Apple David, Chad Gammad issue and its impact to women in journalism

For years, women in journalism have confronted a question that their male colleagues seldom experience in the same way: Do you truly have a place here?

Not in terms of skill, training or work ethic, but in something more constant and harder to prove. A pressure that follows them into newsrooms, press boxes, live coverage and every byline they write.

For many women in media, the job has never been only about reporting facts. It has also been about managing perception. A man reports a story and the focus stays on the story.

A woman reports a story and the attention often shifts elsewhere. Her tone, appearance, clothing, relationships, attitude and even likability become part of the judgment. The work is no longer evaluated on its own.

A woman in politics is often labeled emotional before she is considered sharp. A woman in business is perceived as gentle before she is viewed as trustworthy. A woman in sports journalism is frequently treated as an outsider despite possessing knowledge that may surpass that of many within the field. Expertise is not necessarily rejected, but it is often subjected to repeated scrutiny, as if it comes with an expiration date.

Lifestyle and entertainment journalism carry their own contradictions. These beats are often dismissed as light work, yet they require serious skills, including research, sourcing, verification, ethics and timing. Female journalists in these spaces are frequently viewed through the lens of the celebrities they cover. Their work is reduced to access and appearances. Their visibility is mistaken for ease. At the same time, that visibility becomes the very thing people use to judge them.

This is where the pattern extends beyond any individual beat. It reflects a broader tendency in society: the tendency to link a woman’s credibility to her private life. This is why public discussions involving people such as Apple David and Chad Gammad have resonated beyond the individuals themselves.

David, 33, a courtside reporter in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), and Gammad, 18, a sophomore student-athlete from Letran, have made their relationship public. The age gap became only the starting point. The conversation quickly expanded into questions about power, experience and influence.

One is a student still shaping his future. The other is an established media personality operating within a highly visible professional environment. Even in the absence of any legal issue, the dynamic invites public interpretation. People begin to ask who holds greater influence, who possesses more experience and what the implications of that disparity might be.

These questions extend beyond legal considerations. They concern perception. They concern how society interprets age, status and visibility when those factors intersect within the same sphere.

At the same time, relationships are personal. When they are legal and consensual, they belong to the individuals involved. Journalism exists in the public eye. It depends on trust. It relies on the belief that professional boundaries remain clear even when personal lives become complicated.

This does not diminish the importance of ethics. Journalism, however, requires trust, independence and clear boundaries. Situations in which personal and professional worlds overlap can raise legitimate questions. Those questions should be asked.

But there is a difference between examining ethical considerations and reducing an entire career to a personal relationship.

Too often, women in journalism are expected to carry both burdens at once: Do their jobs while constantly defending their right to be there. They are expected to produce credible work while managing public judgment about who they are outside the newsroom. Men are rarely subjected to the same level of sustained personal scrutiny.

The result is a double burden. A woman in journalism is not only reporting the news. She is also being treated as news. Her life becomes part of the story whether she invites it or not.

The standard for journalism should remain simple: the quality of the reporting, the integrity of the process and the trust built through consistent work over time.

Women have long proven that they belong in every corner of journalism, from newsrooms and courtside reporting to war zones, political coverage, entertainment, business and culture. The question is no longer whether they can do the job. Their work has already answered that.

The question now is why their credibility is still so often measured by everything except the work itself.

Until that changes, conversations about women in journalism will remain larger than any individual headline. The real shift begins when women are no longer judged for telling the story but are empowered and respected for owning it.