MURMURINGSbyACS

This project is the output of the writer during a seminar-workshop on photojournalism "Writing Beyond Stills" conducted by Vera Files in 2010 in Subic, Zambales.  It was voted best script by the trainers.

By Ariel C. Sebellino For Yahoo! Southeast Asia There was one scene in the recently-concluded television soap opera Momay that belittled children studying in public schools: character actress Glydel Mercado, playing the role of a mother, told her nephew, “O ikaw Jay-jay, sa public school ka nalang mag-aral kasi bobo ka naman (You, Jay-jay, will go to public school because you’re dumb).”  That was one of the scenes discussed in a media dialogue organized by the National Council for Children Television (NCCT) with scriptwriters and program producers of the three major television networks. Teacher participants said the infamous line disparaged public schools and the children who study in them. Television director and NCCT executive director Frank Rivera told writers of the popular Momay, Magkaribal, Panday Kids and other primetime shows to “look into the welfare and protection” of children. Veteran television and stage director Mario O’Hara agreed, saying that while writers are ...

What could have been a good opportunity to ventilate legitimate concerns and clear things once and for all, turned out to be a major lambaste on a leading drugstore in the country. In a forum hosted by the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA), Mercury Drug Corporation (MDC) and other drugstores got the ire of several persons with disabilities (PWDs) and groups representing them for refusing to grant discount on medicines to those who need them such as the physically impaired and mentally challenged individuals. Much like a senior citizen, a disabled person is entitled to a 20 percent discount on medicines from any drugstore anywhere in the country and on medical services in all government facilities as mandated by law. The PWDs zeroed in on MDC which was the only drugstore present in the forum.

Photo by Yvonne T. Chua Why sandcastles are disappearing in Boracay By  Ariel C. Sebellino, Yahoo Fit to Post  |  The Inbox  –  Fri, Mar 18, 2011 On one cold and windy Tuesday morning, she made her last sandcastle.  It stood mighty proud till late evening.  A few tourists walked past it, not knowing its impending fate. Precy Sacapaño, a fifty-year-old mother of six used to make a living out of building sandcastles.  She is one of the 31 men and women who build miniature replicas of castles along the beaches of Boracay in the municipality of Malay, Aklan—much to the delight of passersby and tourists.  Even children helped build the sandcastles. "I started playing with the white sand until I learned to make castles out of it," Precy recalled.  I began doing it in 2005.  I was happy doing it at first until tourists were regaled by my sandcastle.  I did not ask them to pay me.  They just threw coins." She and her compa...

FOR four days in February 25 years ago, Filipinos enthralled  freedom-loving people all over the world when they stalled military tanks with nothing but rosaries and roses and the determination to win back the freedom taken from them by  a strongman who ruled the country for more than 20 years. It was a gripping demonstration of “People Power,” which started in the afternoon of Feb. 22. By evening of Feb. 25, then President Ferdinand Marcos, his family and cronies fled the country, transported by a United States C-130 plane to Hawaii. Two veteran journalists belonging to what was then referred to as the “alternative press”  in contrast to government friendly establishment press, recalled how their newsrooms and coverage were put to test and their careers defined by an event that changed the course of the country’s history, politics, culture and society. Lourdes ‘Chuchay’ Fernandez, then editor-in-chief of  Ang Pahayagang Malaya (Filipino term  for “Free”), se...