Oral History of Melinda Quintos de Jesus

August 19, 2008
By Kris Ephraim M. Baylon and Joanna Marie S. Eduardo

BAYLON: We’re here for our final project and I’m Kris Baylon and I’m with Joanna Eduardo and we’re here with Miss Melinda Quintos de Jesus for an interview. Miss, for the record, could you please state your name and your present employment.

DE JESUS: I’m Melinda Quintos de Jesus. I am the executive director and founder of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, a private foundation, a non-government organization, NGO as we put it that looks at the issues of press freedom and responsibility.

EDUARDO: So how long have you been a journalist?

DE JESUS: Too long. I still consider myself as a journalist, although I’m not in the current mainstream. So if you count the period in which I have been engaged in, you want to call it print, I started out in television documentary writing in the 70’s.

BAYLON: Miss, what are the factors that made you decide to be a journalist?

DE JESUS: Okay. I actually didn’t decide. In my time, which was several generations from you, most people, women, who graduated, generally did not think of themselves in a career specifically, because most of us ended up getting married, and that was what we were thinking of. And so my career actually developed quite by serendipity and this is what I tell other people who have asked me this question: “How did you become a journalist?” Actually, because the opportunities came out. And I was invited first to write documentaries for then Channel 13, which was one of the first institutions, press institutions, to examine the television documentary as part of public affairs and news coverage. So from there, I had to travel with my husband for his graduate studies, and then I returned. Again, it was by invitation. They would say, “Are you interested in writing for…?” or “Would you join us this…?” And that was how I got in as a columnist of the Bulletin Today. So it was all actually quite by, what they call, happy happenstance, that I became, what you might call, a journalist. I studied English Literature with electives in Journalism. And that’s why I, you know, had some kind of preparation for the demands of the career. And I was also involved in campus journalism, so I was editing Chi Rho, the publication of Maryknoll College. And that was where it all began, I imagine.

BAYLON: Miss, we understand that you’ve worked with several news publications in the Philippines. And Miss, again, for the record, could you enumerate some of the newspapers you’ve worked in?

DE JESUS: Okay. I was a columnist for the Bulletin Today, which was the Bulletin during the period of Martial Law. Just one of the few papers that was allowed to operate almost rather quickly after Martial Law was declared. It was owned by Hans Menzi. And by 1991, when Martial Law was formally lifted, he was ready to test the waters, and invited women columnists to write for the op. ed. So I became a columnist, then, hoping that I would simply write on the issues of education, of family, because those were mainly my concerns, but very quickly became a political critic. Before that, I edited two magazines: TV times, which looked at television during a period when you could not critique anything else and Balikbayan, which was a magazine that was designed for our overseas Filipino workers, which was then only beginning to form themselves as a constituency. I was also associate editor and columnist of Veritas News Weekly. That was during the latter period of the Marcos regime. No longer technically Martial Law, but still with a lot of the features of Martial Law. After the end of the Marcos dictatorship, I wrote a column for Philippine Daily Inquirer, for the Philippine Star. After that, The Manila Times, The Evening News. Those were probably the, you know, the four newspapers. There were probably a few more.

EDUARDO: Was there one newspaper wherein you stayed the longest?

DE JESUS: I would have to count Veritas, where I was associate editor, and then became editor, when Felix Bautista left the paper. And I was writing also as a columnist and the editorials, and, basically, supervised and managed the coverage of Veritas News Weekly. It was a weekly magazine.

BAYLON: Okay. Miss, let’s move to Bulletin Today, your stay in Bulletin Today. I understand that you’ve worked there and I would like to know more about your work experience there.

DE JESUS: I was invited to be one of the women columnists as I said, right? And then after 2 years, in 1983, when Ninoy Aquino, the former senator, was scheduled, it was already reported that he was going to return to the Philippines. We were slowly eased out of our jobs. Basically, we’re asked to stop writing. And I was the last of the women columnists to be asked to leave. And the explanation was that the then President Marcos was very nervous about the imminent return of his most important critic or oppositionist. And after we were asked to leave in August, this anniversary, this month, August 21?

