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Monday, May 12, 2003
Nalzaro: Professional hazards
By Bobby G. Nalzaro
In every profession there is that so-called professional hazards. It means that you can be injured, maimed, disabled or killed in the process of pursuing your job. And there are so many people who waste their lives and shed their blood in pursuit of their chosen profession.
Our soldiers and policemen are in the frontline protecting the citizens from groups trying to overthrow our government and from lawless elements. Many of our soldiers and law enforcers get killed and wounded in action. This is part of the hazards in their profession.
Some of our medical personnel get sick after they get in contact with patients with a communicable disease, just like what is happening now with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars). Doctors and nurses attending to Sars patients are now suspected of having been infected with the disease. This is again part of the hazards in their profession.
For us in the media, especially those in the news and public affairs and the opinion makers, the professional hazards we encounter are at times worse than the others.
Many journalists and radio personalities have been assassinated and it is lamentable that most of these murders remain unsolved. Just recently, a still unidentified gunman shot dead a radioman in Legaspi City, while radioman Jun Pala, in Davao City, cheated death following an ambush.
Another professional hazard faced by media practitioners is the possibility of being charged with libel and contempt of court, with the aggrieved party demanding millions of pesos in damages.
This, even if the complainant has no basis and not enough ground to file the case. The complaint is filed just to harass the media man. If a media man is cowed by the legal moves of complainants, then that’s the end of it. That media practitioner should stop practicing his profession.
I remember what my college libel class professor in Ateneo de Zamboanga told us. He said there are only two reasons for a media man to be charged with libel: because of his crusade in exposing graft and corruption and abuses in government and because of stupidity.
I have been charged with libel and contempt of court, I think, 20 times in my 23 years in the media profession. But only one contempt of court prospered. Meaning, I was penalized. It was the late Regional Trial Court judge Martin Ocampo who penalized me, together with my editor-in-chief, lawyer Cheking Seares, for writing what the judge termed as “contemptuous article,” when I wrote regarding the much-publicized Chiong case.
All the other cases had been dismissed, in fact, I am a little bit happy nowadays because my two remaining libel cases filed by relieved Bureau of Jail Management and Penology 7 assistant director Supt. Maximo Altubar were dismissed by the prosecutor’s office. Morag na-ibtan intawon ko og tunok. Prosecutor 1 William Canta dismissed the libel cases filed by Altubar, saying “there was no malice in my commentaries against the respondent.”
Quoting US Supreme Court jurisprudence, Prosecutor Canta resolved: “Men in public life may suffer under a hostile and unjust accusation; the wound may be assuaged by the balm of a clear conscience. A public official must not be too thin-skinned with reference to comment upon his official acts.”
Earlier, my two other libel cases filed by a police officer were also dismissed by the prosecutor’s office for the same reason. If I was charged with libel, for sure, it was not because of stupidity. Hay, salamat. Wa na gayoy kaso.
(Send your comments and suggestions to: Bobby@sunstar.com.ph or at bgn@cebu.gmanetwork.com. My cell phone number, 09193181404)
(May 12, 2003 issue)
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