Balitang America is a 30-minute nightly news program of ABS-CBN International. Aired at 5:05 PM PT / 8:05 PM ET on The Filipino Channel Mondays thru Fridays, Balitang America is the reliable resource of Filipinos in the United States and Canada for news stories, events, special reports and in-depth interviews.
Anchored by seasoned broadcaster Gel Santos-Relos, Balitang America focuses on issues affecting Filipino communities all over North America. Balitang America also features community events and remarkable Filipinos making an impact on American life.
Balitang America is produced in Redwood Shores, California by the management and staff of ABS-CBN International’s North America News Bureau.
It has correspondents all over the US and Canada and is backed by the resources of ABS-CBN Global and ABS-CBN News Philippines.
Replays: Tuesdays – Saturdays 1:05 AM PT / 4:05 AM ET
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BALITANG AMERICA NEWS TEAM
North America News Bureau Chief
Ging Reyes [Read Bio]
Anchor
Gel Santos-Relos [Read Bio]
Executive Producer
Vivian Araullo [Read Bio]
Associate Producer
Racquel Rendon [Read Bio]
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MEET THE REPORTERS:
Lenn Almadin-Thornhill/New York & New Jersey [Read Bio]
Steve Angeles/San Francisco Bay Area [Read Bio]
Yong Chavez/Los Angeles [Read Bio]
Karmina Constantino/San Francisco Bay Area
Anna Diaz/Los Angeles
Cecile Docto/Vancouver, B.C.
Henni Espinosa/San Francisco Bay Area [Read Bio]
Mary Estacion/Washington, D.C. [Read Bio]
Rodney Jaleco/Washington, D.C.
Katrina Julian/San Diego, CA
Bev Llorente/Las Vegas, Nevada
Fleur Magbanua-Mansur/Arizona
Marieton Pacheco/Vancouver, B.C.
Joseph Pimentel/Los Angeles
Monette Rivera/Hawaii, New York, and New Jersey [Read Bio]
Yvee Tadeo-Guevara/Los Angeles
Don Tagala/New York & New Jersey [Read Bio]
Marlou Tiro/Toronto, ON
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Lenn Almadin-Thornhill
Lenn Almadin-Thornhill has been a news reporter for ABS-CBN’s Balitang America program since September 2002. Lenn has also been a freelance writer for Philippine News newspaper since 1994. Her works have also appeared in Latina Magazine, Filipinas Magazine and Urban Latino Magazine.
Lenn has covered various national stories including the 2004 and 2008 U.S. Presidential elections, 2004 Democratic National Convention and 2008 Republican National Convention. She has covered stories from Vermont to Florida, but mainly reports from the New Jersey/ New York area.
Prior to joining Balitang America full-time in 2006, she was Communications Coordinator for Paul, Weiss, an international law firm, where she managed and coordinated events and corporate functions. Lenn now enjoys being a freelance reporter again splitting her time between Trinidad and Tobago and New Jersey.
A graduate of College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ, Lenn holds a bachelor-of-arts degree in English Literature. She is a member of the English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta, and the Asian American Journalists Association.[Back to Top]
Steve Angeles
Steve Angeles has been with ABS-CBN since 2005. Steve started out as intern and joined the staff as a member of the production team. Steve has become a full-time general assignment reporter covering Northern California. Steve’s past work with ABS-CBN includes Speak Out, Myx Music Channel, and Strut.
Steve was born in Quezon City, and moved to San Francisco at age 3. The son of comedian Louella Albornoz and Andrew Angeles, a former media practicioner in the Philippines, Steve is no stranger to television. He is the godson of Filipino entertainment institutions such as Nora Aunor, Lino Brocka, Maryo De Los Reyes, and Jake Tordesillas. At a young age, Steve already knew he wanted to work in television. Steve was already active in broadcasting a part of El Camino High School’s Audio Video Program, where he produced videos and was the school’s morning announcer. While attending college at San Francisco State University, Steve worked with various youth and community groups, eventually interning at Pacifica Community Television. Steve began his internship with ABS-CBN during his final semester at San Francisco State University and joined the staff after completing his bachelor’s degree. Some of Steve’s favorite coverages include interviews with high profile Filipino celebrities and athletes, the same sex marriage debates, and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. In 2007, the National Donor Program Nominated Steve for a Media Excellence Award, for his coverages on bone marrow related illnesses.
