by Luis V. Teodoro
Political crises take many forms. In this country—and for the generations represented here today—these forms have ranged from such critical events as the bombing of a political rally and the subsequent suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, the declaration of martial rule, the killing of the late Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., military-civilian mutinies that have unseated presidents, several coup attempts, and a declaration of a state of emergency which itself became an emergency for many groups and individuals as well as for the Bill of Rights.
Lately the crisis has taken the form of a confrontation between, on the one hand, a president more than a majority of the populace believes was not legitimately elected, and, on the other, a broad spectrum of forces that wants her government to at least account for, or to at most resign over, the vast network of corruption that has metastasized in it. Late last year, however, the country was also treated to a crisis which was erroneously reported as a coup attempt, the main component of which seemed to be a press conference in which the same putative president was asked to resign.
We have thus witnessed one political crisis after another, each of varying intensity, but each one being, by common consent, a turning point in the way the country is being governed. And that’s what a political crisis is—a moment in the life of a country in which issues of power and governance come to the surface to shatter the illusion of stability that every government this country has ever had since 1946 has taken pains to cultivate.
The mother crisis
The political crises we have witnessed are, however, rooted in a mother crisis that unless addressed will continue to create the instability governments like the present one hate, but about which they have been unwilling to really do anything beyond the conveniences of repression. That mother crisis is that fueled by the contradiction between the demand for competent, honest and visionary governance that has been at the heart of Filipino hopes for over a hundred years, and its obvious absence.
The Philippine political crisis is driven by the people’s hopes on the one hand, and by the political class’ corruption and incompetence on the other. For as long as that contradiction remains, little child-crises of varying intensity will continue to afflict this country, which means that journalists will be constantly called upon to report and comment on developments that are not only crucial to the country’s present and future, and which thus impose certain demands on the press.
Most of those demands we are all familiar with. Like any other issue or beat, the coverage of political crises is governed by the professional and ethical standards of journalism. These standards are linked to each other, the principles of ethical conduct being reflected in the practical performance of the journalist’s job. In that sense ethical journalism is competent journalism, and vice versa.
In practice, truth telling as a fundamental ethical principle in journalism finds expression in factual accuracy, which in turn is premised not only on getting the statements of sources correctly, but also on checking one’s facts, consulting a number of sources, and providing context, background and/or history.
Although truth-telling is a basic responsibility, it is, however, in turn governed by the principles of independence and justice as equally vital ethical commitments. These are realized in practice not only through the journalist’s non-involvement in any interest that would compromise his or her autonomy, but even more intensely, also in his or her capacity to transcend in favor of the facts his or her own advocacies, personal preferences, or even bias when reporting or commenting on issues of public concern.
In addition, the principle of humaneness mitigates the harm truth-telling can inflict on news subjects, especially those accused of wrongdoing who are presumed to be innocent, as well as those sectors of society that are most vulnerable to harm through publicity. In practice, this principle is realized through specifying that suspects are only suspects, for example, or in withholding the names of women and children involved in crimes whether as victims or suspected perpetrators.
Indispensable
These ethical and professional principles are indispensable to the basic journalistic responsibility of providing information to a public that has a right to it. As principles to which observance is voluntary, they are necessary in a regime of press freedom, in which the presumption is that journalistic responsibility can be achieved only through self-regulation.
The absence of government regulation is the fundamental condition for press freedom as a constitutionally protected right in the Philippines. The Constitution in fact emphasizes that no law may be passed abridging press freedom and free expression. But as experience has shown, this alone is no guarantee that press freedom cannot be curtailed.
The events of Nov. 29 are only one such indication during the Arroyo watch. The raid on a newspaper office in 2006, the threats that inciting to sedition charges will be filed against certain media organizations, the spate of libel suits and advisories that promise legal retaliation should journalists refuse to heed police orders—all are indications that the Constitutional guarantee is not enough.
They also show that what is needed is government good faith as well as commitment to press freedom, based on the recognition, as Chief Justice Reynato Puno has pointed out, that press freedom is a primary right and that it may not be curtailed unless there is a clear and present danger to the state which reporting or commentary may aggravate. Pledged to protect and defend the constitution, governments are charged with the responsibility of upholding press freedom, not for its own sake, but to enable the news media to discharge their mandate of providing the citizenry the information it needs on matters of public interest. If the press has the professional and ethical responsibility of being accurate, independent, fair, and compassionate, a responsible, lawful government has the even more urgent responsibility to protect press freedom as a Constitutional mandate.
Rather than recognize this responsibility, however, the Arroyo government has made it a policy to undermine the Constitutional protection to which press freedom is specifically entitled. The soured and souring relations between the media and the Arroyo government are in fact based on the latter’s insistence on prioritizing its political interests over press freedom, and, in effect, over the right of the citizenry to information as an indispensable condition for democratic discourse.