BAYLON: Yes.

DE JESUS: He was shot when he arrived in the airport, and that was what basically blew the lid off the simmering ferment; questions being raised against how the dictatorship could continue for so long. And so the history of it, and it was history in the making, was that the press, the print media, basically took the lead in engaging the citizenry in the task of reviewing and criticizing more openly what was wrong with the Marcos regime. Okay, so if you want me to talk about Bulletin Today, it was the period in which we tested the waters because Martial Law was formally lifted, meaning it was announced that there was no longer any Martial Law. But there were still orders that you can actually arrest, you can detain, without any question. And so the many features of it remain, and so we felt that there were things still that needed to be criticized. And one of the columnists then, Miss Arlene Babst, felt that he should include more women. . . And so that was how I got engaged in the Bulletin. After which was Veritas. And Veritas, to my mind, was the more important kind of publication in which to be engaged, because we were really out there to make sure that the news that was not being shown in the Marcos newspapers, that we would come out and show them.

BAYLON: Okay.

DE JESUS: And print them. Printing stories.

BAYLON: Miss, since you’ve worked with so many publications now, we’re also interested in how these publications were, I mean, in terms of their physical locations and their facilities and how they print.

DE JESUS: They’re basically almost all the same. I mean, in the sense that you cannot operate without the minimum. Okay? So you have to have the minimum resources to be able to operate something, to print something. And much of that is, you know, it doesn’t require very much. Right now, with the kind of software that you have, one or three or four people can come up with a newspaper. The thing that would be raised is that printing it on print, on the paper, in ink, that’s the thing that really costs money. And of course now, with the greater demand for coverage of every kind, then you need a broader staff, etc. So which one had most of that, that question is answered simply: which publications had more money. Okay?

BAYLON: Miss, when you were practicing your journalism career, who were the people you’ve worked with? I mean the prominent people you’ve worked with?

QUINTOS DE JESUS: In what way do you mean? I mean members of the press?

BAYLON: Yes Miss, members of the press.

DE JESUS: So we were working with the publishers or the owners of the publications. So in Bulletin, we were working with Hans Menzi, who had been running the Bulletin Today for as long as anybody can remember, actually, because it was one of the first dailies, okay, that, basically, was able to establish itself as a business. It was able to establish itself as a business because it had primary dissemination. It could distribute itself, which requires a lot of money—so that it could claim national circulation. The Bulletin had that. And therefore, out of which, it was able to establish the classified ads, which, until now, remains one of its major revenue earners. If you want to advertise anything that you want to sell, buy, you put it in the Bulletin’s classified ads. And nothing has matched that. Okay, so you have to have that. But everything else that wants to establish itself in the print media has to have the resources for printing, for buying the paper, for getting the ink, for establishing a news network.

BAYLON: Miss, when you were a columnist in the Bulletin Today, how were your editors? I mean in terms of the deadlines?

DE JESUS: We were given very regular deadlines because we were given the days in which we would come out with a column and, therefore, as a columnist, it’s a completely different ball game from those who are working on the news beats, where they have to look for the stories, and they have to find the stories, and therefore have to file the stories on a daily basis. If you’re a columnist, you have a regular slot that you fill up on a regular time table. I was assigned two days in a week and on those two days, you had to submit on the deadline that was given to you. Basically, we submitted it to the assistant (editor). Was it the editor? And the. . . deputy editor, was Pat Gonzales. ( now dead.) They would read through it, make sure that it wasn’t libelous or it was . . .the kind of criticism that they could tolerate. And so, every now and then, they would edit out a paragraph or so that they found a little bit, you know, too offensive or too sensitive.

BAYLON: Miss, in terms of the grammar and those particular things in the articles that you write

EDUARDO: How were they, the editors?