A former athlete himself, Steve played and coached high school and semi-pro football for ten years. In his spare time, Steve enjoys exercising, playing video games, and reading comic books. He’s also involved in a few theater groups as well. During the fall, Steve is a season ticket holder, attending every Oakland Raider football game.[Back to Top]
Vivian Araullo
It didn’t seem too long ago when journalist Vivian Zalvidea wrote news reports with a manual typewriter and carbon paper. These days, Vivian tweets, facebooks (yes, these are verbs) and uploads news.
Vivian realized that she had found her calling, after she heard erstwhile TV Patrol newscaster, now vice-president Noli De Castro read one of the first copies she wrote as police reporter for TV Patrol in the early 90s: “Baklang nagnakaw sa sampayan, binugbog ng taumbayan.” (Residents beat up gay man who stole from their clotheslines.) She still thinks that is a gem of a headline.
Vivian was a reporter and newscaster for Channel 2 and Channel 5 in Manila. Her biggest coverage was the execution of Filipino domestic helper Flor Contemplacion in Singapore. Her reporting spurred Philippine legislators to create the Overseas Workers Act, a law that to this day provides protection for all Filipinos workers abroad.
She has covered natural disasters, wars, politics, crime, the courts, coups, elections–almost everything.
She’s been cited for excellence in broadcast journalism, not by the Pulitzer or Peabody awards, but she’s grateful nonetheless.
Her itinerant ways later brought her to ABC News as a field producer for its Manila bureau. She’s helped produce reports for The World Tonight with Peter Jennings, done research for Barbara Walters’ 20/20 and filed stories for ABC News Radio and ABC News online. She later worked for Japanese broadcasting giant NHK as special reporter and field producer. She collaborated with CNN and then-Manila bureau chief (now ABS-CBN News top honcho) Maria Ressa to write, report and host a documentary on overseas Filipinos. In San Francisco, she wrote for local CBS station KPIX and was associate editor for Filipinas Magazine.
These days, she is busy raising her daughter Ronica Malaya and trying to improve her quality of life through yoga, exercise and her admittedly superficial studies of various spiritual traditions. Vivian is currently executive producer of Balitang America for TFC. That means, she is to blame for pretty much most of the things you see and hear on Balitang America. Vivian works to serve the Filipino American community and pay the bills.[Back to Top]
Yong Chavez
Yong Chavez is one of ABS-CBN’s correspondents. She started her reporting career as a features writer for Pacific Daily News (a sister newspaper of USA Today). Her hard-news and feature reports have also appeared in Philippine News and Star Studio Magazine, as well as in TV Patrol and various ABS-CBN shows.
Her noteworthy coverages include exclusive reports on Nora Aunor’s legal case in Los Angeles in 2005. Yong was also a part of the news team that covered the Fil-Am vote during the historic 2008 U.S. presidential elections. One of her reports in 2009 brought attention to a case that helped a group of fraud victims get justice. Likewise, she covered and broke the news of Efren Penalorida’s historic triumph as CNN’s 2009 Hero of the Year. She is also known for her exclusive interviews with Fil-Am and Hollywood celebrities.
Yong Chavez covers the Filipino communities in Southern California where she lives. She is currently writing a guidebook for U.S. immigrants, an offshoot of her news and informational website, FilipinOnline.com.[Back to Top]
Henni Espinosa
Henni Espinosa is a full-time reporter for ABS-CBN International and has covered the San Francisco Bay Area since 2003.
Henni finished her Bachelors Degree in Broadcasting at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City in 1999 and her Masters in Communication at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia in 2002.
Before becoming a Kapamilya, Henni was a segment producer and host for GMA Channel 7’s morning show, “Unang Hirit.” While she was a graduate student, she took her internship at CNN International in Atlanta. One of the stories she reported on and produced was the plight of the Filipino World War II Veterans, which aired on several CNN programs. Henni’s coverage of Filipino World War II veterans would continue during her stint with ABS-CBN International’s North America News Bureau.
Some of her other memorable stories include the Southern California Wildfires, Diablo Valley College Grade Scam, Protests vs. Human Rights Violations in the Philippines, California Nurses Strike, Missing IRS Agent and the Mortgage Meltdown.
Henni also became involved with print media, working as editor-in-chief of Manila Bulletin’s Kababayan Edition from 2003-2006.
Currently, she is also Vice-President for External Affairs of the Philippine American Press Club.[Back to Top]
Mary Estacion
Mary Estacion is a freelance correspondent for ABS-CBN’s Balitang America program. She’s been covering the Filipino communities in the Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD areas since 2006.
