Excuse me po, it's
Mike Enriquez
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| On being Imbestigador ng Bayan: “Getting a ‘scoop’ is tougher these days, says Mike. “Because aside from everything being digital and electronic, we have more and more citizen journalists.” |
He came to our interview on a rainy Friday afternoon with
such high energy, after coming straight from raiding a gambling den. They
managed to have it closed last year through his program Imbestigador, but got
reports early this year saying it had reopened, and that they were even using
his name to keep operations in the clear. With a no-nonsense look, he says it
appears the policemen in the area are in cahoots with the illegal operations.
This was my first time to meet him and I didn’t know what to expect from this
award-winning broadcast journalist who works morning to evening — from radio
show Saksi sa Dobol B to coverage throughout the day to primetime newscast 24
Oras. Here are 10 things you should know about Mike Enriquez.
1. His trademark line
“hindi ko kayo tatantanan” was a phrase he just blurted out to his staff when
they were covering the story of Kaye Lazaro, a little girl hit by a stray
bullet that was later found to have been fired by a policeman on a drinking
spree. The line stuck.
“I personally handled that story, and I saw Kaye’s
condition. I told my staff, hindi natin ito tatantanan until we find that guy.
And we did. Ever since then I said this is what Imbestigador is all about,” he
recalls. If they don’t produce results then it is all for show, he says. It is
a challenge to him and the whole team to have to live up to their tag line.
In real life, he doesn’t talk as fast or with that
high-pitched voice you hear on radio and TV. He actually speaks in a calm but
stern manner, with an excellent command of both English and Tagalog. “That’s a
product of evolution, it’s not as if the first time I spoke on a microphone it
was like that already,” he says of his 43-year career, having gone from sports
to news to horse racing to talk shows and music shows. His DJ name was once
“Baby Michael” (“That’s the name of my ex-girlfriend, now she sleeps with me
every night,” he says of his wife Baby) and off-camera, he is known as “Booma”
(“15 years ago I was 20 pounds heavier, and Booma was an elephant cartoon
character.”)
2. On the rivalry
between GMA and ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs: “I don’t want to call it
dirty, I want to call it rough.”
Getting a “scoop” is tougher these days he says, because
aside from everything being digital and electronic, we have more and more
citizen journalists. “Now it’s a matter of cultivating and encouraging as many
sources as you can,” he shares. He is personally friends with journalists from
rival networks like Che Che Lazaro, Karen Davila, Abner Mercado, and Luchi
Cruz-Valdez.
On the issue of journalists being killed, he says: “The rate
at which journalists are being killed and the rate at which killers are being
jailed are so far (apart).” He says simple law enforcement is key. And second,
“There’s not enough talk about raising the future generation of Filipinos with
the right values, that’s why education is such a big deal to me, that’s where
it all begins.”
3. Mike Enriquez in
numbers:
500-plus: Number of staff of the RGMA Network, the radio
subsidiary of GMA which he heads. They have 27 stations spread across 17 cities
in the country.
20: Average number of students in his class when he used to
teach broadcast management in DLSU.
85: His average grade when he was in college. “I was a very
ordinary student.”
28: Number of awards he has won for broadcasting.
4: Time in the morning he wakes up every day.
4. One of his most
memorable assignments was when he covered the war from Kuwait. “An
Iraqi shot a missile across the bay into Kuwait. I saw all these people
scampering. Military helicopters and fighter jets were circling around and navy
vessels were in the horizon. My God, this is war.”
The missile exploded in one of the most upscale malls in Kuwait just a
few blocks from where Mike was billeted. He had to run down 11 floors with his
camera. Alone on assignment, he was his own cameraman, editor, and he would
have to set up his own satellite phone for live coverage. He hired a Pinoy
based in Kuwait
who served as his light man and driver. As he was running to the mall,
something struck him for a split second: “There’s something wrong with this
picture, people are running away from the mall and I’m running towards it.” As
soon as he got to the mall, he was surprised by what welcomed him. “Wasak na
wasak yung mall, but you know how Filipinos are, yung mga Pinoy crew ng
Starbucks, Burger King, KFC, when they saw me sabi nila ‘Saksi! Saksi! Mike
Enriquez! Mike Enriquez!’” as they were jumping up and down waving their hands.
They told him, “Kunan mo kami, please show this on television so that the
people back home know we’re okay.” “That really struck me. This is what this
job is all about,” Mike shares.
He has as a souvenir six pieces of solid jagged iron bits,
no one piece the same. “Up to that point I was for the war. When I saw that, I
said I am not for this nor any war.”
5. On dangerous
coverage, does he ever feel afraid? “Yeah! We’re human.”
He says what gets him through it is adrenaline rush: “When
that starts, you’re just so focused on what you need to do.” He recalls the
raid they had just covered and says aside from finding shabu paraphernalia,
they also found bullets, which meant guns were somewhere in the area and
someone could’ve fired anytime. He shares that even presidents, who are
supposed to be the most secure people on earth, have had assassination attempts.
