I learned the ground rules of journalism – the Who, What, When, Where, and Why – on my first day ‘on the job’ as a cadet reporter and practiced them until my last day ‘on the job’.
The Five Ws
WHO I am.
A journalist, a foreign correspondent, a speech writer, a press secretary, and a communications manager.
At 25, I left Australia – a journalist – with a typewriter in my backpack, on a quest to become a foreign correspondent. My destination was the Philippines. To get there took 18 months. Travelling alone, writing as I went, I journeyed through six Southeast Asian countries before I reached my destination. I stayed 10 years in the Philippines and reported – for 10 radio stations and three newspapers – on the final decade of the 21-year rule of President Ferdinand Marcos who was overthrow in a People Power revolution in 1986.
For three years, after returning to Australia, I reported for four international broadcasters on Australian and pacific affairs. After that, I was a press secretary for the NSW government, a speech writer for the NSW premier, and the corporate communications manager for Westpac Bank, and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Australia’s multilingual and multicultural national broadcaster.
WHAT I have written.
This two-book chronical of my journalistic life, begins with Meandering to Manila. It focuses on the different path I took to become a ‘freelance’ foreign correspondent. For 18 months, I explored Southeast Asia to gain the experience I needed so that when I arrived in the Philippines, I was ready. I did it by myself. I was not an employee of a media company assigned to Manila. I arrived alone and worked alone. I was a self-made freelance foreign correspondent.
Reinventing Marcos is my account of the Marcos regime during the 10 years I was there (1977-87). I reported on the dictator, President Ferdinand E. Marcos, his political stranglehold over the country, the corruption, the human rights abuses, the cronyism, and the economic plunder of the nation. I saw Marcos at the peak of his martial law powers, and I was there when he was deposed in a People Power revolution in 1986 and fled into exile. He died in Hawaii three years later.
WHEN it occurred.
It was a different time in 1976 when I left Australia to pursue my foreign correspondent dreams. Mobile phones, laptop computers, and the Internet had not yet been invented. I was a newspaper journalist and a radio producer, so I crammed a portable typewriter and a cassette recorder into my backpack and for the next 18 months travelled through Southeast Asia. With no Wi-Fi, I listened to shortwave radio. With no email, I wrote and received letters via poste restante, often several weeks old. Only at city or country post offices could I book an expensive phone call on a shaky line that often was disconnected. In Manila, I was self-employed, self-reliant, and keen to make my mark. I recorded my first radio reports inside a wardrobe. Sometimes, under a blanket. Yes, it was different then.
WHERE it happened.
The Philippines was a story bonanza: a dictator; martial law; a subservient military; a compliant judiciary; a kowtowing bureaucracy; a stifled media; an intimidated opposition; and a browbeaten work force. On top of that, the Philippines was a militarized country fighting an Islamic secessionist war and a communist guerrilla war. For an ambitious, news-hungry journalist, it was perfect: a nation abuzz with stories, riddled with personalities, and dominated by one man, Ferdinand E. Marcos – a president turned autocrat – who tolerated no opposition, wrote his own rules, and systematically robbed Filipinos of their rights while lavishing power and wealth on himself, his wife, family, and cronies.
WHY I wrote these two books.
My first book, Meandering to Manila, sets the scene. A journalist, travelling alone in Southeast Asia on a mission to become a foreign correspondent. The things I saw and the people I met ruffled my sensibilities. These stories needed telling. I carried a typewriter in my backpack and wrote as I travelled. I wrote my companion book, Reinventing Marcos because I had to. I had to counter a pernicious social media disinformation campaign that glorified Marcos and his so-called ‘golden’ age. Social media history deniers have tried to whitewash his 21-year regime and mythologise and propagandize Marcos. As a former foreign correspondent, I was obligated to tell the truth. It is why I wrote Reinventing Marcos.