After graduating from Catholic University in Washington, DC with a Biomedical Engineering degree, Mary went on to get her Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. She worked for 13-plus years as an engineer for Navy laboratories on the East Coast. With the hope of following her childhood dream of becoming a sports reporter, Mary left her engineering career and started working as a reporter for WHAG-TV in Hagerstown, MD. Less than a year later, she moved to Houston, TX to be one of the charter staff members at a new 24-hour television news station. Because of her background, she was assigned the NASA beat and given her own weekly franchise segment, ‘Mission Space’. Upon returning to the DC area to be with her new husband, she freelanced each week at WJLA-TV in Washington, DC and worked as a field producer for the Pentagon Channel. She now works as a video producer for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Among her favorite memories as a broadcast journalist have been the Orioles 2002 Spring Training camp, the 2004 MLB All Star Game and a ride on the NASA’s Vomit Comet. Mary enjoys traveling, playing the piano and her new love, acting. She often treks to her hometown of New York City to attend Mets baseball games.[Back to Top]
Rodney Jaleco
Rodney Jaleco comes from a family of journalists. He is an economist by training, a newsman by vocation. Rodney cut his teeth in the trade, helping put to bed a monthly feature magazine started by his father, Reynaldo Sr., former editor of the pre-Martial Law Manila Chronicle and president of the National Press Club of the Philippines, in the early 1980s. His late brother, Reynaldo Jr., taught English and Journalism at the University of Sto. Tomas; and another sibling, Raleigh, worked for the Malaya and the Manila Chronicle after the 1986 People Power revolt. Rodney eventually joined the Star Group of publications, where the venerated Luis “Ka Louis” Beltran gave him his first big break covering the military just weeks before the bloodiest coup attempt against the Cory Aquino government broke out in December 1989. He was elected president and later chairman of the Defense Press Corps, the oldest national press guild in the Philippines.
Rodney moved to the House of Representatives and later covered President Fidel Ramos in Malacanang, still with the Philippine Star.
The dawn of the new millennium was also a time of fresh beginnings for Rodney, when he was recruited by then TV Patrol executive producer Chari Villa to man the assignments desk of ABS-CBN News and slowly moved up to head day-time news gathering operations. Both on the frontlines and in the back room, Rodney’s experience allowed him the rare opportunity to work with the three media – print, radio (as defense correspondent for radio station dzRH), and television.
He opted for early retirement from ABS-CBN in 2006 to join his family in Arlington, Virginia. Despite assimilating to American life, landing a job for a federal agency contractor in Alexandria, VA, the call of journalism remained strong. Today, Rodney contributes reports for The Filipino Channel’s Balitang America; serves as news editor for Pinoy Herald, a Fairfax, VA-based biweekly Fil-Am paper; and writes about Fil-Am news in Washington, D.C. for the website abs-cbnnews.com.[Back to Top]
Racquel Rendon
Racquel Rendon is an Associate Producer for ABS-CBN’s Balitang America program. She previously worked for Balitang America as a freelance reporter from 2002-2004 covering political stories such as legislation against violence of video games, Homeland Security, and the recall election to replace then Governor Gray Davis.
Racquel initially began her college education in Computer Engineering at California Polytechnic University – San Luis Obispo but turned to Psychology instead. She subsequently earned a Master’s Degree and worked as a School Psychologist for many years.
But Racquel’s passion for writing lured her down a different path. While working full time as a Psychologist – she updated her skills through Broadcast Journalism courses and interned at KTVU and KNTV. She then got a job as a Producer for KCOY, a CBS affiliate in the Central Coast. She moved back to the SF Bay area to get married and worked as a morning news writer for KPIX – CBS5. Racquel began working for ABS-CBN in December 2008. Racquel and her husband have been doubly blessed recently with a new home and a new baby.[Back to Top]
Ging Reyes
Regina “Ging” Reyes is responsible for all newsgathering, content and strategic direction of the news department of ABS-CBN International. As North America News Bureau Chief, she also oversees the production of the station’s nightly newscast “Balitang America” (News from America).
She was named to the post in 2002, tasked to expand the news operations of her Philippines-based parent company, ABS-CBN to include the United States and Canada. Under Ging’s leadership, the news bureau grew in scope, coverage and reputation, contributing to the global content needs of ABS-CBN Philippines and ABS-CBN International.