I ask, “Pag oras mo, oras mo?” He says yes. “At the end of the day, there’s
work that needs to be done, there’s a mission that needs to be accomplished.”
6. He admits to
having cried after a coverage. But in private. “I would be wary of a journalist
who doesn’t know how to be hurt by the news that he covers.”
He says that yes, he brings the baggage home sometimes, but
silently. “This talk about journalists having to have steel characters, that’s
true, but at the end of the day we’re all part of the human family,” he shares.
He recalls one specific moment that made him cry. It was
during the 2000 Payatas landslide where hundreds of people got buried in the
mud and trash due to heavy rains. He saw a 12-year-old girl and he asked where
her family was. She said that her mother, two sisters, and brothers were buried
somewhere, while pointing to a mound of garbage. He asked where they lived and
she said that it was gone, it had collapsed. Then she said, “Tulungan niyo po
akong hanapin sila, birthday ko po ngayon.”
“How can that not hit you?” Mike asks. When he reached home,
he let it out. “How can things like this happen? But they do.” Of all the
issues, he says that it is poverty and children that affect him the most, but
he says he never lets his emotions affect his job: “I have no right to inflict
my emotions on the viewers or listeners.”
7. He badly wanted to
become a priest in his younger years. He tried twice, but his parents did not
allow him.
He was an altar boy and would hear Mass at 5:30 a.m. (“Rain
or shine”) in Sta. Ana every day, and would go straight to the early morning
Mass in the La Salle Greenhills chapel. He asked for permission as he was
entering high school but was denied, and asked again when he was entering
college but was denied again. “I closeted myself in the room for two or three
weeks and I refused to talk to anyone,” he recalls. He says his dream to become
a priest arose because the Franciscans made a huge impact on his life while
growing up.
8. His wife Baby is
his staunchest critic, but it took her time before she got used to Mike’s
taxing schedule. “There would be times when I would come home late in the
evening and she would be seated in the room with tears in her eyes, waiting up
for me.”
“In this kind of profession, or vocation, if your spouse is
not supportive, it will be more difficult than it already is by nature,” Mike
shares. He was 22, a college student, working part-time at a radio station when
he met Baby. They were together for five years before they got married, and are
now 35 years married. “I was her first and only boyfriend, will ni Lord,” he
jokes. Today, it is Baby who reminds him of important announcements he needs to
make and comments on his work.
They did try to have a child, but after some time, they
accepted it was not meant to be. They thought of adopting, but it was at a time
they were both building their careers (Baby was a banker), and it just did not
happen. Their baby is their dog Booma, who was a gift to Baby, and who Mike
says is “too spoiled.”
9. He loves music
(Bruno Mars at that), books (“none of the heavy philosophy stuff”), and
traveling (“my wife and I love to travel together”).
He always has his iPod with him wherever he goes, and his
playlist includes everything from Tchaikovsky to the Beatles to Christian
songs. He reads books during weekends, in the car, or when traveling, and he is
currently finishing Tom Clancy’s Acts of Valor. His favorite cities in the
world include New York (“Its alive!”), Hong
Kong, San Francisco, Barcelona,
Florence (“for the ambience, culture, and food”)
and locally, privacy is of utmost importance to him so he likes going to Cebu
and Palawan.
10. He believes that
almost all politicians will answer and talk well, and it’s up to the listeners
to listen well and judge whether what they say is true or not.
He finds it tough to answer which of his interviews was the
most memorable, but he names the “Ikaw Na Ba?” series he did on Saksi Sa Dobol
B (also celebrating its first anniversary on TV) where he invited all of the
2010 presidentiables to be interviewed live as his riskiest but most
interesting encounters to date. When asked to comment on some political
figures, he shares:
P-Noy: “He’s a glib talker, very spontaneous.”
Erap: “He’s fun!”
Binay: “Halatang Mayor at heart. Ask me about Lim, halatang
pulis at heart. I’ve raided several joints with him and I’ve had to restrain
him.”
CGMA: “You have to watch her moods when you’re interviewing
her.”
* * *
At the start of our interview, intimidated by his
fresh-from-a-raid story, I wanted to start him off on a good mood so I asked
him if radio is still his first love. “Yes,” he said, and his face instantly
lit up. “Love — you can call it passion, you can say radio is my life.”
Throughout the interview, he kept pointing out how he does not call it “work”;
that for him, it is a profession, an advocacy, a vocation. He shares that one
of the books he is enjoying reading now is How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free by
Ernie Zenilski. What makes it so different from other books on retiring? It
doesn’t talk about finances and quantities, he says, “If you’re into something
good that is your passion, don’t stop! Just keep doing it! The hell with all
these definitions of retirement.” At the age of 60, having spent over 70
percent of his life as a broadcaster, Sir Mike still talks about his work with
so much gusto. He is living proof of one of my favorite quotes, saying “if you
have your passion as your profession, you won’t have to work a day in your
life.”
