ROR quid pro quo for FOI

With a vote of 17, the House committee on public information approved the consolidated version of the various bills filed on the proposed legislation of Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. A former newsman, Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, chairman of the House committee on public information, finally delivered on his task to shepherd the FOI bill through this stage of the legislative mill in the 15th Congress.

The Senate version of the measure, however, is on a more advanced stage of the legislative mill. It was earlier approved by the Senate committee on public information and is now pending for plenary debate at the Senate floor. Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, who chairs this committee, recommended a consolidated/substituted version of the FOI bill that has been renamed as Public Ownership of Government Information, or POGI for its acronym.

Various media groups have long been lobbying for the approval into law of the FOI, or (POGI as it is called at the Senate). The proposed legislation has been billed as something that would further promote transparency and accountability of officials in government. The FOI once approved into law will give not only the media but also the people in general wider access to government documents and other public records.

President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III, who won on a platform for transparency in government, has foi-bill-tells-cabinet-men-send-it-to-congress” endorsed the passage of the FOI bill, but has not included it in his administration’s priority legislative measures as submitted to Congress. 

During the last Congress, the FOI bill was only waiting for ratification of the House — the final step in the legislative process before it is forwarded to the President for signing into law — but was not approved due to — “freedom-of-info-bill” lack of quorum.

Ironically, the House adjourned yesterday abruptly after it was briefly convened again due to lack of quorum. The FOI bill has been pending before Evardone’s committee since February last year. House deputy speaker Lorenzo Tañada III is the principal author of the FOI bill.

Tañada is candid enough to admit the FOI bill is still in the realm of uncertain approval considering they have only 11 sessions days left before both chambers of Congress go on their Christmas recess on Dec. 22. When they resume session on Jan. 21, the election fever will already be running high.

Of the entire membership of the House committee on public information, only three voted against the proposed consolidated version of the 15 FOI House bills. One of the three who voted against it is Nueva Ecija Rep. Rodolfo Antonino. He insisted to include a provision in the FOI bill for “the Right of Reply,” or ROR, for short. The proposed provision became a thorny issue that nearly derailed the House committee approval of the FOI bill for submission to the plenary.

If my memory serves me well, this proposed ROR was a separate bill that was first tackled during the 14th Congress. I distinctly recall this because I attended a House public hearing as among the resource persons from media who were invited to hear our comments on this proposed legislation. At that time, Manila Rep. Benny Abante was the House committee on public information chairman.

We posed no serious objection to this ROR bill as long as the proposed law would not impinge on our Freedom of the Press as enshrined in our country’s 1987 Constitution.  But as far as we’re concerned, there is no need for such law. It is not something mandated but an exercise of the basic tenets of journalism of fair and balanced reporting.

Even without a law, The STAR has been giving such right of reply to anyone who feels aggrieved by any stories or commentaries of columnists that we run in our newspaper.

Either this reply comes out verbatim in our Letter to the Editor page, or we run a story based on the reply. Some resort to the so-called “advertorial,” or paid advertisement that will run their reply in full.   

Apparently, the ROR bill died also a natural death in the previous Congress for inaction of our lawmakers, for whatever reason.  

House Bill 4252, Antonino’s version of the FOI bill that seeks to include ROR, gives a person an “opportunity to reply” if he or she is involved directly or indirectly in an issue which came from information obtained through the FOI.

National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) secretary general Rowena Paraan best described Antonino’s insistence on inserting the ROR provision in the FOI bill. It indicates that some lawmakers “do not understand” the workings of the media. “Balanced reporting is already intrinsic to what journalism should be,” Paraan pointed out. 

Glaringly, she added, the ROR provision to the FOI bill obviously seeks to protect “political interests” and not the interest of the public.

What makes this Antonino version of the bill objectionable is its imposition that compels media entities to give the same space or the same program where the original report was published or aired. Antonino cited it is only “fair” to give politicians the opportunity to reply to accusations against them from information obtained through the FOI bill.

But that is like giving one thing in one hand, and taking the same thing away from the other hand.

We call such a person an “Indian giver,” a proverbial expression to describe one who gives a gift, literal or figuratively, and later wants it back, or something equivalent in return. For politicians, it is called a “win-win” or compromise. But in Congress parlance, it is called horse-trading.

 But the worse argument raised yesterday by Antonino is invoking alleged corruption in media in pushing for this ROR rider in the FOI bill. The veteran politician warned that unscrupulous members of media would abuse the FOI for illicit activities like getting information that could be used to attack them. Antonino pointed an accusing finger at alleged corrupt members of media while forgetting his four other fingers are pointed back at him. 

What are they in Congress for if they could not craft a law that would promote and protect public interest? For once, we could only ask again our lawmakers to serve public interest first before their own vested interests. ROR should not be a quid pro quo for FOI.