The right of reply
by Don Gil K. Carreon
On Jan. 11, editorial board chair and columnist Vic Agustin of the Manila Standard Today announced in his Cocktales column that the paper had just been sued for libel. Agustin said the complainant was Philcomsat Holdings Corp. (PHC) vice president Enrique Locsin, a brother of the paper’s publisher, Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. PHC is a government-sequestered company whose management is bitterly disputed by its major shareholders.
Agustin wrote that the Standard was being sued for his Dec. 19 column “Locsin’s private ATM.” Quoting from the complaint, Agustin said Locsin had claimed that he had been “maliciously and unwarrantedly portrayed as a person who has withdrawn several millions of money from a certain corporation for his own personal account.”
Fourteen days later, The Philippine Star published an advertisement by Locsin complaining about the Standard’s repeated refusal to publish his response to the Agustin column. He said the refusal had forced him to buy ad space in another paper to balance readers’ understanding of the issues. Locsin is also the publisher of the news magazine Philippines Free Press.
Locsin complained about Agustin’s Jan. 7 column “Lawyer’s fiesta, PR bonanza,” where the latter, among other claims, said that P400 million pesos of PHC funds could not be traced after Locsin ordered its withdrawal. When Locsin wrote the Standard in reply, he saidthe paper would not publish his letter even as a paid advertisement. Locsin protested Agustin’s selective reprinting of portions of his letter, which he said were taken out of context.
Agustin said in an e-mail interview with PJR Reports that the Standard decided against publishing the letter for four reasons: it was unsigned; it did not carry a return address and telephone number; the fax machine that was used to send it did not list a return number; and when a hard copy was eventually delivered, the Locsin PR consultant would not sign an acknowledgment that the letter, which still did not carry a return address or telephone number, indeed came from /had been delivered by the PR firm. Agustin said the Standard had a policy to print letters to the editor questioning the accuracy of its reports.
The right of reply law
The Standard-Locsin flap is a reminder of the acrimonious dispute between former foreign affairs secretary Roberto Romulo and The Philippine Star in 2004. In June 2004, Romulo complained that the Star had vilified him in more than 30 articles over a period of 14 months and had refused to print his side. Romulo first sought the help of the press community to resolve the issue but he eventually filed for libel. Central to that incident was also the right of reply and the press community’s ability to ensure that people subjected to inaccurate and otherwise unflattering reports could still exercise this right when it is denied them by a news organization.
The right of reply proceeds from the assumption that reportage is a continuing dialogue and that those subjected to damaging comment or reports have the right to defend themselves in the same medium. Responsible press organizations recognize this right. Some media critics, however, argue that the right should be legally enforceable, since voluntary compliance as a function of self-regulation is unreliable. For example, the press commu-nity’s inability to resolve the Romulo-Star row partly fueled ongoing efforts to enact a right of reply law.
Such a law would theoretically make it easier for aggrieved parties to present their side. But the press has opposed the bills that have so far been introduced in Congress, among other reasons because a right of reply law would constitute prior restraint. Editors are also concerned that such a law would impinge on the editorial prerogative to decide what to print and have argued that it isn’t necessary, since most news organizations do recognize the right of reply. In brief, the argument is that a right of reply law would be contrary to Article III Section 4 of the Constitution, which mandates that “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”
The proponents of right to reply laws have softened their stance and even withdrawn their support for it after consultations with the press. Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara said he is no longer pursuing the passage of the right of reply bill (House Bill 00162) he filed in July 2007, which has been merged with Rep. Monico Puentevella’s version (HB 01001).
Last October, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, the bill’s proponent in the Senate, also expressed willingness to support the voluntary right of reply on the condition that there be a working remedy to those cases when news organizations refuse to recognize this right.
These were welcome developments, since the proposed laws were flawed. Pimentel’s Senate Bill 1178 makes it compulsory for press organizations to publish or air the reply of the aggrieved party within 24 hours or be fined P10,000. Third time offenders would face a 30-day prison term on top of a P30,000 penalty. Puentevella’s bill even proposes a 30-day suspension of operations of the media organization that does not comply.
Enter the PPC
The press community already has in place the mechanism Pimentel wants. The Philippine Press Council (PPC) is a self-regulatory body within the Philippine Press Institute (PPI). It is charged with addressing ethical and other complaints against the press, and recognizes the right of reply of those parties with grievances against the print media (complaints against broadcast are addressed by the Kapisanan ng Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, or KBP). The PPC, composed of representatives from the media, the private sector, and academe, was organized so that complaints against the press could be resolved without intervention from the courts or other government agencies.
Aside from the PPC, there are also several citizens press councils in the provinces organized by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR). These councils—there’s one in Palawan, and one each in Baguio City and Cebu—accept complaints from those abused or aggrieved by the news media, but who have been denied the opportunity to defend themselves.
