Broadcaster to UP grads: Leave your echo chambers

NEW CHAPTER More than 5,000 graduates celebrate the conclusion of their campus life at the 144th General Commencement Exercises of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, on Sunday. —Grig C. Montegrande

MANILA, Philippines — “So what if you’re from UP?”

Veteran broadcast journalist Jessica Soho had a candid yet inspiring message in her remarks as a guest speaker at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman commencement exercises on Sunday.

“‘So what if you’re from UP?’ asked one of my cameramen when I was still starting out as a reporter, 40 years ago to be exact,” Soho said in Filipino. “He even told me, ‘Carry those things and the tripod. Learn to do lighting and how to plug in the microphone.’”

“Work is an equalizer,” she added. “So what if you’re from UP? I throw that same question to our graduates now.”

For Soho, being educated at UP means having a connection to the communities within and around the campus.

She reminded the students to “stay grounded,” instead of being boastful, and be one with the community and society.

“UP is not a vacuum, and more importantly, not an ivory tower,” she said. “It is easy to connect what we learned to the realities of life, because just beside our academic buildings and hangouts are the homes and small businesses of workers [on] the campus.”

As a “gentle reminder,” Soho noted that being able to study at UP is a “privilege” made possible by taxpayers, many of them everyday Filipinos struggling to go to work and make ends meet.

“Yes, there are high expectations for each of you. Not for you to feel entitled or superior, but to be humble and thankful,” she said.

‘Need to listen well’

Soho also highlighted the importance of forming meaningful relationships, which she said can be a useful tool once the students start working in their respective fields.

“Before March of 1989, a soldier told me at the press office in Camp Aguinaldo that there is an area within the waters off Palawan called the Spratly Islands,” Soho recounted. “According to him, he was thrown out to the Spratlys as punishment for ‘misbehaving,’ his own words.”

She noted that at that time, not many people knew about the islands, but it was now a “hot issue,” with the Spratlys being a highly contested area in the South China Sea.

“[R]elationships are important. Your lives will be richer if you include people who are not like you,” Soho said.

“Reach out to more people. Get out of your own circles or silos or echo chambers. At this age where we all have a voice that can be amplified through social media, we also need to listen well. You will be surprised at what you can find out,” she added.

No sole credit

The veteran journalist also urged graduating students to appreciate the people they would come to work with, as she expressed her gratitude to her colleagues in the past years.

“I would not have stumbled on another story, ‘Kidneys for Sale,’ if an old acquaintance did not trust me enough to lead me and my team to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tondo, Baseco Compound, where poor men were selling their kidneys to be transplanted to patients who have the money, including foreigners,” she recalled.

“I cannot claim sole credit for my body of work for the past four decades; that also belongs to every single person I have worked with, and those who survived with me during the most difficult and dangerous assignments,” she said. /cb