Muzzling media

As a result of entities accused of incompetence in the recent hostage-taking scandal involving our security forces, some have decided to deflect the real issues and focus on muzzling media. Proposals from simple restraint and regulation to censorship have been raised each threatening in various degrees not only the freedom of expression but the right of the people to know. Invariably those tickled-pink with their mugs flashed across television screens have taken to the talk show circuit to preen and pose. The opportunity to inflate both egos and airtime is a strong come-on. Swagger, smirk and soi-disant all suit smug windbags. As a counterfoil a few validly argue for better-educated, more circumspect and self-disciplined journalists. We are blessed with these younger, more principled breed of better and brighter media-men. More than the wrinkled old dogs, they see both the discipline of science and the creativity of art in media. Still, the lesser-educated and long-toothed persist with the opposite view falsely believing that geriatric grey passes for wisdom. Fortunately, where sound bytes do not rule, television cameras do not roll and self-important media celebrities are not fashioned by talk show glib and verbosity, the issues of media muzzling are better debated. In a modest courthouse away from the glitz and grandiloquent duplicity of talk show habitués, media was being un-muzzled against resurgent threats to deny the people’s right to know. Last September 2, 2010, broadsheets reported the junking of a petition to silence media through a temporary restraining order (TRO) inflicted on the publication of appeals that sought presidential assistance in investigating alleged irregularities in the controversial Smokey Mountain fiasco. The “Dear Noynoy” appeal entitled “Kung Walang Corrupt, Walang Mahirap”, by the Kapisanan Kontra Korapsyon, sought help but was challenged by an injunction, that was eventually rejected. That the battle to deny media censorship was won in the courtroom of Judge Evangeline Castillo-Marigomen made sense. Several times before, when and where it mattered, judicial history was written in the journals of Branch 101 of the regional trial court in Quezon City. In 2006, Judge Castillo-Marigomen, citing parliamentary immunity under Article 6 of the Constitution, ordered the release of a 73-year old legislator then being harassed following a declaration of national emergency issued presumably on the basis of an alleged coup against Gloria Arroyo’s incumbency. In 2007, following a TRO she had earlier issued, Judge Castillo-Marigomen stopped the government from imposing a strain of rice developed from potentially toxic genetically modified organisms (GMO). That established a landmark decision, the first since 2002 when the Arroyo government first allowed the entry of GMOs into our vulnerable food chain. The Smokey Mountain TRO recently and rightfully junked by Judge Castillo-Marigomen sought to muzzle the publication of a desperate appeal to President Benigno Aquino III to investigate a billion peso scandal where entities demanded the payment of over Php 3.17 billion for an uncompleted project wrought with controversy and where, reportedly, only Php 211 million worth of actual work had been accomplished. In questioning the overpayment proposal, the public’s desperate appeal published by two leading national broadsheets to ensure against criminal overpricing follows calls by President Aquino for a major anti-corruption overhaul in government. According to the court, the imposition of prior restraint against media contradicts the policy of the Aquino government to make public projects transparent. Ironically, those publications upon which censure was attempted had previously hosted full-page ads which carried the side of those who would now seek censorship. In her decision, apparently, such irony was not lost on Judge Castillo-Marigomen. She declared that a TRO would effectively amount to prior restraint on media. In a democracy public scrutiny is critical and opposing perspectives are likewise as essential as the right to know. These are neither sound bytes nor talk show rhetoric. The voices sought to be silenced do not belong to graying talk show regulars who inflict motherhood prattle on media muzzling. When the victimized resort to public appeals for transparency, that in itself is symptomatic of inequitable access to media. In this instance, it is the lowly and often neglected victims of injustice who stand to be twice raped had their appeals been censured. This makes this more important than boob-tube drool and drivel and we are thankful that in some quiet courtroom, real justice reverberates with a booming voice.