PPC chair Gary Mariano said the council was already looking into the Locsin-Agustin issue but had to abandon its inquiry because of the council’s policy not to entertain complaints when cases have been filed in court.
“I wish Mr. Locsin (had come) to the Council,” Mariano said. “But the Council is an option, not a requirement. I respect his decision to go to court [as he claimed in the Star ad] and to place that ad in the Star.”
Locsin, however, told PJR Reports in an interview that he did not file a complaint before the PPC because he did not know that such a council exists.
The lack of awareness about the PPC—in this instance, even by a news magazine publisher—underscores a nagging problem that has haunted not only the PPC but the citizens press councils in the communities as well.
In a forum on press councils CMFR organized in September 2006, PPI executive director Jose Pavia declared that the lack of public awareness had been a long-standing problem of the PPC.
Pavia said the PPC had begun an aggressive awareness campaign of going to all information offices of government agencies in Manila and some campuses to inform them about the Council. Two years later, however, the problem apparently remains—and it is especially ironic, the membership of the PPC being media organizations whose mandate is to provide the public information.
Pavia in fact wenty farther. He said many journalists themselves are not even aware of the PPC’s existence, not to mention what it’s for.
“The lack of awareness about the PPC has always been there, even in the press community,” Pavia said. “Maybe they have heard of it but they don’t know what it can do.”
Attempts to inform people about the Council continue.
“Every time we have an out of town seminar for community journalists, there is a companion activity wherein Mr. Mariano talks with students, especially mass communication students about the PPC and journalism ethics,” Pavia said.
The PPI website, http://pressinstitute.ph, also contains guidelines on how people could seek relief from the PPC if and when they have problems with the media.
The PPC is not the only press regulatory body that has awareness problems. In a roundtable discussion on the state of the Baguio-Benguet Citizens Press Council (BBCPC) last Dec. 10, the participants also attributed the lack of complaints filed before the BBCPC press council to the fact that much of the public is unaware of both the existence of the council as well as, in general, the fact that the news media are mandated by ethical standards to correct errors, and to present all the relevant sides in a given issue. CMFR helped establish the BBCPC in 2005.
Mariano has a different take on the low number of complaints submitted to press councils. He said one probable reason for the paucity of complaints to the PPC is that editors nationwide do recognize the right of reply, which is why those who believe they have not been heard do not go to press councils but to the media organizations instead.
The glaring fact remains, however: by not providing information about press councils and other self-regulatory mechanisms, or providing too little of it, media organizations themselves are not giving the corrective capacity of the press councils much of an opportunity to flourish.
Toothless tiger no more?
Despite Mariano’s positive take on press recognition of the right of reply, Locsin’s being forced to file a libel suit against the Standard indicates that while some news organizations claim to recognize the right of reply, they throw all sorts of obstacles into its implementation, as is evident in the Standard’s multiple conditions it wanted Locsin to meet before publishing his letter. If the right of reply is to be of any use for those aggrieved by the media, the latter need to make it easy rather than difficult for that right to be exercised.
The sense among policy and law makers that the media are arbitrary and arrogant in the exercise of their power in fact proceeds mostly from their personal knowledge of how often the media have been asked to provide space or air time to those they have maligned or otherwise mistreated, and have refused. The proponents of right of reply laws cannot be blamed for thinking that the only way to address the problem is to compel the media to observe the very ethical responsibilities the media themselves claim to recognize but often don’t practice.
Hopefully in recognition of the fact that unless the media practice what they preach, the PPI has tried to ensure that those with grievances against the press would no longer have to turn to the courts. In August 2006, the PPI Board of Trustees adopted a resolution binding PPI members to the PPC’s decisions. PPI members that do not comply with its decisions may be subjected to censure, a fine, suspension or termination of membership. Mariano said the resolution was adopted after the PPC was virtually ignored by the Filipino-language tabloid Pilipino Star Ngayon, which they were trying to communicate with due to a right of reply complaint in January.
Press councils are sometimes regarded as being more of a “moral instance that do not need to enforce (their) decisions than a jurisdiction of the profession.” Hopefully, this step taken by the PPI to strengthen the PPC’s oversight functions would finally dissuade the government from forcing the media to comply, ironically with their own standards.
The Philippine media should learn a lesson from the British experience. When public disaffection grew with the British Press Council’s performance in the 1980s, the government commissioned a study to determine “what measures (whether legislative or otherwise) are needed to give further protection to individual privacy from the activities of the press and improve recourse against the press for the ordinary citizen.” In June 1990, the commission recommended that the Press Council be replaced by the Press Complaints Commission. If in 18 months, it does not satisfactorily conduct its job, a “statutory system for handling complaints should be introduced.” The complaints commission has since been made to work for the simple reason that if self-regulation doesn’t work, the government will do the regulating. |
