2019 McLuhan Fellow Patricia Evangelista: My job is ‘keeping the record straight’
2019 McLuhan Fellow Patricia Evangelista: My job is ‘keeping the record straight’
Patricia Evangelista, veteran multi-awarded journalist
By Althea Manasan
The Philippne Reporter
Last year, while investigating a story about the Philippine drug war, journalist Patricia Evangelista found herself in a hotel room with a killer.
His name was Simon — at least that’s the name she gave him in her story in order to safeguard his identity — and he had admitted to murdering two men as part of a vigilante group targeting drug users.
Before the interview, Evangelista’s editors at Rappler warned her and her photographer to be careful, and to check Simon for a gun — but they had decided that they’d rather not find out if he had one.
For Evangelista, this is all part of the job. In her work as an investigative journalist, she has travelled to hurricane-ravaged regions, listened to graphic stories of sexual exploitation, and come face to face with killers.
But don’t call her fearless.
“There are a lot of fearless reporters. I’m not one of them. I’m fearful everyday,” she said to an audience at Toronto City Hall, as part of the BoniFest arts and culture festival held on Sunday, Nov. 17.
“I’m afraid of getting it wrong, of getting someone shot, of failing to ask the right questions, of believing the wrong person, of pissing off some vigilante who decides I’m more useful dead.”
Evangelista’s presentation, titled “Covering Trauma: Reporting for the Imagination,” was the first of a two-week speaking tour across Canada after she was named this year’s Marshall McLuhan Fellow.
Patricia Evangelista receives a plaque of appreciation and medal from the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada. From left: Susana Donan, NEPMCC Senior VP; Evangelista and Thomas Saras, President and CEO of NEPMCC. (2 Photos: MC Ramos)
The award is presented annually by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and the Canadian Embassy in the Philippines to recognize excellent work by a Filipino journalist.
Over her career, the 34-year-old Evangelista has earned accolades for her work covering traumatic events, such as the Ampatuan massacre in 2009, Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, and now the “War on Drugs” being waged by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Her stories often focus on individual human stories, on the people affected by these major events.
“I’m a narrative journalist, so it means I immerse,” she said in an interview with The Philippine Reporter. “And people are interesting … people are more than that single traumatic experience.”
She says a large part of her interviews are about love stories.
“How did they meet the man who was a corpse the night before? My job is to take the body and … make him a human being, make her a human being.”
During her presentation, Evangelista offered tips, both practical and ethical, on how to report on stories of trauma: approach all survivors and witnesses with care, respect and kindness; accept refusal with courtesy; seek out the whole person; go beyond tragedy.
Evangelista says that above all, her job is simply to keep the record straight.
“If my goal were changing public opinion, I would have given up years ago,” she said. “I’m keeping a record. That’s what I think my job is now.”
Group photo at Toronto City Hall’s Council Chamber with Patricia Evangelista (2nd row, 7th from left)
(Photo: Rene Sevilla)
From left: Hermie and Mila Garcia, Patricia Evangelista, Carlo Figueroa (at the back), Leslie Gesell, Marissa Corpus (Photo: Y. Cabana)
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