GMA News and Public Affairs’ pioneering newscast Stand for Truth marks its first anniversary with a record-breaking increase of views, making it one of the netizens’ preferred sources of news.
Anchored by award-winning broadcast journalist Atom Araullo with GMA resident political analyst Richard Heydarian, the mobile journalism newscast continues to gain traction since it premiered last April 2019.
Stand for Truth has become a training ground for future journalists as well with a pool of millennial reporters — Nico Waje, Manal Sugadol, Shai Lagarde, Izzy Lee, Eduard Faraon, Mj Geronimo, Bhea Docyogen, Jm Encinas, and Anthony Esguerra—producing their stories themselves.
These up and coming broadcast journalists are not daunted by the challenges of using only their mobile phones in coming up with reports. In fact, most of SFT stories have been used by mainstream newscasts and paved the way for authorities to take actions on issue raised in some reports.
It is no surprise that more and more netizens turn to Stand for Truth as their source of news online. Last February, the digital program recorded a total views of 55 million on GMA News’s Facebook page.
Leading the list with the highest number of views for February was MJ Geronimo’s “Mass Cremation in Wuhan,” which recorded 4.9 million views. This was followed by another story of MJ, “Chinese Palit Pastillas” about the alleged anomaly on Bureau of Immigration, which recorded 2.9 million views.
Meanwhile, Izzy Lee’s story on “Patay sa Gluta,” about a 33-year-old woman who died after allegedly receiving glutathione injections, gained 2.4 million views as of this writing. And as the entire Luzon continues to be in enhanced community quarantine, netizens also turned to Anthony Esguerra’s story on “Buhay Quarantine.” It already has 2.3 million views on Facebook.
Stand for Truth launched its own Facebook page last February and already has 31,000 followers and recorded 3 million total views to date.
“Nabanlian si Baby” by Nico Waje topped the story last March with 2.1 million views. This was followed by Shai Lagarde’s “Lockdown sa Italy” and Bhea Docyogen’s “Recovered from COVID-19” which both earned 1.5 million views.
On YouTube, Stand for Truth episodes continue to attract viewers. As of March, Stand for Truth gained a total of 4.3 million views on YouTube, with 3.1 million views coming from the Philippines, while the remaining number of views came from the United States, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Japan.
Various segments of Stand for Truth also recorded high number of views on YouTube. Last February, “The Mass Cremation in Wuhan” segment got 400, 000 views and “Inside Wuhan” with 208, 000 views. More segments attracted netizens in March topped by Lagarde’s “Lockdown sa Italy” with 467,000 views and “Sugadol’s Malunggay vs NCOV” with 425,000 views.
For the past weeks, while most regular programming on television has been put on hold, Stand for Truth has been a source of credible and breaking news, most especially on topics concerning the COVID-19 pandemic through regular updates on its Facebook page.
Last March 30, Stand for Truth returned to live streaming. Catch it every night at 8:30 p.m. via its Facebook page, as well as GMA News’ and GMA Public Affairs’ YouTube channels.