In a league of her own
By Aurora D Rodriguez Aireen Perol-Jaylmalin could be the typical working mother, straddling two roles and two worlds.
She starts the day with feeding her one-year-old baby and then prepares breakfast, which she eats with her husband.
This done, she prepares to leave for work.
While putting on her make-up, she gives last minute directions to her domestic help.
Typical as this routine is, Perol-Jaylmalin's work profile is far from typical in Philippines' Albay Province.
This 31-year-old is a television broadcast journalist.
Her workday starts with briefing her nine-member news team.
"This is a must before they go out to gather the news for the day," she explains.
As the day progresses, she could be on a military helicopter covering an encounter between local Communist rebels and the military.
Or she could be negotiating the narrow streets of a city slum area with anti-narcotics agents for company.
Late afternoon, Monday to Friday, she is on camera for a live broadcast.
Perol-Jaylmalin is the news anchor for a 30-minute news programme, TV Patrol Legazpi.
At least one day a week, she works late into the night for a studio recording of yet another show - this time as the host of Largavista, a weekly news and public affairs talk show on local issues and concerns.
Although the programme has been on air for less than a year, the Philippines Survey and Research Centre (a media research group) places it among the top five Sunday television programmes in the Bicol region.
"Officially, I am chief of the news department at the Legazpi station," she says, as she explains her various functions in ABS-CBN, the country's largest television network - as senior field reporter, news anchor and talk show host.
As she goes about her work, Perol-Jaylmalin seems blissfully unaware that she is breaking every stereotype in Albay's male-dominated media industry.
Albay's media is largely Legazpi-centred (Legazpi City is the capital of Albay Province) but also covers Sorsogon and the island of Masbate, all of which are in the Bicol region at the southernmost tip of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines.
This region has a little over 200 journalists, 8 to 10 per cent of whom are women.
Given the context, is it difficult to be a woman journalist? Perol-Jaylmalin knits her eyebrows, "It is difficult but if you know what you are doing, you earn their respect." She graduated in journalism from the University of the Philippines Baguio Campus, the country's premier state university, in 1994.
Her first job was with an AM station in Metro Manila (Philippines' national capital region).
She moved on to RPN, a TV network, as production manager of a talk show.
In 1997, she opted to return to her native town, Tabaco, in Albay.
A week after her arrival, ABS-CBN Legazpi hired her as senior reporter.
From then on, Perol-Jaylmalin has been working in the local media.
In Albay, the marginalisation of women journalists goes beyond numbers.
Few women journalists make it as opinion-makers.
A very large number of columnists and commentators are men.
In local television, however, Perol-Jaylmalin is an opinion-maker in her own right.
"When you have a predominantly conservative, male-dominated media, you can safely say that you have a populace that looks at its social environment from a conservative, male perspective," she says.
Perol-Jaylmalin believes that her educational background in social, economic, political and psychological concepts helps in her role as an "analytical and critical" talk show host.
"It helps to know the 'isms'.
But most important of all is credibility," she says, as she wraps up her list of what makes an opinion-maker.
That, perhaps, explains the popularity of Largavista, a weekly show that she hosts and her team produces.
Joel Espino, a local government unit employee observes, "Talk shows from Manila discuss national issues.
But 'Largavista' discusses local concerns.
This helps us (Albayanos) to better understand local issues." Largavista is the brainchild of Woodrow Francia, station manager at ABS-CBN Legazpi.
Television networks traditionally broadcast Manila-centred programming and it was a coup of sorts when Francia convinced the network management to slot time for a locally-produced programme.
"Pressure," is how Perol-Jaylmalin sums up her job as a journalist.
She isn't talking about just work pressure though.
Nor even the pressure to be "one of the boys".
Or the pressure of being a working mother, for she has a supportive husband.
She is most weighed down by the pressure of holding on to her principles as a journalist.
"The year 1998 was my baptism by fire," she recalls.
A beginner then, she came face-to-face with 'envelopmental journalism' at its worst during the election season.
During Marcos' dictatorship, the practice of giving mediapersons 'tokens' was introduced to counter the media's adversarial stance.
The money came in envelopes - thus the term 'envelopmental' as opposed to 'developmental' journalism.
"You just learn to say no," is Perol-Jaylmalin's solution to a complex problem, fostered and institutionalised by a dictator, which still plagues the local media.
"I want to think I am different.
I am trying to make a difference." --WFS About us | Advertise | Other Publications | Subscriptions | Weather | Letters | Send Mail Disclaimer: Information is being made available at this site purely as a measure of public facilitation.
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