02.19.2010 at 5:31 pm | Have your say »

Storms turn Filipino citizens into reporters

The Philippines is perhaps among the countries that are already ahead of the curve in the Southeast Asian region when it comes to gathering content from its readers.

I experienced this first hand in the morning of September 26, 2009. At that time, tropical storm Ketsana (local name: ‘Ondoy’) unleashed a month’s worth of rainfall in less than 12 hours causing epic flooding in several cities.

Amid the heavy downpour, rescue operations continue in La Trinidad, Benguet. Sent by Gloria Cosme to GMANews.TV's YouScoop

I was then a desk editor for the morning shift of GMANews.TV. But for hours my inbox remained empty. No reporter was submitting any story for hours.

The four of us who made it to the office knew something big was happening outside. But without stories from our stringers we were left clueless. Then the phones began to ring off the hook.

A bus passenger used his mobile phone and reported that he and 30 other passengers had been stranded for more than 3 hours in EDSA, Metro Manila’s main thoroughfare.

The highway had become a murky river, he said. Most of the cars too were immediately swallowed by the floodwaters.

I took down notes and after that phone call, I immediately opened my CMS and wrote the story.

Then I received another call from a resident in Marikina city, a low-lying area surrounded by a big river.

She narrated how her neighbor’s house has been carried off by the strong flood into the river.

Using Google maps, GMANews.TV invited readers to pin areas that still need relief and rescue efforts.

She said she captured it on her camera. I told her to E-mail the images directly to us.

In a few minutes I had two pictures: One of a house with only its roof showing out of the water and another, of residents holding hands while crossing the road that by then had become a raging river.

This was what happened on that Saturday morning in the Philippines: Ordinary citizens armed with their mobile phones, cameras and Internet connections submitting stories for organizations who should have been delivering them the news.

On an ordinary day, these pictures would have been thrown to the bin because they were grainy and amateurish. But at that time, these raw images of the storm’s devastation elicited such a strong impact that our editors would later compile and broadcast these pictures on television.

Later in the day, we set up a Google map in one of our stories and urged the public to start pinning areas where people still needed rescuing.

This was eventually used by the government’s National Disaster Coordinating Council in their rescue and relief efforts. Tropical storm Ketsana would later claim more than 400 lives and cost some P11-million (USD 238 thousand) in damages to livelihood and infrastructure.

Some of the younger Filipinos turned to Facebook and Twitter to plead for help.

A group of Filipino surfers caught one of these “newsbits” and organized a relief mission using their boards and paddles. [Watch: YouTube video of the storm surfers ]

Even Hollywood took notice

As the storm became a popular trending topic in Twitter some famous twitterers like Demi Moore, Josh Groban, Ricky Martin and even Deepak Chopra urged people to start mobilizing donations.

'Mrs Kutcher' also known as Demi Moore, was among the first Hollywood celebrities to ask for relief to the Philippines.

Several bloggers began to link these tweets on their blogs that were then forwarded to news agencies.

Since then, two of the biggest media organizations in the country have gone big on user-generated content.

Their news room also ordered everyone to create a Facebook account, monitor important people’s Twitter feeds and bookmark popular political and controversial blogs.

GMA Network, the country’s leading news media outfit, re-launched YouScoop on its website GMANews.TV. This special section provides readers the chance to submit pictures and videos of events that they find newsworthy.

Since its re-launch in November, Filipinos have submitted good pictures and videos from the devastation of landslides in northern Luzon to a beautiful rainbow arching over Manila’s skyline.

“Pre-screened by GMA News and GMANews.TV editors and producers, the best of the these image submissions will be seen by millions on TV news programs and on the web,” a GMANews.TV article read.

For its year-ender report, GMANews.TV picked out 10 of the best pictures submitted via You Scoop and created a slideshow for it. [See: GMANews.TV's slideshow]

Citizen patrollers

Philippine media giant ABS-CBN created a Multiply blog where 'citizen patrollers' could report pictures or stories that they could then show on television.

But as early as 2007, ABS-CBN, the country’s biggest television network, had allotted a part of their evening newscast to ordinary people to report news.

It’s called Citizen Patrol, where citizens report on TV the news they have researched. These stories range from unfinished road projects to an abusive town chieftain.

ABS-CBN’S online website also created a special blog account where their loyal viewers could send pictures, videos or pitch in story ideas. [See: ABS-CBN's special blog site]

For the upcoming elections, ABS-CBN is training their ‘Patrollers’ in several parts of the country on how to report about campaign-related issues.

The future is online

Filipinos online are young and often tech-savvy. A typical Filipino youth owns at least one mobile phone. And most of these cellphones already have built-in audio and video recording functions.

As of 2008, the Philippines has seen a 28 percent increase in Internet users. Internet Service providers in the Philippines have also made it easier and cheaper for Filipinos to go online.

For just USD 32, a Filipino citizen could buy a pen-sized USB device and use the Internet for only 64 cents an hour.

And with new technology coming in, Filipinos are becoming more active participants in the country than mere readers of the news.

| Tagged Case Studies, citizen journalism, typhoon ketsana