Veteran broadcast journalist Cesar Chavez has been named Best AM Radio Program Host at the 20th Gawad Gandingan Awards, organized by the UP Community Broadcasters’ Society, an organization based at the University of the Philippines College of Development Communication.
The Gawad Gandingan is an annual awards event that recognizes radio and television programs promoting genuine development and encouraging the production of development-oriented content for the benefit of every Filipino.
Chavez brings to the recognition a career spanning nearly four decades in Philippine broadcasting, during which he covered five coup attempts and numerous disasters across the country.
His body of work has earned him an extensive list of industry honors. He is a two-time KBP Golden Dove Awardee for Best Public Affairs Host and has hosted a KBP Golden Dove Award-winning Best Public Affairs Program. He is also a two-time recipient of the PMAP Best Public Affairs Program Host award, and has received the Manila Overseas Press Club Award for Excellence in Media and Government. He has twice been recognized by the Rotary Club of Manila for broadcast journalism excellence, and has received recognition from the Philippine Senate, the Quezon City Council, the Manila City Government, and various non-governmental organizations for his journalistic work.
Long before his broadcasting career, Chavez had already distinguished himself as a speaker and thinker. He was a fourteen-time winner in oratorical and extemporaneous speech competitions in high school, and went on to earn the University Best Debater award in college, where he also captained the champion AB Political Science Debating Team.
In his acceptance speech delivered partly in Filipino, Chavez opened with a reflection on his roots in Sitio Bongliw, San Jose, Camarines Sur—a remote community located 54 kilometers from Naga City—where he farmed alongside his father Marciano and grandfather Pedro during the 1970s.
He recalled that their farming life in that era was also a time of abundance in the natural environment. After each day in the fields, the family would return home with freshwater fish, crabs, shrimp, and alimasag, drawn from a community he described as rich in natural resources.
On the morning of the awards, Chavez said he was exchanging texts with his mother, Concepcion, who told him it was sweltering back in Bongliw — fitting, he noted, as the sitio was celebrating the feast of San Isidro Labrador. The community he remembered, though, was a different place: rivers fed by Mount Isarog no longer flow, the trees have thinned, and more people now live where nature once did.
He said this memory and the environmental change he has witnessed over the decades have shaped how he thinks as a broadcaster.
“Ang alaalang ito at karanasan ay bahagi ng aking mindset sa aking pananaliksik, sa aking pagpapaunawa, at sa aking pag-unawa sa kawing-kawing na kaganapan sa lipunan bilang program host,” he said, describing his recollections as part of the lens through which he researches and makes sense of interconnected events in society.
Reflecting on the awards night itself, Chavez responded to remarks made by Prof. Mark Lester Chico, founding adviser and Director of Gandingan, who had described the awards as a challenge to media to go beyond delivering news and to serve as instruments of development.
Chavez said his simple reply to Chico and to the UP Community Broadcasters’ Society was this: keep challenging media.
“Tuloy-tuloy niyo lang ang paghamon sa media upang higit na maging mapagbantay at makabuluhan ang programang ito,” he said, urging the organization to continue pressing broadcasters to be more vigilant and more meaningful in their work.
The awards, now in their 20th year, continue to press Philippine media toward content that serves the public good. It was a standard Chavez said he had spent nearly four decades trying to meet.
Chavez holds a Master’s Degree in National Security Administration and a Doctorate in Peace and Security Administration, and has completed Executive Education programs at Harvard Kennedy School and the National University of Singapore (NUS).
He previously served as Vice President of Manila Broadcasting Company and Station Manager of DZRH Radio, DZRH News Television, and DZRH Digital Media.
