Hillary, Albright back Ressa on libel case

MANILA, Philippines — Former US secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright yesterday expressed support for Rappler chief executive officer and executive editor Maria Ressa, who was convicted of cyber libel on Monday.

“Maria Ressa was convicted in the Philippines yesterday for doing her job. As Amal Clooney wrote, the message to other journalists is, ‘Keep quiet, or you’ll be next,’” Clinton said in a post on Twitter.

“We must fiercely protest attacks on the press. They are attacks on democracy,” the former US first lady said.

Albright also threw her support for Ressa on Twitter.

“I stand with Maria Ressa,” Albright said.

Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 found Ressa and Rappler’s former researcher-writer Reynaldo Santos Jr. guilty of violating Republic Act 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act, specifically for cyber libel.

Ressa and Santos, however, were allowed to post bail as the decision is appealable.

If upheld, both Ressa and Santos can be sentenced to six months and one day up to a maximum of six years in prison. They are also ordered to pay P200,000 in moral damages and P200,000 in exemplary damages.

Rappler Inc. was declared to have “no corporate liability.”

In 2017, businessman Wilfredo Keng filed a cyber libel case against Ressa and Santos for a 2012 Rappler article that linked Keng to illegal activities, including human trafficking and drug smuggling.

Personal matter, political harassment

Keng claimed that the cyber libel case filed against online news site Rappler is a personal matter even as journalist Maria Ressa maintained that it is a politically motivated harassment.

Lawyers Ryan Cruz and Melissa Andaya, who represented Keng in the cyber libel case, insisted that the matter is not a press freedom issue “but a simple case of holding someone accountable of not holding the standards of ethical journalism.”

“The issue here… has to be clear: this is not an attack on press freedom,” Cruz said in an interview with “The Chiefs” aired on Cignal TV’s One News on Monday night.

“We have consistently said that our client was maliciously attacked or maligned on an online publication,” he added.

Keng does not personally know President Duterte despite the appointment of the former’s daughter Patricia to the Philippine Commission on Women last year, according to Cruz.

“The fact that Mr. Keng’s daughter was indeed appointed, I don’t think that is relevant because what is involved here is Mr. Keng’s willingness to vindicate his reputation,” Andaya said.

“They keep going back to this issue that the case was influenced by the government, the simple answer is that it is not. This is a personal case to Mr. Keng,” she added.

In the same program, Ressa underscored the need to look at the entire context of the period when the cyber libel case was filed.

“It was a fishing expedition, all the time. That was the context of 2018. That’s why you can’t take the cyber libel case on its own, because the full context of that, the fishing expedition is in all fronts,” she said.

That year, the Securities and Exchange Commission revoked Rappler’s license over supposed violations of the Constitution and the Anti-Dummy Law.

Tax evasion charges were also filed against Rappler Holdings Corp., Ressa and its independent certified public accountant Noel Baladiang over alleged violations of the National Internal Revenue Code.

For Ressa, the cyber libel case goes beyond the issue of fair and balanced reporting as claimed by Keng’s camp, noting that the case was filed several years after the article’s original publication in 2012.

“I don’t think this is an issue about being a gatekeeper of journalism. I think this is a press freedom issue. I think it is legal harassment – it is politically motivated,” she said.

The Rappler chief noted that the article, which cites an intelligence report linking Keng to illicit activities, included the response of the businessman at the time.

In his complaint, Keng alleged that the outfit and its reporters were “out to attack him” for not publishing a story on the certifications he secured 2016 and 2019, which stated that he has “no derogatory record on file” for drug-related crimes.

He said their camp has repeatedly requested that the article be taken down and that the businessman’s side of the story be published.

DOJ’s role

Ressa and Santos were convicted of cyber libel even as the original article was published months before the Cybercrime Prevention Act was approved.

In allowing the case to proceed, prosecutors from the Department of Justice (DOJ) ruled that the article was republished in 2014 when Rappler corrected a typographical error.

At the time, the law was under a temporary restraining order by the Supreme Court.

Ressa said “legal acrobatics” were used to justify the case, adding the move to change the prescription period of a libel case from one to 12 years.

“It couldn’t have moved forward without the Department of Justice moving it forward,” she added.

While maintaining that it is personal for Keng, Cruz confirmed that it was the DOJ prosecutors who decided to file a case only against Ressa and Santos.

“We actually tried to include as respondents all the editorial board,” Cruz said.

“It was not the decision of the private prosecutors; it was the decision of the DOJ (prosecutors) who conducted the preliminary investigation… that probable cause was clear with the writer Mr. Reynaldo Santos and the executive editor (Ressa),” he added.

Dangerous precedent

The University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication (UP-CMC) described the ruling as a dangerous precedent and a direct threat to press freedom.

The UP-CMC noted that the decision eliminated the one-year prescriptive period of libel and created what it described as a strange abomination in the theory of continuing publication.

“The State can prosecute even after ten, 12 or more years after publication or posting. It is a concept of eternal threat of punishment without any limit in time and cyberspace,” it said.

“This is not a threat to media alone. More important, it is a bladed weapon poised to cut and bleed out any journalist, any writer or any Filipino social media user, who posts criticisms of public acts of corruption and incompetence on the Internet,” it added.

The departments of communication and political science of the Ateneo de Manila University also issued a joint statement describing the decision as the latest attempt to dismantle checks and balances in the country.

“We express our concern that if this government is able to use its resources in this attempt to silence the country’s most visible and high-profile, internationally known journalist, then how safe are the rest who toil daily with equal integrity to hold those in power accountable?” it said.

Nonsense insinuations

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. rejected insinuations yesterday that the Duterte administration has a double standard in dealing with supporters and perceived enemies in the wake of Ressa’s and Santos’ conviction.

“That’s nonsense. First, the case of Maria Ressa involves a private individual, not the government nor a person from the government, not even a politician, but a private individual,” Roque said at a virtual presser from Malacañang.

Roque, who proclaims himself a lawyer expert in libel, expressed belief that Ressa’s conviction may be considered for probation, which might allow her to escape serving her jail sentence.

“The sentence of Ms. Ressa… is subject to probation but you will lose the benefit of – meaning, if you accept the decision, you won’t be jailed once you apply for probation. But if you appeal it, you will lose that privilege,” Roque said.

He added that if Ressa loses her appeal before the Court of Appeals, then she has to serve the sentence.

Roque blamed her defense team for failure to prevent her conviction because the lawyers did not present evidence to counter “malicious intent” in uploading the article.

“Why else would Maria Ressa be not convicted when her lawyers did not introduce any evidence to prove there is no malice? They did not introduce evidence to establish that they verified their report before they published it,” he said.

“There is a presumption in law that there is malice, that the malicious imputation is in fact malicious if the complainant is a public individual. Teddy Te (Ressa’s lawyer) did not move to overcome that,” Roque added. “How will they be absolved?”

The Palace spokesman raised doubt over the defense’s moves, saying they seem to have a strategy to deliberately get a conviction.

“It looks like they want a conviction. Well, they were convicted and although the sentence may allow possibility of not serving the jail term, the problem arises when they appeal it,” he said. Janvic Mateo, Christina Mendez