Interrogation of women journalists: Good or bad?

By a strange twist of events, I was preparing a lecture on the Philippine media during the martial law period (September 1971-August 1982) when the state of national emergency was declared on Feb. 24, 2006. One’s immediate reaction was that martial law would not be far behind. The memory of the suppression of the press under martial law rushed back to one’s consciousness, and to the resolve that one should never allow that to happen ever again.

The lecture was to open a series of memorial lectures in memory of the late Augusto Caesar Espiritu, a constitutionalist, nationalist, thinker and writer. He was a co-founder of PROCESS (the acronym for the rather lengthily-named Participatory Research Organization of Communities and Education towards Struggle for Self-Reliance), along with Dean Froilan Bacungan and former Judge Alfredo Tadiar. Two other sponsors of my lecture were the Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC) and the Philippine Communications Society (PCS).

I was asked to dwell at length on the interrogation of women journalists by military officers – one of the forms of harassment on media persons during the dictatorship. While working on this assignment, I felt the chilling effect of repressive measures being inflicted by the government and military officers – the effect of having to write under "a climate of fear." I am sure the ongoing interrogation of broadcast and print media persons are producing that same effect.

On March 3, 1983, a group of women journalists filed with the Supreme Court a petition for prohibition with preliminary injunction, seeking to prohibit the respondents (a) from issuing subpoenas or letters of invitation to petitioners and interrogating them, and ((b) from filing libel suits against female writers.

The petitioners were columnists, feature article writers and reporters of various local publications. These were Arlene Babst, Odette Alcantara, Ceres P. Doyo, Jo Ann Q. Maglipon, Domini Torrevillas-Suarez, Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, Cielo Buenaventura, Sylvia Mayuga, Sheila S. Coronel, et al.

Respondents were the National Intelligence Board, Special Committee No. 2, whose members consisted of Brig. Gen. Wilfredo Estrada (ret.), Col. Renato Ecarma, NBI Asst. Director Ponciano Fernando, Col. Balbino Diego, Col. Galileo Kintanar, Col. Eustaquio Peralta, et al.

The petitioners had each received letters of "invitation" for them to appear before the committee "to shed light on confidential matters being looked into by this Committee." If they failed to appear before the committee, the committee would be constrained to proceed "in accordance with law."

Aside from the interrogations, Brig. Gen. Artemio Tadiar Jr., filed a criminal complaint for libel on Feb. 9, 1983, with the Office of the City Fiscal, Manila, against petitioners Domini Torrevillas-Suarez, editor of Panorama, and writer Ma. Ceres Doyo based on Doyo’s article that came out in the March 28, 1982 issue of Panorama, and asking for a P10-million claim for damages.

The petitioners maintained that the respondents had no jurisdiction over the proceedings which were "violative of the constitutional guarantee on free expression since they (had) the effect of imposing restrictive guidelines and norms on mass media; that they (were) a punitive ordeal or subsequent punishment of petitioners for lawful publications; that they amount(ed) to a system of censorship, curtailing the ‘free flow of information and petition and opinion"’ indispensable to the right of the people to know matters of public concern guaranteed in section 6 of Article IV of the Constitution; and that they constitute(d) intrusions into spheres of individual liberty."

Regarding the libel charge against this columnist and Doyo, petitioners denounced the filing as "instituted with intent to intimidate and based on illegally obtained evidence."

The women journalists interrogated were Arlene Babst, Domini Torrevillas-Suarez, and Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon, Ninez Cacho-Olivares, Eugenia Apostol and Doris Nuyda.

The women were asked questions under the sun. From their clothes, educational background likes and dislikes. They were asked not to write anything about the interrogation. Committee stenographers seated at the sides, however, recorded the interrogation.

Arlene was one of four female columnists at the Manila Daily Bulletin. All of them wrote critical pieces that incurred the ire of the Marcoses. The committee called Babst and Cacho. The Bulletin publisher eventually sacked all four of them.

At the interrogation, Arlene, accompanied by her lawyer Joker Arroyo, was asked about her marital status, her trips abroad, why she left the Catholic religion, why women writers made activist Fr. Agatep "look like a hero," if she had known that Edgar Jopson was a radical, if she was ever censored or edited, if she was familiar with the problem of brain washing. What was her definition of national security and press freedom, her guidelines for responsible journalism? ("Do you realize that some of your writings are only a hairline away from subversive writing?")

Arlene said, Colonel Diego asked, "Why do you write to agitate the mind and arouse the passions?" Colonel Kintanar was the one most concerned with "the effect of your writings on the minds and passions of your readers."

After the interrogations of the eight women, general Ver terminated the proceedings, but Attorney Arroyo pleaded, "The matter is of such importance that the petitioners hope for a definite ruling on the principal question raised."

The ponencia of Justice Plana declared the petition moot and academic in respect of the interrogations, but it agreed with Justice Claudio Teehankee that the Court should "rule squarely on the matter."

Justice Vicente Abad Santos said the interrogations "were not only offensive to the guarantees of free speech and free press, they also violated the right to privacy, and the right to withhold information which are nobody’s business."

Justice Abad Santos quoted Chief Justice Enrique Fernando’s statement in The Bill of Rights, thus: For freedom to speak and to publish to be meaningful, "Not much reflection is needed to show that these freedoms would be nullified if a person were allowed to express his views only on the pain of being held accountable. That would be to stifle the expression of opinions, which are repugnant or contrary to the current political, economic, or moral views. The right to dissent becomes non-existent. To expose the party availing himself of freedom of speech or of the press to run the risk of punishment is to make a mockery of our commitment to the free mind."

Justice Teehankee said, "Filipino journalists are not so dense as to misread (interrogations) as anything else than the intimidation it was meant to cause."

As to the filing of libel suits, Justice Teehankee said, "The constitutional guaranty of freedoms of speech and press prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood . . . unless he professes that the statement was made with ‘actual malice." The charge was eventually dropped by the Regional Trial Court of Manila, outside the purview of the petition for the Supreme Court to prohibit interrogations.

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