Sunday, January 13, 2008 Mercado: Shuffling backward By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
"EXPERIENCE should teach us to be most on guard when government’s purposes are beneficent,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once warned.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel and Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara swore their “purposes were beneficent.” when they filed bills that’d compel “right of reply.” Senate Bill 1178 and House Bill 162 prescribe jail terms plus fines for “stubborn” editors or station managers, i.e those who’d refuse to air an “offended person’s side.”
They propose a reply must published or aired, a day after receipt. It must appear on the same page or be aired on same program. It has to be of the same length or time – for free.
Suppose a 20-inch column, on page one, attacked the Angara family dynasty.
Under his bill, Rep Angara could insist on same-length, same-place reply, even if the editor, felt the NPA attempt to ambush Sen. Edgardo Angara was more news-worthy. Malacañang spokesman Ignacio Bunye could overrule ABS-CBN’s Maria Ressa, if she allocated broadcast time to, say, Nielsen ratings responses rather than Pimentel’s tirades.
Government becomes editor. Imagine Lapu-lapu Mayor Arturo Radaza overruling Sun.Star editor Pachico Seares. Or Mayor Tomas Osmeña holding a stop watch for replies to GMA’s Bobby Nalzaro.
“Government may not force a newspaper to print copy, which in its journalistic discretion, it chooses to leave on the newsroom’s floor,” Justice Byron White wrote in 1974. That still holds in 2008
As in other democratic countries, our Constitution provides (Sec. 4, Art III): “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, expression, and of the press.” No ifs and buts against prior restraint.
“Media can not be told what to publish,” the Cebu Citizens Press Council said. “(Likewise, it) can not be told what not to publish.” But a legislated right to reply operates as a command. “Thus, this is prior restraint.”
“There are absolutes in our Bill of Rights,” Justice Hugo Black once said. “They were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions were absolute.”
Indeed, “the Charter’s provision against the clipping of press freedom covers all papers (or stations): good, lousy or indifferent,” Philippine Daily Inquirer said in “A Press Tutorial” commentary. “But in a democratic society, the only permissible form of (restraint) is the citizen’s refusal to read or listen.”
Therefore, the press adopts self-regulatory mechanisms. That is what those “Codes of Ethics” are.
Internationally, New York Times has probably one of the most detailed statement of “do’s and don’ts.” Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas has their standards. The Philippine Press Institute’s 11-point code ranges from right of reply to protection of minors.
In the community press, Sun.Star Cebu has probably the most detailed “Code of Ethics and Standards.” This 62-page document even spells out “Policy and Protocol” to protect journalists from threats. “Editorial lapses, are being corrected by the press' own mechanisms.”
Efforts by the press to become more accountable are made difficult by democratic space. “Democracy sometimes seems the art of running a circus from the monkey cage,” the editor H.L. Mencken said.
Frail men and women try to work by ethical standards under deadlines pressure: “the invisible environment – the complexity of forces and agencies that we can not monitor for ourselves but affect our lives,” as Time editor Harold Evans put it.
They don’t always succeed. But the way forward is for all press groups to institutionalize, self-regulating mechanisms. Shoving a gun at our temples, as proposed, is “shuffling backward into the future.”
