Right of reply, wrong premise

The advocates of press freedom in the Philippines are confronted with an unusual dilemma. A proposed law is being considered for passage in the Senate and the House of Representatives that, according to its proponents, would uphold press freedom but, on close reading by journalists, could actually curtail it. The dilemma is that if the advocates participate in the discussion, they may end up unwittingly supporting the passage of the proposed law, called the Right of Reply Bill. Such an engagement necessarily means that they would be accepting the premise of this proposal. But if, on the other hand, the advocates don't engage in the discussion of the bill, with the objective of fine-tuning it, to make it more palatable, the bill in its present form stands a great chance of being passed. At best, their silence would be interpreted to mean as surrender by default and, at worst, acquiescence. Evidently, press freedom gets a beating either way. Which is a pity since journalists and advocates of press freedom should never have been put in this position in the first place. With this in mind, I will not go into a detailed discussion of the merits, or lack thereof, of the Right of Reply Bill. What I will point out, however, is that press freedom advocates, journalists and the public should reject this bill not because it is flawed (it sure is) but because its assumptions about press freedom and media responsibility are wrong and, more importantly, the premise of the bill is a serious contravention of the Philippine Constitution. In a nutshell, the Right of Reply Bill mandates that journalists and publishers in the different the media – newspapers, radio, television, the Internet – can be fined, imprisoned and their outlets closed if they fail to publish the reply of the subjects of their news and commentary. The reply should be in the same space, allotted the same amount of time and should be given the same prominence, and that the publication of the reply should be done in a matter of days after the original material being replied to was published or aired. Senate Bill 1120 was filed in June 2004 by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. but the 13th Congress did not have enough time to approve the bill, which had gone as far as passing the third reading. Pimentel refiled his bill as soon as the next congress opened in June 2007 and was finally approved by the Senate in June this year. At the House of Representatives, two bills were likewise filed, one by Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara of Aurora (House Bill 162) and the other by Rep. Monico Puentebella of Bacolod City (House Bill 1001). These two bills are up for third and final reading before they are consolidated with the Senate version. Ever since Pimentel refiled his bill, other colleagues at the Senate, notably Ramon Revilla Jr. and Francis Escudero, have decided to not just support the bill but sponsor it as well. The House versions have likewise gotten broad support, with Speaker Prospero Nograles saying recently that he was inclined to support the bills. The media, on the other hand, have been raising hell against the bills in editorials and columns, promising to challenge it in court if it gets approved. Pimentel, meanwhile, had said that he had been a victim of unfair reporting by the press and filed the bill in order to correct what he viewed as a systemic problem in the media. "Let us make sure that we have an honest to goodness working remedy to balance the right of the mass media to publish what they want to publish with the right of the objects of their libel, defamation or criticism to explain their side within the ambit of the right of reply bill," he said at a forum in October 2007. He tried to allay fears that his bill would curtail freedom of expression. "The bill will, in fact, widen the freedom of expression by obliging the media to provide space to the response and explanation of persons to media reports or commentaries that are inaccurate, unfair or biased against them and injurious to their reputation," Pimentel said last month. But I say Pimentel's involvement all the more makes the bill insidious because the public regards the senator as a decent Filipino and one of the country's noted civil libertarians and a staunch defender of human rights. Sadly, he is using this image to push for a law that contradicts the very things – freedom, human rights, to name two — that he supposedly stands for, the very ideals that made him dear to Filipinos. Because Pimentel is the one who is so earnest in having this law passed, the danger is for the public to agree with him, to swallow everything he says about this proposal. After all, if it is all right with him, how can the Right of Reply Bill be so wrong? In one fell swoop, the proposed Right of Reply law will undermine or take away the editorial prerogatives of journalists to print what they deem fit. Worse, this proposed law will intimidate journalists and prevent them from performing their watchdog functions because the potential cost of doing their job is rather high – fine, imprisonment or closure. It will, in other words, control what the public reads, hears or sees in the media. No recent legislative proposal has so brazenly attempted to violate the Bill of Rights — "No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press…" — than this one. How things in the usually rambunctious Philippine media have come to this is subject to different interpretation. One view is that, as far as Pimentel is concerned, the proposed law is well-intentioned: its objective is to widen the democratic space, to allow – under pain of punishment by law – more voices to be heard in the Philippine press. Moreover, according to Pimentel, it seeks to balance the playing field in the Philippine press, given that, far too often, the subjects of negative news are either completely ignored by the media or are not given adequate time or space to air or publish their side. Another interpretation, also propounded by Pimentel and the others who have sponsored the two versions in the Senate and the House, is that a Right of Reply law will force Filipino journalists to be responsible in how they do their job. The press being generally abusive (or so the perception goes), the proposed law will go a long way in making sure that news subjects, whether politician, government official or ordinary citizen, will not be victimized by the bias and the incompetence of the Philippine press. I will not debate the merits of these rationales for the proposal because, truth be told, the Philippine press is as rowdy as it is irresponsible. The sins of the media that Pimentel and the others are now throwing at our faces to justify such a draconian measure are there for all to see. Which is why, for its own good, the Philippine press should do better, and we certainly don't need a repressive law for us to do better. The best way to counter this proposed law is to prove that its premise is wrong, that regardless of our shortcomings, we have the capacity to be accurate and fair. Never mind balance, never mind objectivity. Just mind accuracy and fairness. In other words, we should excel at what we do so that people like senators and congressmen, no matter how well-intentioned, will not entertain the arrogant idea that their notion of how the press should perform is far more important than the Bill of Rights. (This commentary was first published in the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project website http://rightsreporting.net) (The author is a journalist based in Manila. He writes for The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. He was secretary-general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.)