Cebu media against right of reply bill!

While the debate on the “right of reply” is being waged between Congress and the media, allow me to join the fracas for my ten centavos’ worth on this burning issue. Mind you, in September 2008 when the Cebu media celebrated the 14th Press Freedom Week, this was one of the issues raised before our guest speaker, Speaker Prospero Nograles. Back then, you can tell that this issue would be a hot one.

For the record, the Philippine media, through its various organizations, notably the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), has issued this statement: “The Right of Reply Bill is an ill-conceived piece of legislation that violates two of the most cherished freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, those of the Press and of Expression. It is both ironic that the principal authors of the bill in the two chambers of Congress ought to have known better, Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. having earned his reputation as a champion of civil rights, and Bacolod Representative Monico Puentevella having been president of the Negros Press Club.”

I fully concur with this statement and I’m sure that we speak for and in behalf of many media practitioners in Cebu or in the Visayas and let me point out clearly that even without a law on the right of reply, we already practice it, where we publish or print the letters of our readers, and often we include those insulting ones! In fairness, Speaker Nograles said this bill targets mostly radio commentators than newspaper columnists.

But I did present to Speaker Nograles several scenarios like, for instance, if we wrote something about someone and this person demands his right of reply in a 10- or 20-page letter, what should we columnists do? Print the entire reply, which would certainly not fit our less than a thousand word parameter of our columns? In a one-hour radio broadcast, that may be possible, but with columnists’ limited space… we’d end up doing nothing for the entire week or two just responding to the person who wrote us. This is why we call this Right of Reply Bill a curtailment of our press freedom!

Undoubtedly, the biggest opposition by the Philippine media to this Right of Reply Bill is the fact that it makes media persons who refuse to follow this law as criminals! Today we already have the libel law that makes criminals out of journalists for speaking their minds freely.

Who was it that said that the Philippine press was the “freest” in Asia? It seems that this old stereotype of Philippine media is no longer true because many people file libel cases against media persons, whose sole purpose is to silence them! When the case is already in court, you can bet that their lawyers would stall or foot-drag the legal proceedings or dilly-dally because they know that most of our judges are sympathetic to the media.

However, thanks to the doctrine of sub judice, journalists are always under threat if they continue writing about the case they are involved in. In the end, these lawyers use the courts to infringe on press freedom! I should know, I’ve been in the midst of such a case for a year now, but I can’t even give out any information about this for fear of being hauled to court for writing the truth!

Actually what is needed is simple professionalism that we exhort other media practitioners to follow. In my case, I always make an effort to print the letters sent to me, especially the short ones. For the long responses, I merely copy their meat. This way, our readers always get the chance to air their sentiments and as I’ve said, including those nasty letters that we often get.

Here in Cebu, the media has created what is known as the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) where complaints against media practitioners can be forwarded. Our dear friend and colleague Atty. Pachico Seares, editor of SunStar Daily, vigorously pursued the idea of a press council and it has now become a reality. Last Monday, Atty. Seares wrote on the issue of the right of reply in his column “News Sense” and we quote him:

“Who are the legislators supporting the right of reply bill that makes access to media compulsory? They don’t genuinely want to protect Press Freedom and promote a robust public debate on issues of public interest, as they falsely claim. They are people who have private grievance against certain journalists and news media. Hurting, they want redress and revenge.

“Not by mechanisms that media industry has already set up, including individual newspapers’ and broadcast stations’ correction system and press watchdogs, such as the KBP Standards Authority and Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC), all of which, irony of ironies, preach and practice the right to reply.” So allow me to shout it out loud that the Cebu media is totally against this bill!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.