THREE Thomasian journalists have been elected officers of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap), a professional organization of Manila-based foreign journalists and correspondents.
Reuters’ Manila bureau chief and UST communication arts alumna Karen Lema was elected Focap president.
Lema had served as a senior reporter for BusinessWorld until 2006 before joining the London-based news agency in 2006 and becoming its Manila bureau chief in 2020.
Elected Focap secretary was New York Times correspondent Aie Balagtas See.
A former reporter for the Philippine Star, See obtained her journalism degree from UST in 2008 and has been covering human rights issues, including the drug war of the Duterte administration, and climate justice.
Another UST journalism alumnus, veteran photojournalist Aaron Favila, was named to Focap’s board of trustees.
Favila has been working for the New York-based news agency Associated Press for 26 years, covering events spanning politics, crime, sports, and disasters, among others.
Joining him on the Focap board are freelance journalists Yasmin Coles and Martin San Diego, along with Janella Eugenio and Chad Williams of Agence France-Presse.
Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo was elected vice president, while The Straits Times’ Mara Cepeda will serve as treasurer.
All new Focap officers will serve a one-year term until 2026.
Focap was founded in 1974 by a group of journalists led by Teodoro Benigno, who took up pre-law studies in UST. It sought to “achieve an effective and harmonious relationship between the government and the working members of the foreign press.”
