Reply
Sen. Loren Legarda—estranged wife of convicted murderer and ex-Batangas governor Jose Antonio Leviste, the lovely sad-eyed woman whose crisp white shirts, beauty queen wave and “christian duty” accompanied the kidnapped Ces Drilon and her crew to various press conferences—has made a startling new discovery.
“I now realize,” she says, after pulling out her support for the Right of Reply Bill, “that an untrammeled press is better than a press dictated by authority.”
She realizes this now, long after years of reporting from the streets, long after nights of anchoring the daily news, long after soulfully looking into cameras at the end of her half-dozen or so various current affairs shows. Toss up the confetti, break out the champagne, stop the presses, Loren Legarda has finally realized that it is good to have a free press. Not only good, but better than a press reporting with a presidential elbow to its metaphorical throat, better than wiretaps and dead journalists and copy-pasted press releases.
Legislation, Media, Government
Not that it requires any sort of journalistic training to prefer a free press over an autocratic one, as reporting the truth has traditionally been the role of the press in any democracy. It’s only logical to assume that a repressed press will be a press unable to fulfill its responsibility to the public trust. But perhaps we expect too much of our government officials. Legarda has already made it stunningly clear just exactly what she believes senators should do in the line of duty—visit newsrooms, smile at reporters, pose in skin-whitening advertisements, and, in her spare time, pass a law or two.
Legarda, of course, is only one of the 21 other senators who voted unanimously to pass the Right of Reply Bill, a measure that allows any individual who feels directly or indirectly alluded to by news report or opinion pieces to publish or air a reply within three days in the same space, within the same time. Legarda has pulled back her support, along with Sen. Francis Escudero, who says his authoring of the bill “was a mistake,” and Sen. Mar Roxas, whose complicated reason for voting for the right of reply can be summarized into “I wasn’t there.”
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, who authored the bill in the Senate, says that those who practice the right of reply in print and broadcast have no reason to be afraid. Pimentel promises that it is only those who have no capacity for self-regulation who will be affected by the bill. “That mode of imposing strictures will only fall on those who do not follow in a voluntary fashion.”
The law, however, has a different view, and offers the right of reply to any and all individuals who are “criticized by innuendo, suggestion or rumor of any lapse in behavior in private and public life the right to reply to charges or criticisms in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, radio, television and websites.” At any point where any individual feels alluded to in any form, whether directly or indirectly, in a newspaper article or television segment or a spot in a radio show, that individual will automatically have the right by law to take the place of that article, segment or spot to say his piece. This newspaper is one that has not shirked the duty to admit mistakes nor to correct its own writers, but it does not make it a habit to offer spaces reserved for news, commentary and advertising to every self-righteous politician who decides he was insulted.
It means that Joc-joc Bolante can command pages of newsprint and millions worth of television minutes to further entangle the state of the nation. It means that the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Justice can turn ANC into a he-said-she-said forum, that former Brig. Gen. Jovito Palparan will have the entire media machinery at his disposal to convince the public that the slew of recent activist disappearances is a sign of peace and order. It means that newspapers will close and stations will collapse from the weight of “offended” politicians filling advertising time and space with their various vacuous idiocies. Anyone who has ever been mentioned in Philippine media—from Estrada to Imelda to Kris Aquino to each of next year’s presidential candidates—can decide on what will constitute the contents of Philippine media, without the necessary fidelity that the journalist has to truth and fairness and balance. It means that if the right of reply were in action now, this column will see print in two weeks after Legarda demands to fill my next column with a thousand two hundred words of how she is a credit to the Philippine Senate, along with a rundown of her accomplishments as both journalist and environmental advocate.
Pimentel says the replies “do not have to be the same length.” He says that if the offending story is a banner headline on the front page, the response “does not necessarily need to take the place of the banner headline.” They say many things: “Maybe we can do away with that,” or “Maybe we don’t have to.” Monico Puentevella, representative of the lone district of Bacolod who authored the House version of the bill, says that the media are not representing them correctly. “If a paragraph will do, it will be enough.” It is difficult to believe these people are senators mandated to legislate laws that govern the land. After all, it would be difficult for a judge to “maybe” sentence a violator because Pimentel says “we don’t have to.”
It is true that there have been journalists who have abused their power, who have failed to correct when necessary, but the industry itself has measures of self-correction. The reason the law is necessary, says Puentevella and Pimentel, is that something must be done when individuals are “unduly criticized” by the mass media. Neither gentleman has defined what it means to be unduly criticized, but what all this implies is that criticism in itself is a punishable act, one that stands in opposition to the constitutionally defended right to free speech.
Pimentel challenged the media to give him “a reasoned argument” to withdraw the bill. “They should convince me that the bill is a mistake and the convincing argument must be reasoned, not those [arguments] that do not jibe with the truth. That’s what I’m looking at. If the reasoning of media organizations is correct, then we will withdraw it. But they have to show it to me [first],” Pimentel said.
His is a far more difficult challenge than it appears. After all, reason is a quality that is rarely recognized by those in public office.
