertation” or “Based on our evaluation of all his accomplishments, Mr. Corona deserved a doctorate degree.”

Instead, the people running the university exposed themselves to be profoundly clueless on how media has changed.

As veteran journalist Inday Espina-Varona said in a Facebook post, “For the management of a university with a top-ranked college of communications to say, it’s at a loss re how to respond to online journalism is truly mind-boggling.”

It’s not as if UST is unaware of the World Wide Web. It has a Web site, and even a Facebook account.

But perhaps it’s still a strange world for the old guard on campus.

I found myself imagining UST’s guardians reading Vitug’s piece on printed copies of the Inquirer, gripping with indignation the newsprint that left ink stains on their fingers. Meanwhile, across the campus or at Internet cafes on España, their students are reading the same story on PCs or smart phones.

But there’s a bright side to this. UST just gave us an opportunity to talk about this brave new world of media. It’s still evolving after all.

Rappler is just another example of the change. It’s new and exciting, and led by experienced journalists, including chief executive Maria Ressa.

They’re just getting started. They have their work cut out for them. Success is not guaranteed.

I myself am not too crazy about the name which sounds like a hip-hop chat room. (“Rappler” is from the words “rap,” to discuss, and “ripple,” to make waves, the group’s Web site says.)

But that’s a minor quibble.

As Ressa writes, “We feel unbelievably lucky to be at this time and place — to feel the ground shifting beneath our feet and see the world change in ways we can barely imagine.”

Maybe some of that shifting and shaking will eventually be felt even in the most cloistered offices on one famous campus on España.

On Twitter @KuwentoPimentel. On Facebook at www.facebook.com/benjamin.pimentel