Cabaero: Justice for Mike

WHAT we were doing was giving voice to the voiceless in the global arena. But we didn’t know it that time.

For online journalism pioneer Michael “Mike” Marasigan, what we did then in the Globalization of Island Community Newspapers (Globicom) project was to round up community newspapers and convince them to send us their news articles so we may post them to the website. It was 1999 and most, if not all, community newspapers didn’t have websites.

I was Visayas bureau chief of Globicom (before I rejoined SunStar in late 1999) while Marasigan was editor of BusinessWorld’s website at www.bworldonline.com. It was Marasigan who taught me the rudiments of online journalism and how to use the Internet to bring community newspapers to a global audience through the Globicom website. Globicom was a project of the Philippine Press Institute and the Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

It was familiar newsroom work for me to get these news stories, edit and process them. Not for a newspaper or a Cebu audience, but for a digital product and a global audience that could link a Cebuano in New Jersey in the United States to news about his community in Guadalupe, Cebu City.

As I worked on the same model for SunStar, at www.sunstar.com.ph, I realized it was not just about the news, it was the connection, the community we helped create. And how their voices could now be heard beyond borders, beyond physical limitations, beyond time.

Marasigan was killed together with his brother, Christopher, by gunmen Thursday night. Motive for having them killed was not yet known by investigators. Marasigan was a press relations person and media consultant, after giving up journalism more than a decade ago.

Goodbye, Mike. I join the clamor for justice for you and Christopher.

u2022••

Terrorism and climate change are the leading security threats faced by Filipinos. That is if results of a global survey, on what people see are the greatest threats to national security, are to be believed.

The survey conducted recently by the United States-based Pew Research Center asked about eight possible threats: Isis or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, global climate change, cyberattacks, the condition of the global economy, the large number of refugees leaving Iraq and Syria, and the power and influence of the United States, Russia and China.

Out of 38 countries polled, respondents from 18 countries, including those in Asia, named Isis as the top threat.

In the Philippines, the Isis ranked highest at 70 percent of respondents saying it is the major threat to the country’s security; followed by global climate change at 65 percent; cyberattacks from other countries, 64 percent; and condition of the global economy and large number of refugees, both at 46 percent.

The government of President Rodrigo Duterte is addressing the terrorist threat, in ways forceful, maybe popular, but at times questionable. The amount of time, energy and resources spent addressing terrorism unfortunately cannot be said of the problem of climate change.

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