Broadcasters Cortez, Solon plead not guilty to libel raps

Block-time radio broadcasters Reynante “Rey” Cortez and Lito “Bing-bong” Solon yesterday pleaded not guilty to the libel charge leveled against them by Undersecretary Elberto Emphasis, head of the Philippine Reclamation Authority.

Regional Trial Court Judge Estela Alma Singco then set the trial of the case on January next year.

Cortez and Solon, co-anchors of block-time radio programs over DyDD station, were arrested last year in an entrapment inside a restaurant in a mall where they allegedly received money in exchange for stopping their attack against Emphasis

Emphasis earlier complained to the National Bureau of Investigation about the “extortion” of the two and this prompted the NBI agents to set the entrapment.

Emphasis alleged that Cortez and Solon demanded P20,000 payoff from him so that they would stop attacking him on air.

The two however denied demanding and accepting money from Emphasis, accusing the government official instead of setting them up allegedly to protect certain people at the Bureau of Customs.

These people at the BOC, they said, had been the subjects of their attacks on-air to get rid of corrupt men and women from the agency.

Cortez and Solon said it was Emphasis who asked them to meet him at the mall’s restaurant so that Emphasis could present his side of the controversy. Before the meeting could end, however, Emphasis allegedly handed them the money.

NB I agents stood firm that Solon received the money from Emphasis, peeked at the envelope and slid it inside his pocket. When the NBI agents approached and announced the arrest, Solon then slipped the envelope out of his pocket and tossed the same to the floor.

Even before the controversial entrapment, both broadcasters already grabbed the headlines in 2003 when they were shot by a still unidentified assailant while walking to their vehicle after a visit to the BOC.

Cortez was hit in the leg, while Solon was unscathed.

Emphasis, in his complaint before the NBI, said that Cortez and Solon have been attacking him relentlessly in their radio program.

Emphasis then went to the National Telecommunications Commission to get official recordings of the broadcast and filed a complaint against the two at the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters sa Pilipinas.

However, the KBP set the complaint aside because dyDD, the station where the commentaries were aired, was not member of the organization. —Joeberth M. Ocao/RAE