Saturday, October 04, 2008 Carvajal: Moving backwards By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
IDEALLY, the mission of a journalist is to watch those in power on behalf of the powerless by lending his or her voice and pen to the latter’s search for truth, justice and their rightful share of the earth’s bounty. The reality, however, is that there are good and bad journalists as well as good and bad holders of power.
The good power holders are seldom the target of a good journalist’s negative discourse. Moreover, when he is targeted in any negative way by the bad journalist, the good power holder just finds a way of setting the record straight within the legal system and without impinging in any way on press freedom.
The right to reply bill, therefore, cannot be about good officials being unfairly treated by bad journalists. The right to reply bill has to be about bad officials who abuse power and who consequently are intently watched and exposed by good journalists.
It is not about bad power holders and bad journalists because everybody knows corrupt officials have corrupt journalists in their payroll. Precisely because they are bad, they bribe the bad journalist into not criticizing him or into protecting him with his or her mercenary pen. Corrupt and abusive leaders do not need the right to reply bill to get bad journalists to protect their delusionary good reputation.
It is the good journalist who cannot be bought or intimidated that is a problem to corrupt and abusive high government officials. It is these fearless journalists that they want restrained with the right to reply bill. Indeed, the right to reply bill is, to make no bones about it, a prior restraint to the conscientious journalist, a superfluous impingement on his freedom and an attack on his honesty and integrity.
Our lawmakers who favor this bill have it backwards. Journalists are the endangered species in Philippine society and not politicians. Journalists are either threatened with bodily harm and even killed for what they write or bribed into writing distortions of the truth. It is, therefore, very ironic that the answer of our political leaders to threats to press freedom is to add another threat in the form of the right to reply bill as if they are now the beleaguered ones.
We must oppose the right to reply bill on the grounds that it is directed at the honest and truthful journalist. Moreover, it is obviously filed in anger by its sponsor and that explains the absurdity of the bill. I get nightmares about losing my assigned space because I have to give it up to the legislated answers of politicians I do not write favorably about.
And guess what? These answers will probably be ghost-written by bad journalists in the bad politician’s payroll. Is that not moving backwards?