DE JESUS: They did not have to correct very much because we were established writers. They did not have to correct much grammar in our copy. Today, you have to have copywriters, I think, copy editors. And actually, they have to go through the grammar and through the remarks on how English is written. I mean I don’t have to talk about that, am I right? We are losing the facility for good English and yet we insist that English is our national language for print. And that is where the problem is.

EDUARDO: So who would you consider to be a memorable editor of yours and why?

DE JESUS: You see, I also function as an editor for Veritas News Weekly and in that sense, I was an editor in the most exciting period. I worked with my editor, Felix Bautista, who was in, you know, news editor from cast in the old mode, you know, daily journalism, going after the stories as they came. . . quite a bit of the work actually fell on my shoulder, so I would say working with somebody like Felix Bautista was a good experience for me as we tried to combine the kinds of ways in which we worked together. Who were the other editors? I edited TV Times Magazine. Rod Reyes then was my editor/publisher so I would have to include among the important or significant personalities, Felix Bautista, Rodolfo Reyes, who asked me again to write for him in The Evening News. I also got to know pretty well Raul Locsin, who founded and edited the Business Day, because we worked together as colleagues. He was not my editor. I never worked for him, but basically, we had a lot of meetings where we talked about the issues that confronted us, and I invited him quite a bit as a resource person for the work that we do at the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. Who were the others? Teddy Benigno, of course, who was running a ‘Agence france’. He wrote a number of articles for Veritas, and . . . he was one of the older senior journalists that had earned their place in Philippine journalism. Currently, there is Luis Teodoro, who is the editor of Philippine Journalism Review. And Vergel Santos, who is one of our members of the board of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, who is the chairman of the board of advisers, editorial advisers for Business World.

BAYLON: Miss, when you were working as a journalist, how long did you have to work? And did you have rest days?

DE JESUS: I worked on my own time, basically. When I was editing the paper, however, we worked, we planned the issues, and then we put aside a day or so when we were simply putting the issues together. So in journalism, you do not have ‘how many hours do you work?’, you work for as long as the story is there to be written and to be, you know, to be collected and to be reported, to collect the data, so that you could report. So there is no timeframe to do these stories except your deadline. You had to have a deadline. If it was the daily deadline, then you had to have your story at that certain point that the editor gave to you, so time is not the element, you know. ‘How many hours?’ is not a ‘bundy clock’ job, okay?

EDUARDO: How about the salaries back then?

BAYLON: Did you have a fixed salary?

DE JESUS: Yes, we had fixed salaries. They paid columnist per piece which was fixed and as editors also, we were hired on a salary basis. Yes, a monthly salary.

BAYLON: Okay, Miss.

DE JESUS: It’s not functional to compare, you know, how we were paid then, because the cost of gasoline was different then. Alright, so there’s no point in saying we were paid so much. ‘Oh my God! Was that all you were paid?’ Actually, we were, you know, we were probably paid more buying power because of the economy . . .that is a different kind of economy in that period.

BAYLON: Miss, have you ever been a cub reporter?

DE JESUS: No.

BAYLON: No?

M: In that sense, my career is different, okay? I came in. I was asked to write for television, and so I pitched stories. I said I want to do the story to the news director or to the public affairs. Actually, he was the head of Channel 13. He invited me to come in and basically said, ‘Would you like to do a television documentary on a regular basis?’ And basically, I would suggest the topics and I would research it. I would write it up. I would then get a TV team to work with me in the camera, and the editors to work with me on that page so in a sense, I basically came in on a different career track.

BAYLON: Okay Miss, you mentioned earlier about the news beats.

EDUARDO: What was your first beat?

