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Monday, March 10, 2003
Amante: Media-bashing and misplaced sympathy
By Isolde D. Amante
A CYNIC once said it’s always the wrong sort of people who are in power, because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people. Cynics closer to home add: substitute “newspapers” for “power” and the statement would ring true as well.
Few people want their names and mug shots plastered in the papers, or aired on the primetime newscasts, considering the media’s steady diet of crime and criticism. Now, apparently tired of seeing ink smeared on so many presumably honorable reputations, at least two members of Congress want journalists fined P10,000 to P30,000 or jailed for up to 30 days for failing to air or publish a reply to “onerous” news items.
House Bill 5774, filed last month by House Deputy Speaker Raul Gonzalez, is intended to provide a measure of relief to anyone who’s ever been “subjected to tirades in the press, for seldom is the hapless given an equal chance to defend himself, or clarify the issues affecting his person.” A bill filed last year by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. expressed similar intentions.
Gonzalez’s “right to reply” bill is meant to benefit those accused of committing or intending to commit a crime, as well as those “criticized by innuendo, suggestion or rumor for any lapse in behavior in public or private life.”
The penalties kick in if, a day after the person accused or criticized delivers his or her reply, this is neither published nor broadcast by the offending newspapers, magazines, newsletters, radio or television stations, websites and electronic devices. (That last phrase, if I’m not mistaken, includes mobile phones, but exactly how do you enforce a law that requires correction of every rumor ever circulated by text?)
I wish I could say all media organizations are run so professionally that inaccuracies never slide through editorial gates, or potentially damaging reports never see print unless all sides of the story are thoroughly explored. “They were not so much published as carried screaming into the street,” as H.G. Wells once observed of some tabloids.
But while Congressman Gonzalez and Senator Pimentel’s bills may strike a popular chord, their proposal is superfluous.
Public access is already a tradition among self-respecting media organizations. In this interactive age, readers and viewers can phone, fax, text, e-mail or write feedback. Despite our profession’s tarnished reputation, majority of journalists are unlike the British editor Richard Ingrams, whose motto was, “Publish and be sued.”
Most of us journalists do our best to strip reports of inaccuracies and innuendo, not only because we want to avoid costly lawsuits, but also because we do not wish to squander our readers, listeners and viewers’ goodwill.
We also recognize that in order to survive cutthroat competition, a media organization must be self-correcting. Published mistakes are promptly corrected, and answers or letters to editors given space, except when these resort to rude personal attacks. And journalists are often reminded of the limits and restrictions on the right to freedom of speech and of the press: among others, no slander, no sedition, no obscenity, no falsehoods.
As for those in the unprofessional fringe (and every profession has them), sanctions already exist for libel, slander or defamation. One can even slap a libel suit on someone for sarcasm, for jesting or for calling one a “bastard” or the family’s “black sheep”—even if that may be closer to the truth than one would like to admit. Or, one can simply stop reading or tuning in, and thus starve the offending media outfit into insignificance.
Considering that these remedies already exist, a “right to reply” law would only be oppressive, one more claw on government’s already heavy hand. In April last year, the Romanian Parliament approved fines equivalent to US$150 to $3,000 for failure to print replies within three days. Panama is flirting with similar legislation.
We’d like to think our lawmakers are cut from a more libertarian cloth. So when they ignore far more urgent legislative concerns to cook up draconian proposals like this, one wishes they would exercise another right more often: the right to remain silent.
(ida@sunstar.com.ph)
(March 10, 2003 issue)
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