FROM THE FRINGES: Writing History in a Hurry

FROM THE FRINGES: Writing History in a Hurry

By Jerome Aning | August 7, 2026  

The month of August in the Philippines is History Month, proclaimed by President Benigno S. Aquino III in 2012, expanding and replacing History Week, which has been observed from September 15 to 21 since 1974. For this year, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) chose the theme “Hinubog ng Bayan, Dinuyan ng Alon.” The theme is related to the NHCP’s earlier declaration of 2026 as the “Year of Philippine Diplomatic History and Diaspora,” honoring the country’s foreign affairs and international relations, the 2016 Arbitral Ruling, and the global legacy of overseas Filipinos.  

“From our shores to the various corners of the world, the history of the Philippines is a story of a people who traveled, interacted, and brought the Filipino spirit wherever they went. The sea became a bridge for our trade, diplomacy, and to the millions of Filipinos who set up communities overseas,” the agency said on its Facebook page.  

In his proclamation, Aquino said the designation of August as History Month was meant “to emphasize the most significant turning points in Philippine history.” Two pivotal events in our history took place in August: the outbreak of the 1896 Philippine Revolution, with the Cry of Pugadlawin and the Battle of San Juan del Monte, and the assassination of opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. in 1983. History Month culminates with National Heroes’ Day on the last Monday of August, during which heroes from all times, living or dead, famous or unsung, are honored.  

The NHCP, various state bodies, local government units, and private groups also mark other important events such as the mock Battle of Manila (1898); the ratification of Philippine Independence in Bacoor (1898); the arrival of the Thomasites (1901); the end of World War II in the Pacific following the surrender of Japan (1945); the signing of the United States-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (1951); the adoption of the “Filipino First” policy (1958); the foundation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (1967); the Plaza Miranda bombing (1971); and the 1987 coup attempt.  

Also falling in August are the death anniversaries of Presidents Manuel L. Quezon (1944) and Corazon Aquino (2009), Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo (2012), and Miguel Lopez de Legazpi (1572); and the birth anniversaries of Marcelo H. del Pilar (1850), Josephine Bracken (1876), Quezon (1878), President Ramon Magsaysay (1907), José García Villa (1908), and Fernando Poe Jr. (1939). Important institutions established in August include the province of Cebu (1569), the Philippine Independent Church (1902), Silliman University (1901), the Philippines Free Press (1908), the Philippine National Historical Society (1941), the National Movement for Free Elections (1951), and El Shaddai (1984). Key legislation enacted in August includes the Jones Law (1916), the Rizal Law (1956), and the Reproductive Health Act (2012).  

Remembrances are also held for tragedies that took place in August, such as the Cherry Hills tragedy (1999); the Moro Gulf (1978) and Casiguran (1968) earthquakes; the country’s worst oil spill off Guimaras (2006); and the Luneta bus hostage incident (2010).  

Journalism is often described as “history written in a hurry,” with daily print or broadcast news reports relating events as they unfold. When writing about significant events, journalists are bound by deadlines and space constraints and so tend to pick facts that matter most to keep readers and listeners interested, although some would later produce longer “deep-dive” or explanatory news features.  

When I was a print reporter covering national and local beats, I was fortunate to have written about historic events in our country’s history, such as the 1998 Centennial, Edsa Dos and Tres, the executions of convicts at the New Bilibid Prisons, the promulgation of the Vizconde massacre case, the Oakwood mutiny and Manila Peninsula siege, the “Hello, Garci” scandal, the Lung Center of the Philippines fire, the Sumilao farmers’ march, the visit of Pope Francis, the war on drugs, and the COVID-19 pandemic. My stint covering southern Metro Manila is memorable as I was able to write about local notables such as Fr. Pedro Dandan and St. Ezekiel Moreno. In my coverage of Manila, the Supreme Court, and Manila-based government agencies, I researched and wrote straight-news stories and features about interesting issues pertaining to national heritage, such as the demolition of the Jai Alai and Avenue Theater buildings, the Mehan Garden conservation, the Torre de Manila case, and the revitalization of Intramuros and Rizal Park. On the occasion of the centenary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, I got to write about artist-writer Francis D. Millet, one of the ill-fated liner’s passengers, who visited Manila as an “embedded journalist” during the Spanish-American War.  

It would be the professional historians who will get to write the proper history of the events I covered, along with their long-term impact, and elaborate on their contexts and aspects. There were a few occasions when historical researchers and historiographers got in touch with me to help them get full quotes, primary documents, and other details of an event, place, or person. I get pleasantly surprised whenever I stumble upon the history pieces they produced and see some of my articles mentioned as references, appearing in footnotes and bibliographies.  

As a young journalist, I was always conscious, as I had been taught in college, about keeping my news articles, especially those tackling important events, objective or bias-free. Experience showed, however, that from condensing narratives and providing overviews and highlights to selecting quotes and details, reporters and editors inevitably inject into the final copy their personal biases, which may or may not reflect the media entity’s editorial stand. One editor told me that a writer’s bias could still manifest unconsciously in his or her piece, so it is useless to suppress it, although one may still try to do so. What’s important, he added, is for the article to pass through “gateways” such as the editors and publishers so that the bias can be removed, toned down, or even made more evident, depending on the editorial stand. Another editor told me that a journalist should at all times be “biased in favor of the truth,” but nowadays, in the age of “alternative truths,” malinformation, and fake news, that is easier said than done. On social media, where anyone can be a journalist or historian, I am dismayed and always try to avoid reading journalistic and history-themed write-ups and multimedia content that are obviously generated by artificial intelligence, which also has biases due to flawed training data, poor algorithmic design, and inept or prejudiced human prompters.  

Like journalists, historians writing their pieces are also confronted by their own biases. However, the eminent historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo argues in his 1978 essay “History as Humanities” (available on the Official Gazette website) that biases are okay, as these could lead to a better understanding of a historical person, place, or event. What one has to be apprehensive about, he said, are the standardized interpretations of history.  

He wrote: “Because history is a re-creation of the past as seen by the historians, it is not objective. In the process of re-creation, the personality of the historian plays an important role. He displays his passion, his prejudices, and emotion—in brief, his humanity—and as such, he cannot help being affected by the events and personalities he is re-creating. It is this subjectivity that characterizes all great historians, a subjectivity that makes for divergences in interpretation. It is ignorance of the nature of historical writing that made even learned men in the past say that history is and must remain objective—an impossibility since the historian as man or woman cannot run away from himself/herself. We, as human beings, have feelings, emotions, prejudices, loves, and jealousies which play a part in our writing, whether this be a mere letter, essay, or an extended historical work. It is my belief that an objective historian is unhuman and, therefore, dull and impossible to deal with. I do not know of any such unhuman historian.”  

“Since interpretations in history vary from person to person and from time to time, some people fear that the readers might get confused in the wilderness of interpretations. There need not be any such fear, for far from sowing confusion, differences among historians make for intelligent and critical appraisal on the part of the readers. What the readers should fear is uniformity of opinions or interpretations, for such a situation can only come about at a time and in a place where freedom has no meaning,” Agoncillo added.  

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Comments are welcome on my page: <https://www.facebook.com/fromthefringesph/>.

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