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The dismissal by the Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC) of the class suit filed by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and other media organizations and individual journalists outraged over the arrest of several dozen practitioners during the so-called Manila Peninsula siege could yet be the biggest legal blow to press freedom to date.
While the ruling cannot compare in impact to the continuing killing of journalists, it was issued in the context of a clear policy by a regime hostile to press freedom and the people’s right to information to do all it can, both within and outside the law, to deny the press its Constitutionally-guaranteed right to cover events of public interest. This policy undermines the public’s sovereign right to information.
In the Peninsula incident, the regime stretched the definition of obstruction of justice to include journalists’ doing their job of covering events of public interest, and arrested journalists even after the so-called military rebels had been taken into custody. It did so without saying why they were being so treated, and on the pretext of determining who were legitimate journalists and who were not, hauled them off to a police camp for “processing.”
It was the worst incident of its kind in the history of the struggle for press freedom since 1946—worse than any attempt by government to restrain the press during the several coup attempts against the Aquino administration in the 1980s, and worse even than during the martial law period, when no journalist was ever arrested while doing his or her job.
By arresting journalists who were at the scene of an event of public concern, the regime was in effect saying through its coercive instrumentalities that covering such an event is illegal, and withdrawal from the scene of crisis is the only legitimate decision a media organization can make.
The decision to stay and to continue to cover a developing story, or to withdraw from the scene, is the editorial prerogative of a Constitutionally-protected press. It is at the very heart of the capacity of the press to discharge its duty to the public. By preempting the right of the press to decide either way, and declaring that there is only one right way, which is not to cover a story, the regime usurps a function and right that belongs only to the press. No regime has the right to dictate that a decision to stay and cover is wrong and can be penalized.
The RTC decision, if not challenged, would not only legitimize an illegitimate attempt to subvert press freedom, the Constitution, and democracy. It would also embolden an already aggressively anti-press freedom regime to repeat the offense, as it has several times threatened to do.
The RTC decision came in the heels of the killing of one more journalist. Like most of the others killed, he was a colleague in the community press. The assassination of Fausto “Bert” Sison last June 30 demonstrates that while the killings have abated, they are continuing as a sustained blow against press freedom.
It reminds us all that while the legal is an important arena in the continuing effort to defend press freedom, the killing of journalists is still a major factor in undermining it, and that the defense of press freedom is as urgent a task as ever during the reign of a regime whose indifference to the killings on the one hand, and whose sustained assault through legal and other means on the other, has evolved into the worst threat to free expression and democracy since the Marcos dictatorship.
Luis V. Teodoro
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