by SHEILA S. CORONEL

I had resolved to keep quiet in the midst of the Inquirer's barrage against the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). I know that words come too easily for those in our business, especially words written in moments of anger and pique. I did not want to be caught in a word war with the country's largest newspaper. There is no way the PCIJ—a small, independent nonprofit media organization—can fight the Inquirer. Nor was there ever any reason to wage such a fight.

But now that Conrad de Quiros has also lashed out at us, I feel it is time to speak. I have shared far too many bottles of beer with Conrad to let this pass. There is nothing sadder than to be misunderstood by your friends.

The crux of the Inquirer's beef with the PCIJ is that we put pressure on them to run our stories on President Estrada's wealth. This is simply not true. As far as I know, the Inquirer was NOT pressured by Malacañang or any other office NOT to run the PCIJ story. The real reason they did not use our story is the internal dynamics between the Inquirer and PCIJ.

A couple of years ago, the Inquirer editor, Ms. Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, herself told me that the paper wanted to develop its own investigative team and would use fewer of our stories. I respect this sentiment. The press and the public benefit if more news organizations invest in investigative reporting. Our own brochure says that PCIJ does not intend to replace the work of newspapers, "but merely to encourage the development of investigative journalism and to create a culture for it within the Philippine press."

Since its founding in 1989, PCIJ has given grants to enable both freelance journalists and staff reporters to do investigative reports. We provide financial, research and editorial support for these investigations. Our reports are sent to 15 major newspapers in Manila, Cebu and Davao, which are free to decide whether or not to use them. PCIJ charges a modest fee (P1,500 to P3,000) for each story.

We appreciate the fact that from 1989 to 1995, the Inquirer consistently used nearly all of our reports, including one on Rosemarie Arenas that incurred the ire of then President Fidel Ramos. The usage declined after 1995, but still, the Inquirer published 14 PCIJ stories since then; the very last one was a report on teenage prostitution printed on November 8, 1999.

All of these stories have embargo dates: We normally release them to the editors on a Friday and ask that they print them NOT EARLIER THAN the following Monday. Setting embargo dates is standard journalistic practice. As every journalist knows, a newspaper is free to use the material anytime after the embargo date. There has never been any pressure for the Inquirer or any other paper to print our stories on the embargo date itself. Embargo was never an issue with any newspaper until now. In fact, the Inquirer ran controversial stories, including those on the Amari scam and the textbook scandal, and never found any problem with our practice of setting embargos on story publication.

I am not stupid (at least Conrad concedes this). I know that PCIJ will gain nothing from waging a campaign against the Inquirer. Apart from the fact that we have friends in that newspaper, we have always recognized the Inquirer's courage and valued its support of our work. That is why we stood up to defend the Inquirer during last year's advertising boycott. When its media colleagues were delighting in the Inquirer's woes, we circulated a statement and spoke out in many public forums condemning the boycott. I told the Makati Business Club that press freedom was under siege because of what Malacañang was doing to the Inquirer.

In a phone call on September 9, 1999 (I keep a log of calls), Ms. Magsanoc suggested to me that PCIJ do a report on the boycott. We sent one of our fellows, Glenda Gloria, a former Inquirer reporter, to work on the story, which we were preparing to release in the coming months. Glenda spoke to a number of Inquirer editors and to the Inquirer president, Ms. Alexandra Prieto Romualdez, who all cooperated with her investigation.

In addition, from February to July this year, Malou Mangahas, a co-founder and member of the PCIJ board, was in constant touch by e-mail and phone with Ms. Romualdez, who in March proposed to contract her to do a regular critique of the paper. Malou declined the offer of remuneration, but she and Ms. Romualdez continued to exchange notes about news coverage and journalism. (Copies of the email are available on request.)

It was in the context of this relationship that Malou called Ms. Romualdez on July 24, asking her whether it was true that Malacañang called some newsrooms to ask them not to print the PCIJ story on the Estrada wealth. The call was not intended to imply that Inquirer buckled down to Malacañang pressure. Malou made the call only because PCIJ was doing a TV report related to the Estrada story.

All this time, we were cooperating with the Inquirer, not putting it down. Nineteen of its correspondents have attended our training courses - for free - in the last year alone. I have sat with Isagani Yambot, the publisher, in explaining the issue of press freedom to students. When I spoke out in a press forum last week about the "chill" in Philippine media, I was not referring to the Inquirer, but to the sentiments expressed to me by my friends in other newspapers and TV stations for whom the issue of self-censorship is very real. Unfortunately, neither Conrad nor Mr. Doronila was in that forum and so could not appreciate the context of what was said. Sadly, the journalists of the Inquirer seem to have little sympathy for our colleagues straining under the leash in other media organizations.

Atty. Raul Palabrica, the Inquirer's Readers' Advocate, said that the paper had decided not to print the Estrada wealth story at the outset. What he did not say was that there was pressure, not from PCIJ, but from the other Inquirer editors to run the report. As a result, a decision to write a story on the PCIJ report was made. But then, at that point, the newspaper was inundated by angry email from disappointed readers.

PCIJ cannot be held responsible for the barrage of e-mail asking the Inquirer why it did not use our story. Concerned individuals, some (but not all) of whom are closely associated with us, were apparently so disheartened by the non-use of the story that they circulated e-mail messages critical of the newspaper. Should we apologize for what our friends and other Inquirer readers say? We cannot stop people from speculating. We cannot ask them to shut up. But we have tried our best to explain to people that the Inquirer's decision on the Estrada story has nothing to do with Malacañang pressure, but was a part of the paper's policy to develop its investigative reporting team.

Unfortunately, many readers do not find this explanation good enough. That is not our fault. Even more unfortunately, the Inquirer and some of its columnists have chosen to defend the paper by putting PCIJ down. This is the saddest part of all, because we like to keep the friendship and mutual respect.

Conrad quotes Oscar Wilde. This is from the Zen master Mumon:

Wind, flag, mind moves,
the same understanding.
When the mouth opens
All are wrong.