A 2026 “situationer” from the CCPC secretariat – with Seares as executive director and Cabugon as deputy director – reported to the Cebu Citizens Press Council en banc, Sept. 24, 2026, MBF Cebu Press Center.
THE Cebu Citizens-Press Council or CCPC, in the year 2026, is 25 years old, counting from 2001 when the idea was adopted by three Cebu newspaper editors-in-chief and preparations for its birth began.
It is also 21 years old, counting from 2005 when the project was revived after being stalled for four years and CCPC finally held its first en banc meeting. It has been active and relatively well since then. (CCPC is old but younger than CebuPress FreedomWeek, 42 years old [since 1984], holding in the year 2026 its 34th celebration.)
🟥 From a 15-member council, it has room now for 17 members, the two seats added in 2024 for members coming from the digital media sector.
🟥 Its standing in the community of citizen-press councils across the country may be seen from the role given CCPC in the training of media leaders for the PPI-organized councils, such as:
◼️ CCPC leaders being tapped as speakers for a 2014 Philippine Press Institute (PPI)-Coca Cola Femsa four-city (Davao, General Santos, Bacolod and Angeles) roadshow, which presented the CCPC experience as model for organizing new citizen-press/citizen-media councils (CPC/CMCs).
[PPI organized four CPCs/CMCs in the course of its 2014 roadshow and 11 in its second rollout starting 2022. Earlier efforts failed because of “lack of resources and weak commitment.”]
◼️ CCPC being cited in news media forums, in Manila and key areas of the industry “as the most successful, long-running citizen-media-citizen council in the country.”
◼️ CCPC providing inputs during organizational meetings of some of the new media-citizen councils organized by PPI in 2023. In 2020, a few days before the Covid lockdown, a staffer of Pecojon (The Peace and Conflict Journalism Network) came to Cebu to study the CCPC structure and operation. Pecojon, using mostly insights gained by its Cebu study, organized the Kordilyera Media-Citizen Council.
◼️ March 13, 2024, at the Cebu leg of the forum on media citizen councils organized by the U.S. Embassy with CCPC — billed in the roadshow across the country as “a pioneer in independent self-regulation of the community press” — the local council’s experience was highlighted.
◼️ CCPC apparently has earned recognition beyond its geographical boundaries, influencing the creation of press-citizen councils not only within the Philippines but also outside the country:
— In 2013 Cherry Ann T. Lim, then CCPC deputy director, was among discussants of a plan to organize an Asean Press Council among seven media groups from other Southeast Asian countries. (Noteworthy is that it was CCPC – not the then national Press Council based in Manila – that represented the country at the Bangkok, Thailand forum.)
RELATED: CCPC shares tips with Asean media, PPI members (CJJ, May 2013)
The discussion led to the creation of the Southeast Asian Press Council Network (SEAPC-Net) that met for the first time in Bali in December 2023.
— In December 2019, some members of the Timor-Leste Press Council spent two days in Cebu City to learn more about Cebu media in general and CCPC in particular.
— In 2022, the Timor-Leste Press Council invited CCPC to the Dili Dialogue Forum, to which the Council sent as representative then journalist and CJJ contributing writer Karlon N. Rama. After that, Rama attended two more Dili Dialogue Forums as CCPC representative.
RELATED: CCPC attended Dili Forum (CJJ, May 11, 2019)
— In Sweden, May 14 to 28, 2022, Joseph Tubilan – former news reporter and features editor of SunStar Superbalita, who was then an associate professor of Cebu Normal University – started a year-long international training program called “Media Development in a Democratic Framework. CCPC was invited by the organizer, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) through NIRAS Sweden AB. CCPC chose Tubilan as its representative.
RELATED: Sweden has a media ombudsman and a media council (CJJ, December 2022)
— In 2023, CCPC en banc received in Cebu City the human rights ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, accompanied by the Philippine ambassador.
— A year earlier, in 2022, election observers from the European Union met with CCPC members to hear their perspective on the presidential election.
— In January 2024, a number of CCPC members interacted with Irene Kahn, United Nations rapporteur on expression and opinion.
🟥 CCPC’s active role in national and local legislation by speaking out on concerns of the community press on proposed laws involving regulation of press and speech.
CCPC is proud to have played a major role – initiating, pushing, or in one or two cases even
helping draft the bills that became law or ordinance – in the passage of:
◼️ The Vicente Sotto-Raul del Mar Law, which protects confidentiality of news sources. (through Sotto, covering only print journalists; through Del Mar, expanded to include broadcast and digital journalists)
◼️ The Cebu Press Freedom Day Law declaring Sept. 21 of each year as working holiday in the entire Cebu. (Counterpart ordinances of the Cebu City Council and the Cebu Provincial Board were also initiated by CCPC.)
◼️ Cebu City Council’s 2022 Freedom of Information Ordinance and Cebu Provincial Board’s 2026 F.O.I. Ordinance, separately passed, both “encouraged and inspired, if not set off, by CCPC initiatives.”
🟥 An active entity, being among the original organizers and participants, of the annual Cebu Press Freedom Week.
Media Gallery in Museo Sugbo and the CJJ section in Cebu City Rizal Public Library, as part of the program to improve local journalism standards by inspiring and educating future journalists.
🟥 CCPC is routinely, almost dutifully, asked for its stand or opinion on issues related to media standards and free press and speech.
Recorded in CJJ and news and social media reports are CCPC views and positions on several issues related to its advocacy of >improving journalism standards, >defending freedom of the press, >battling disinformation and >improving media consumers’ literacy.
🟥 CCPC has partnered with the media-on-media online newsmagazine CJJ or Cebu Journalism and Journalists in building and preserving a cache of information about the industry in Cebu.
CJJ is chronicler and promoter and at the same time archive and database about Cebu journalism and its practitioners. 
CCPC SECRETARIAT’s Marit Stinus-Cabugon, deputy director; and Atty. Pachico A. Seares, executive director. At CCPC forum, Sept. 24, 2026.