Aware of risks, slain reporter’s daughter follows pa’s path

KORONADAL CITY—Even if she knows the risks, Jhan Chiene Maravilla has decided to follow in the footsteps of her father, one of the 32 media workers killed in the Maguindanao massacre.

“He is my idol. I want to continue what he started,” she said of Bart Maravilla, a native of Bacolod City and one of the pioneering reporters of Bombo Radyo when the station was established here more than 20 years ago.

Maravilla was the station’s chief of reporters when the grisly massacre shocked the nation on Nov. 23, 2009.

Now 22, Jhan Chiene is studying mass communication at Marvelous College of Technology Inc. here preparatory to pursuing her dream of becoming a radio reporter.

To test her mettle in live broadcasting, she served as a volunteer reporter for Bombo Radyo during the 2019 midterm elections. She passed the test with flying colors.

Since 2016, Jhan Chiene has been a regular at the South Cotabato Public Information Office (PIO), where she is a volunteer intern.

“Instead of bumming around, I decided to make good use of my time by being an intern even without pay. I’m learning a lot of things that I know will be useful when the time comes,” she said.

At the PIO, she writes press releases and does radio and video productions. In the course of her work, she gets to meet top local officials.

Teacher

But she considers her late father her most important teacher and influencer.

“When he was alive, I could hear him reporting almost every dawn,” she recalled.

Bart also brought his kids to the radio station, where he anchored the noontime program. At the time of his death, his wife, Ivy, was working in Kuwait. He was thus both father and mother to their five children.

Jhan Chiene, the second in the brood, said her mother initially opposed her plan to go into journalism. But after she completed a two-year information technology course on her mother’s behest, she proceeded to study mass communication after getting a scholarship.

“I am aware that a reporter’s work is dangerous— that as a journalist, I already have one foot in the grave,” she said. “But there’s no way of stopping me from following in my father’s footsteps.”

Ivy herself told the Inquirer that she had objected to her daughter’s plan because it would entail dedication and truth-telling. But she said that she had seen how Jhan Chiene had changed. It was enough to change the worried mother’s mind.

Jhan Chiene said she wanted to pursue what her father had started: to inform the public of the truth.