DE JESUS: I did not get in on the beats. Remember, okay? So I did not get hired. I did not come in and they say, ‘Okay, you go to the police beat.’ I got hired as, basically, a writer and producer who, basically, put together the program that they would come out. It’s a completely different ball game when you’re hired on that basis. If you’re looking for different career tracks, my career track was different. So I wrote a column. In my columns, I chose, I did the research, I went and did my own interviews, and when that column was ready, I filed it and submitted it for publication. So go and ask, you know, leave it to the others who are interviewing other people who are going through, you know, what beat were you assigned etc., etc. I chose my beats and I chose the areas that were not being covered by other people.

EDUARDO: So what were the significant events that you have covered like, for one, Martial Law? How? Could you discuss those?

DE JESUS: There’s nothing that can compare with the coverage of 1983-1986. There was a historic change that happened in this country that people have to review every now and then to learn those lessons. Basically, the print media played a critical role. We, in the alternative press, it was called the alternative press or the ‘mosquito’ press.

EDUARDO: Yes.

DE JESUS: We chose to look for the stories that could not be covered in the crony press of the time, and therefore, allowed a significant critical mass of Filipinos to get to know the truth that they could not find in the controlled press. How can you compare that with anything now that everything is free and that people are basically ‘free’ to a certain point, okay? And that newspapers are basically competing more for revenues, for the scoop, for the first to be there, you know, in terms of big stories. Sometimes, what’s happening now is that they miss the stories still that are not told. Why? Because it’s easier to go after the sensationalisms.

BAYLON: Miss, do you have any specific personal experiences that you’ve encountered?

EDUARDO: For example, during coup attempts, EDSA, rallies, any experience?

BAYLON: Encounters?

EDUARDO: Yes.

DE JESUS: Yeah. Well, you know, when you have bombs going over you head, when you have parts of the military fighting other parts of the military. How can you describe going through that and writing about it? I was then both a radio columnist as well as a print columnist. In the coup attempts of 1987 and again in 1989, where basically the city of Manila became a war zone, I would have to say that that is one of the most unforgettable periods. But then, it was not just me as a journalist going through that. It was, basically, a lot of ordinary people going through that experience of seeing clashes on the streets and sometimes, being part of the, you know, exchange of fire or being caught in the crossfire. For example, if you look at what’s happening in Mindanao now, you know, it’s a lot of civilians and ordinary people, not necessarily the media that is experiencing. So it’s good for us to recall the times when we experienced it ourselves, not just as journalists but as ordinary citizens. What other things? It was wonderful to be able to see a new president that was going to open up democratic space. And the Aquino presidency has to be re-revisited again and again for the kind of hard work that it required to be able to establish and recover democracy. And much of my writing in that period, post-1986, focused on the dilemmas of democracy, and how difficult it is to have a democracy work within the limits of our development.

DE JESUS: One last question. I think we can finish. You choose what is your most important question.

EDUARDO: What can you say about the current status of the journalism in the country?

BAYLON: And what’s it’s future?

DE JESUS: Journalism is a continuing, learning experience. You are not a real journalist unless you are willing to learn and re-learn. Why? Because you are covering change. You are reporting on actual changing world. And many journalists don’t see that change. And they have to be taken away from the daily grind for them to realize that the story is actually about the changing institutions, the breaking up of institutions, and the recovery of those institutions. And so, that is what print media and all of media, journalistic media, need to find: the skills to be able to make relevant to a public that needs the press to help them learn about democracy and the requirements of democracy.

BAYLON: In behalf of my partner, Joanna Eduardo, we’d like to thank you for this time that you’ve given for this interview.

EDUARDO: Even if it’s very abrupt.

DE JESUS: Thank you. You’re welcome. And thank you for coming.

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Born on July 20, 1944 in Manila, Ms. Melinda Quintos de Jesus is the current Executive Director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. Having graduated in Maryknoll College in 1964 with the degree of B.A., Major in English Literature, she has worked in radio, television, film, and print. She has worked as a columnist and an editor in many of the Philippine news publications including Bulletin Today (Manila Bulletin), Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Times, Philippine Star, and Veritas News Magazine.