DEAN ARMANDO J. Malay, who was a journalist for over 40 years, and
who died last week at the age of 89, was one of the pioneering faculty
members at the College of Mass Communication, then Institute of Mass
Communication (IMC), of the University of the Philippines. In his
May 16 to 18 wake at UP, his former students, many of them now editors
in the country’s leading newspapers, recalled how, together with
the late Hernando J. Abaya and IP Soliongco, he shaped their development
as journalists.
But even before IMC was established, Dean Malay had been teaching
the UP journalism courses then lodged in the Department of English
and Comparative Literature. I was an English major with what was then
known as a “concentration” in creative writing and journalism
(a strange, probably dangerous, even incompatible, combination). I
was among his students in two subjects, newswriting and feature writing.
Professor Malay would come to class in a bow tie and dress shirt,
and from there proceed to the Manila Times, then the most widely circulated
newspaper in the country, where he was a columnist and was also one
of the editors—and where, we his students presumed, a bow tie
and dress shirt were the norm.
We made secret fun of his bow ties, of which he seemed to have dozens;
his choice of the cigarettes he perpetually smoked, a local brand
from the Ilocos and not from Richmond; his pacing up and down before
the class rather than sitting down; his looking out the window or
at the ceiling rather than at his students while lecturing on the
complexities of writing a news lead; and his voice, which was loud,
insistent and demanded undivided attention.
Some of us derided his current events quiz, which was everyday and
took 20 minutes of each class period. We wanted professors to carry
on about “the larger issues,” rather than force us to read
newspapers. But no one said he didn’t know his stuff as a journalist.
When he told us about the debates in the newsroom over the proper
use of this word or that phrase, we listened. Was it “watch out
for” or “watch for” the publication of Nick Joaquin’s
latest book? Was the name NVM Gonzalez spelled with two “z”s
or with one? Was it ever correct to say “peoples” or “sport”?
We listened, too, to his accounts of his experiences as a reporter
before and after World War II, one of them his covering the suicide
of a Tondo fisherman who had swallowed a blasting cap, and whose remains,
he assured us, had to be literally scraped off the walls. Occasionally,
he would put his students down, especially those who ignored his admonition
to put things simply and clearly, and to think of the readers rather
than themselves. Being then under the influence of Lionel Trilling’s
murky prose, I once used the word “pestilential” in a feature
story. He reacted to it by saying, while looking at the ceiling as
usual, that “class, this is one word you should avoid like the
plague”—a little joke we caught on to only after he had
laughed at it himself.
But he emphasized ethical behavior most of all, admonishing his students
to never, never accept anything from any politician, businessman or
whomever else one was interviewing or otherwise writing about. That
rule was for him absolute and brooked no ifs and buts, and meant refusing
not only envelopes and all-expense-paid trips, but even a cup of coffee.
Time does wonders to one’s outlook. I never got over the bow
ties. But I did come to realize that a journalist needs to be informed
and that it’s a constant and daily need not easily realized in
a world of conflicting claims and versions of events. As a teacher
at UP, I give current events quizzes myself, although not daily, and
now understand the virtues of looking at the ceiling or out the window
if there are windows, rather than being distracted by that student
writing a note to his seatmate, or that other one smiling up at you
while her mind’s elsewhere.
The newsroom debates he recounted—those debates over the proper
use of this word or that phrase—are lessons in the permanent
responsibility of communication for exactitude and precision, and
the need for journalists to write for the reader and not for each
other, a common vice in Philippine journalism. It recognized the fundamental
duty of journalism to report events, and to report them as clearly
and as precisely as possible.
His instruction to refuse even a cup of coffee, which many describe
as far too demanding, and as raising the ethical bar too high, on
the other hand, draws early a line the journalist must not cross.
Many journalists do draw a firm line between reporting with no consideration
other than the facts on the one hand, and on the other, writing with
one eye on who benefits or suffers. But some draw the line too late—so
late in fact that many find themselves no longer journalists but paid
performers, surprising even themselves at how quickly they have been
transformed into dancers to the tune of the powerful.
Dean Malay preferred to draw the line early. That way there would
be no mistaking where the boundaries between the ethical and unethical
are, an issue that in the murky world of Philippine journalism is
especially critical.
Dean Malay did not limit the lessons he taught to those he imparted
only in the classrooms of UP. Though already dean of Student Affairs
at UP Diliman, in the martial-law period he was arrested several times
for what he wrote, and thus demonstrated how valuable a free press
was, and how it had to be fought for despite the threat of prison
and worse. This was itself an invaluable contribution to the broad
resistance against dictatorship. But to that dangerous course he also
added involvement in the organizations of former political prisoners
as well as of the relatives of the disappeared, and regular attendance
in antidictatorship demonstrations.
But he was more than a human rights and antidictatorship activist.
He was also committed to a radical vision of a better society and
nation, the coming of which he sought through his actions to realize,
but which he seemed to know he would not see in his lifetime.
Dean Malay thus combined in his person the virtues of authentic journalism,
and of active involvement in the fight for human rights and for an
alternative future.
In 2001 Metrobank joined other groups in recognizing his achievements
both as a journalism practitioner as well as an outstanding leader
in journalism, the latter achieved both by his teaching as well as
by the force of his example as practitioner.
The process of his selection was among the most rigorous I have ever
seen in the often confused and confusing world of journalism awards.
As the process unfolded, and the boards of judges that made up the
awards committees came to know more about Dean Malay as teacher and
journalist, it became evident that the twin recognitions were properly
his.
The months-long search for nominations among journalists, academics
and media advocacy organizations had yielded several names, but that
of Dean Malay was the one most often mentioned. Once nominated, however,
the nominees were subjected to the further probing of a referee, who
interviewed the nominee’s colleagues, other practitioners, academics,
his friends and enemies and others familiar with him or her. In many
cases the muck-raking produced surprising results.
In the outstanding journalist awards, of which there were three,
but especially in the lone leadership in journalism award, there was
soon no contest. There was not a single negative comment about Dean
Malay, no claims that he misused his writing for personal ends, no
suggestion that he was other than professional in the four decades
that he practiced. There was instead universal recognition of the
critical role he had played in the development of the skills and ethical
awareness of the practitioners consulted, and testimonies to his personal
and professional integrity.
What this indicated was that no one else except Dean Malay then combined
in one person the integrity, the experience and the influence on the
profession and on professionals that defined leadership in journalism
in addition to outstanding practice in it. That could well be his
epitaph as journalist and teacher. But it is also a reminder to us
all that what we do during our all too brief journey on this earth
decides what we will leave behind.
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Reprinted from Today, abs-cbnNEWS.com, and
LuisTeodoro.com. Also delivered on May 18, 2003 during the tribute
to Dean Malay held at the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice in UP Diliman.
