PHILIPPINES

Campus Journalists Trained to Report Using a Human Rights Lens

Project HR Lens and the Rights in Focus: Human Rights for Campus Journalists Summit 2025 helped train young journalists to integrate human rights principles into their reporting, at a time when press freedom in the Philippines continued to face challenges. The project recognized that human rights stories were often underreported and aimed to promote responsible and ethical coverage, especially of vulnerable communities.

The project focused on universities in Metro Manila, reaching ten schools and engaging up to three student journalists from each, along with ten campus paper advisers. Through surveys, mapping activities, partnerships, and training materials developed from February to July 2025, the program assessed participants’ knowledge and helped them learn how to apply human rights principles in their work. A human rights primer was also produced and shared with partner schools as a practical guide for reporting.

As part of these efforts, the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC), with support from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Philippines, held the Rights in Focus Summit on December 6, 2025 at the Ateneo Professional Schools. The whole-day event brought together more than 100 campus journalists.

Award-winning journalist Jamela Alindogan delivered the keynote address, sharing her experiences from the field and encouraging students to tell stories with compassion and courage.

Two panel discussions highlighted the state of campus journalism and the importance of reporting through a human rights lens. The first panel, moderated by Raphael Bosano of ABS-CBN News, featured campus editors Regulus Dipasupil (Philippine Collegian) and Chalssea Echegoyen (The Varsitarian), ABS-CBN anchor Adrian Ayalin, and Jonathan de Santos of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

The second panel, moderated by Atty. Mike Navallo of the Supreme Court, focused on human rights reporting and featured Lian Buan of Rappler, photojournalist Raffy Lerma, and AHRC Executive Director Atty. Nicolene Arcaina.

Participants also joined workshops on ethical and rights-sensitive reporting, fact-checking and countering misinformation, and digital safety and security. These activities aimed to improve journalists’ capacity to tell stories of inequality, injustice, and social issues in a fair and accurate way.

Through Project HR Lens and the summit, a growing network of student journalists committed to human rights-based reporting was formed, helping strengthen the future of responsible journalism in the Philippines.