While she oversees the bureau’s news gathering operations, Ging also covers breaking news, politics, economic, immigration and veterans’ issues in the service of Filipino communities in North America. Some of her major stories were about the Democratic and Republican conventions, the historic US presidential election of 2008 and the inauguration, United Nations summits, presidential visits and the election of a new Pope. Other memorable coverage include the deportation hearings of former Philippine agriculture official Jocelyn Bolante, the extradition of murder witness Cezar Mancao and human interest pieces on Filipinos in America.
Ging also spearheaded the creation of the bureau’s news website, balitangamerica.tv, which regularly draws user generated content to support online and on air news coverage.
Reyes is based at ABS-CBN International’s headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007, she was named one of the 100 Most Influential Filipino Women in the U.S. by the Filipina Women’s Network.
She has spent more than 20 years with ABS-CBN, working as production assistant, researcher, writer, associate producer, executive producer and news director.
Ging graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in Broadcast Communication. She has 2 children.[Back to Top]
Monette Rivera
Marionette “Monette” Rivera has been covering issues, people, and events surrounding the Filipino communities in Hawaii, New York, and New Jersey.
As a Correspondent for ABS-CBN International since 2003, she has fond Hawaii memories of the Presidential campaign and victory of Hawaii-born Barack Obama; the confirmation that the “Pregnant Man” is of Filipino descent; the fight for fair labor practice by Filipino hotel workers or the modern-day plantation workers; and the political, cultural, and social, achievements of many Filipinos in the islands.
In New York, she has witnessed the emotions of Filipinos during the 8th Anniversary of the 9-11 Tragedy at the World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan; the death of President Corazon Aquino; as well as, the historic events such as the Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting, the first-ever Earth Ball at Times Square; and fights for good education, fair taxes, and healthcare.
Monette has over 15 years of professional integrated communications management experience, both in the Philippines and in the U.S. Her expertise includes crisis communications, media production, event management, and business development. Her passion is to connect with people, listen to their stories, and keep relationships.[Back to Top]
Gel Santos-Relos
Gel Santos Relos, one of the most respected and multi-awarded broadcast journalists in the Philippines, anchored top-rating radio and television programs for ABS-CBN. She made her mark in shows such as “Tatak Pilipino”,“Hoy!Gising”,“Companero y Companera”,“Pulso, Aksyon Balita”, “Headlines”, “Relos Reports”(DZMM), and “Dear Ate Gel”(DZMM) during her 20-plus years of partnership with ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation. Prior to her successful work in media, Gel was an Instructor in Broadcast Communication at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication, where she graduated cum laude and pursued post-graduate courses.
She was granted Permanent Resident status in the United States as an “Alien with Extra-Ordinary Ability”, and this is where she has been based with her family since 2001. As her husband was doing surgical residency, Gel has experienced how it was like to live from coast-to-coast in America—from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Minnesota, and finally to California, where Gel and her family are now happily settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Their move to California gave Gel the opportunity to renew her ties with ABS-CBN. Since 2007, Gel has anchored The Filipino Channel’s “Balitang America”, the first daily television newscast for Filipinos in North America. Gel also co-hosted the most popular immigration show “Citizen Pinoy” with Atty. Michael Gurfinkel from 2005-2009.
In 2009, Gel Santos Relos was honored as one of the “100 Most Influential Filipina Women in America” by the Filipina Women’s Network.Gel continues with her mission to help the Filipinos navigate their new life in America, while keeping and strengthening their ties to the Philippines.[Back to Top]
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Don Tagala
Don Tagala is a full time video journalist for Balitang America. Based out of Chicago, he started as a freelance reporter covering many cities in the Midwest since 2003. As a video journalist, he’s covered the news both as a cameraman and a reporter. He also pioneered the electronic transmission of video materials among freelancers, making it possible for Balitang America to receive the freshest news from around the U.S.
Don has covered Barack Obama’s historic rise to presidency, from his announcement in Springfield, Illinois to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. He was in ground zero when Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast and reported its extensive damage and how it affected the Filipino communities in the Mississippi and Louisiana area.
Prior to reporting for ABS-CBN News, he has worked with ABS-CBN Foundation’s Sines’kwela and Bantay Bata 163 since 1994 before moving to Chicago in 1997.
Beginning 2010, Don will be based in the East Coast, covering the New York and New Jersey area.[Back to Top]
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