In theory, legislators pass laws in the interest of the public. Unfortunately, that is not the motive behind the right of reply bills, which practicing journalists fiercely opposed because a right-of-reply law would violate their constitutionally protected freedom of the press. But the havoc that a right-of-reply law would wreak would be more fatal to ordinary citizens who rely for information on the press or what is sweepingly called media.
SB 2150 of Senators Aquilino Pimentel, Francis Escudero and Ramon “Bong” Revilla, and HB 3306 of Representatives Monico Puentevella, Bienvenido Abante and Edgardo Angara seek to grant “All persons natural or juridical who are accused directly or indirectly of committing or having committed or of intending to commit any crime or offense defined by law or are criticized by innuendo, suggestion or rumor for any lapse in behavior in public or private life shall have the right to reply to the charges published or printed in newspapers, magazines, newsletters or publications circulated commercially or for free, or to criticisms aired or broadcast over radio, television, websites, or through any electronic device.”
Failure to do so, SB 2150 says, “The editor-in-chief, the publisher or station manager, or owner of the broadcast medium…shall be fined in an amount not exceeding Ten thousand pesos (10, 000.00) for the first offense; Twenty thousand pesos (20,000.00) for the second offense; and Thirty thousand pesos (30,000.00) for the third offense.” How about the penalty imposed by HB 3306? Never mind. It’s more stringent than the Senate’s.
There is a gathering consensus among journalists that a right-of-reply law would break into the editorial control editors exercise over the news. SB 2150, for instance, mandates that the reply of the aggrieved party be published or broadcast “not later than three days after the reply shall have been delivered to the editorial office…or to the station that carried the broadcast being replied to”—free of charge. As if it were not enough, HB 3306 wants the reply be published or broadcast “not later than one day.” With a right-of-reply law in place, editors would be disenfranchised of their right to choose which news items to print or broadcast and which not to print or broadcast. “[T]he right of reply bill…would violate the right of journalists under the freedom of the press clause of the Constitution to edit or determine the contents of their publication,” a Philippine Daily Inquirer editorial noted. “It would intrude into the function of editors.”
Contrary to the arguments of the bills proponents, neither can the people benefit from a right-of-reply law. The right-of-reply bill, Mr. Pimentel says, merely gives the people, who are offended and mortified, the right to reply. On closer examination, however, the spotlight of the media is frequently on politicians or other public officials. It is the powers that be who are constantly being watched by the media. Thus, as Amando Doronila puts it, “The poor, the underprivileged and the disadvantaged have no reason to complain or to clamor for the right to reply against newspaper reports simply because they have never been the targets or victims of media attacks.”
Who needs a right-of-reply law then ? The straightforward answer is: the powers that be that are in dire need of a right-of-reply law because “when you analyze it,” Neal Cruz says, “…99.9 percent of negative stories concern public officials.” When grievances of politicians start flooding the newspapers or the airwaves because the right-of-reply law grants them the right to reply, that’s where the danger starts. And the casualties? Not only the media outfits, but also the ordinary citizens who rely on the media for information on the vital issues of the day.
“The media,” veteran American journalist Helen Thomas says, “is the go-between, a transmission belt to disseminate facts, figures and policies to a waiting public, explaining what the news means to their readers, viewers, and listeners.” Ordinary citizens generally do not have regular access to government information. But journalists do because they are the only entities who gather news on the necessary scale. That is why people turn to the media for updates on what their government and the men and women running it are doing. But a right-of-reply law, which is in the offing, would interrupt that function of the media.
If what people read on paper, hear on radio and see on TV, are nothing but rubbish heaps of complaints from disgruntled politicians, then the people will be less informed. How can the people tell their government that it is dead wrong for pushing this or that policy when they don’t have a sure knowledge of what needs to be improved? How can they make their government officials accountable?
The media is indispensable in a democratic country like ours. They inform, and at times form, the people. Imagine what would have happened had the media not exposed the unexplained wealth and the many excesses of Joseph Estrada? “Without an informed people,” Helen Thomas says, “there can be no democracy.”
The right-of-reply law--a law which Pimentel et al are pushing-- is, in a nutshell, an affront to democracy.
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