Media’s mandate
Political crises being of public concern and interest, it need hardly be said that the media are professionally and ethically mandated to cover them. It is not as if this is the media’s choice, but a responsibility thrust upon them by the very nature of the media’s role in providing the public information in a society that claims to be a democracy. Covering the events of Nov. 29 was therefore a responsibility the media could not have shirked; no doubt, should something similar to EDSAs 1 and 2 come to pass, the media would be remiss in their duty if they failed to cover it.
This basic responsibility is either unappreciated or despised by those who fear the popular empowerment that information brings, and they have raised various issues to cloak their bottom line wish, which is no coverage at all, or, at least, coverage that’s to their liking.
When the police and other government agencies and officials raised these issues some journalists were understandably concerned. The community is after all committed to the standards of the profession, and if journalists overstepped their bounds, it was only correct for them to reexamine themselves and their actions. The press and the media should be thankful for every opportunity for self-assessment, especially when it involves the coverage of the political crises that we can expect to be with us for some time to come.
Obstruction of justice was of course the first issue raised, occasioning not only justifications for the arrest of journalists not only last Nov. 29, but also for future arrests in future crises.
No journalist would nor should argue in favor of obstructing justice as a principle, in the sense of, at its most basic, preventing the police from doing their work (if that indeed is what they’re doing rather than using police operations as a cover for planned misdeeds), or, at its more complex level, denying themselves or others the penalties or rewards that they deserve. In the Nov. 29 case, however, whether there was indeed obstruction of justice is at issue, and I might point out that during a hearing before a branch of the Makati RTC last February, the judge was visibly taken aback when it was pointed out that the journalists were arrested after the so-called military rebels were already in custody, which would preclude their obstructing police efforts, given the latter’s success in doing their jobs.
The government’s raising this issue as superior to the rights of the press and the public obscures the basic fact that journalists are indispensable to the public need for information, and that the basic responsibility of a government committed to democratic governance is to protect press freedom.
To provide the public’s need for information the news media have to be onsite, and a news event does not end with police deadlines; it isn’t something anyone can declare to be over. To assume so is to assume that as King Canute thought, ocean waves can be stopped at the say so of so-called authorities. Media organizations do have the option to either leave or stay, depending on their assessment of the gains and losses that may be incurred either way, and a police deadline imposed on the protagonists in a news event does not equally apply to the media. Force, or the threat of its use, is of course something else, and before police guns or truncheons journalists have little hope of prevailing.
The basic responsibility of journalists is to provide factually accurate information as well as context and analysis so the public may judge events for themselves. Journalists can’t do this if all sorts of obstacles including threats and arrests are thrown in their paths. But journalists also need to be fully aware of the conditions in which those responsibilities can be best discharged as well as those that have to do with the consequences of their reporting. They need only to be loyal to the facts, and, no matter how difficult it may be, given the passions that politics arouses, they also need to transcend their own views in favor of the facts and what they very likely mean.
Like most thinking people, journalists have their own convictions and even advocacies. They don’t leave their citi-zenships at the door when they join the media. But the ethical norm in journalism is not to allow those convictions to interfere in the basic responsibility of reporting the truth.
Slippery slope
Personal involvements are specially tricky, a slippery slope on which journalists would do best not to be caught. In such instances the accepted protocol, as tough as it may be to follow, is to inhibit one’s self from reporting on the sources with whom one is involved, given the difficulty of retaining one’s neutrality when reporting on those sources.
Most journalists are aware of and understand the ethics of reporting on sources with whom they may have developed close ties. Journalism ethics does not demand that journalists abandon their advocacies, or forbid their acting on them. But acting on those advocacies does have consequences, among which being hauled off to court and even to prison are, or should be, accepted risks.
These risks are specially pronounced in covering political crises, because those forces involved in such crises often look at the media as hostile entities that either need to be contained, or suppressed. In the present circumstances, covering political crises will always involve such risks. This is not to say that being arrested onsite is lawful, only that a government to which legality is often the last concern cannot be underestimated. The responsible coverage of political crises may be a two- way street in which both the media and the government have their respective responsibilities, but no one should count on the latter’s being true to them.
Which brings me to a crucial point. Journalists need to arm themselves with an evaluation and understanding of the policies, tendencies and proclivities of the present regime and such of its major actors as Mrs. Arroyo and other Palace denizens, the police, and the departments of the interior, justice and defense. The understanding that it is regime policy to conceal rather than reveal, to be opaque rather than transparent, should provide journalists the basic guide in covering political crises: it is that they have to exert extra effort to get information and to convey and interpret it to a public that wants and needs it. In many instances that has required the firmest insistence on upholding the journalist’s right to report events as he or she sees fit, guided only by the ethics and standards of the profession. Covering political crisis during the watch of a government that is itself the problem rather than the solution demands that the journalist keep his or her sights on that most basic responsibility of all. |
