#CourageON: Because of you, we pushed a ‘boring’ topic into the mainstream

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'It’s because of the general public, people like you, who took the time to slide into our DMs, to send us an email, to courageously reach out to us in public, telling us that you know of red flags in government processes that need to be reported on'

Who would have thought that we Filipinos would be ending 2025 with procurement irregularities and corruption as mainstream issues?

That would have been hard to imagine just a few months ago. In Bangkok last year, when I attended a procurement reporting seminar of Journalists Against Corruption, a network of Southeast Asian media practitioners, speakers would sometimes joke that procurement was anything but a sexy beat. 

That no longer seems to be the case. It’s now a hot commodity, with reporters across newsrooms hunting for the next procurement-related red flag. My co-reporters and I, who have been focusing on the public works scandal, even have our own coordination group chat, where we notify each other about the story we are working on so we don’t duplicate efforts. 

At a Rappler+ briefing last week, I told our community how the landscape has changed since Rappler published our investigative story on Zaldy Co’s business empire in March. Back then, we had to guide our readers every step of the way why his existing ties to Sunwest were problematic, regardless of whether the company did a good job constructing the projects awarded to it (admittedly, the quality of structures that Sunwest constructed at the time was not something we touched on, because we just did not have evidence).

Today, I’d like to believe that more Filipinos have a better understanding of the concept of conflict of interest in public service. 

In my recent vertical videos about politicians with ties to contractors, there were still some comments here and there justifying the arrangement. They would say there’s no point to our story if we could not prove that the construction firms engaged in schemes to build substandard or non-existent projects. But others would reply to these comments, echoing what was said in our explainers: that these links to contracting firms should not have existed at all in the first place, because they open the floodgates to potential corruption.

This shift is not the work of journalists alone, or civil society, or the government. It takes a village. 

It’s because of the general public, people like you, who took the time to slide into our DMs, to send us an email, to courageously reach out to us in public, telling us that you know of red flags in government processes that need to be reported on. 

Because of you, we have an extensive map of “politicontractors,” visualizing which provinces bear the symptoms of conflict of interest.

Because of you, there have been efforts to turn these exposés into cases that authorities can pursue.

It takes a village, and we thank you. 

Let’s not drop the ball. We are a small team so not all leads get answered, but continue sending Rappler your leads. And send them also to your other trusted local or national journalists. 

And if you can, please consider supporting our investigative fund. May 2026 be the year corruption meets sustained scrutiny. – Rappler.com