Editor’s Note: INQUIRER.net is uploading an English version of our video “Giyera,” a look at the Mindanao war through the lenses of 10 photojournalists. We are, however, also keeping the Filipino version on our VDO channel for our readers who prefer listening to the narration in this language.

MANILA, Philippines—Panelists at a forum on Mindanao said Tuesday media have a role to play in fostering peace in the southern Philippines.

At the same time, they noted media’s propensity to focus on negative news rather than positive developments.

MindaNews editor-in-chief Carloyn Arguillas, one of the panelists at the dialogue organized by the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project, said most stories on Mindanao tend to be on the conflict there.

“The only time Mindanao gets in the front page is when there is war and stories involving [Filipino boxing champion Manny] Paquiao,” Arguillas, who also chairs the Mindanao News and Information Cooperative Center, said.

Lawyer Michael Mastura, a member of the peace negotiating panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, noting the role media play in shaping public opinion, urged journalists to “be careful” in delivering information to their audiences and never to omit the “expert’s point of view” on Mindanao.

However, Alan Davis, director of the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project, acknowledged that media tend to give more prominence to new that “sells.”

“Good news, if it makes it, sits toward the back pages [of newspapers]. Bad news ‘sells’ and dominates the front [pages],” Davis said.

Other factors the panelists acknowledged colored much of reportage on Mindanao were logistics, political conflicts and language differences.

American Ambassador Kristie Kenney, who attended the dialogue, weighed in with her views as a “media consumer,” and acknowledged the role of media in helping people understand the roots of and the reasons for the conflict in Mindanao.

“In a nation of 7000 islands, you’re [media] the link,” Kenney said.