While studying at Tufts and writing for the student newspaper, Horatio “Howie” Severino, A83, made an unexpected friend: Benigno Aquino Jr., a Filipino politician who was living in exile in the Boston area.

Their conversations opened Severino’s eyes to the turbulent politics of their shared homeland, as Aquino was an outspoken critic of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino underscored the importance of standing up for vulnerable people, and his generosity with his time also modeled how to treat others: with dignity and respect, no matter their station.

Severino had planned to live and work in the United States after graduation. But when Aquino was assassinated upon his return to Manila, just months after Severino’s Tufts graduation, Severino instead went home to protest Marcos’s regime and document the struggle for power.

As a journalist, Severino covered everything from the presidency of accused war criminal Rodrigo Duterte to the evolution of the Filipino diaspora, and co-founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Today he hosts GMA Network’s i-Witness documentaries and gives talks to the next generation of Filipino journalists. His dozens of awards include Broadcast Journalist and Investigative Journalist of the Year (Rotary Club of Manila) and the Titus Brandasma Award for Leadershjp in Journalism, and he was once voted sixth on a Reader’s Digest list of most trusted Filipinos.

Here, he shares insights about the importance of journalism, in the Philippines and around the world. 

Tufts Now: How is Filipino journalism different from American journalism?

Howie Severino: We had martial law here from 1972 to 1986, and that destroyed a lot of institutions, including independent journalism. All the newspapers were shut down, and all the journalists were thrown out of their jobs, or jailed, or they went into exile. The only remaining mainstream newspapers were pro-Marcos, mouthpieces of the government. Many Filipinos chose to accept the risks and keep reporting the news, but it went underground for a while. We had to start all over again. 

Now, we have rebuilt independent journalism. And in the capitol, there’s more dialogue, more understanding of what we do. But in the remoter provinces outside Manila, especially for radio journalists, if you say something critical about somebody powerful, they will not debate with you. They will just have you killed.

That’s the basic difference between our countries. The New York Times and the Washington Post have never been shut down by the government. And although journalists in America do get killed, the Philippines is still the country that has the most violent deaths of journalists. 

What makes journalism a fulfilling profession?

I’ve gone to the most remote places in the Philippines and around the world, covered the Filipino diaspora in Africa and Iraq, and traveled to war zones and all sorts of places around the world I would never be able to go as a tourist. I’ve interviewed presidents, artists, disaster and crime victims, child warriors, and all kinds of professionals and ordinary people. There are very few jobs where you could be interviewing an impoverished, illiterate fisherman in the morning, and a senator in the afternoon, and you’d be talking to them in the same way, with the same amount of respect. It’s a very interesting life, and it’s also a form of service. There are very few jobs that are like it.

How can today’s journalists combat misinformation?

In the last decade or so, the truth has been toppled from its pedestal. And in its place, people put loyalty instead—if they’re loyal to you, it doesn’t matter what you say. So we’re up against a huge world of lies that’s eating us up. It’s preventing us from getting vaccinated, addressing climate change. It’s preventing societies from solving problems. Disinformation is right up there with all the other global crises that are tearing us apart. So I tell students, whether you’re going to be a journalist, a scientist, an academic, or something else, you’ve got to be part of the universe of truth—to join it, to collaborate and build it together. This goes beyond any geographical context. We can disagree, but we have to agree on one thing: to put truth on the pedestal. And then maybe there’s hope for all of us.

Why is good journalism important to the world?

There’s a lot that gets us down as journalists. We’re demonized, we’re trolled, here in the Philippines we’re threatened, people call us names. But on the other hand, we know we’re doing something noble. And when there’s an approaching storm or disaster, people aren’t going to go to vloggers or YouTube influencers—they’re going to go to us, because when they really need information, we are who they trust. That trust was built over time. And we have to keep at it, because there’s always going to be value in what we do—if not for its immediate impact, at least for the record we’re building for the future.