Business Circuit

“Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.”- Aneurin Bevan, British politician.
 

*  *  *

I Have been invited to a symposium in the University of Santo Tomas to participate in a discussion on decriminalizing libel.

I will surprise my listeners by telling them that while I am prepared to lay down my life in defense of press freedom, I do not like the idea of decriminalizing libel.

The libel law is the only instrument victims of press abuse can use to redeem their integrity or what passes for it.

The only advantage I can see in decriminalizing libel is the respondents are not required to post bail, the case not being criminal.

Apart from that, all is fair game for government officials, private citizens and us people in media.

I have always maintained that if we can dish it out, we should be able to take it.

As it is, I am beginning to feel that the press is not that responsible. Criminal libel may help them to be a little more careful in maligning or attacking or criticizing people.

Truth is a defense in libel. So what are we worried about if we are writing the truth?

Many criminal libel cases I know stem from the refusal of some newspapers to accommodate the right of reply. We force aggrieved parties to file criminal libel charges against us.

If libel is decriminalized, the cases that may be filed against a perceived offender will be civil in nature.

If the complainant wins his case, he is awarded by the court a sum or something close to that sum he claims as damages.

Decriminalization of libel will make us poorer than we already are. Where, pray tell us, are we going to get the millions of pesos in civil damages that the court may award a complainant?

I think we will be stripped of everything in our name. Nothing will be left of us after paying damages.

In libel with a civil aspect, insolvency translates into subsidiary imprisonment. We pay or we go to jail because we do not have the money to pay damages.

Where then is the logic in decriminalizing the libel law? None. It makes media more irresponsible because we remove the sword – the libel law – dangling over our heads.

I suspect the plan to decriminalize libel is almost solely intended for media people. Which means that fear of imprisonment of people who are not in media is similarly removed.

Media does not need protection from the libel law by removing its criminal element. What is most important to us is to be allowed to exercise our right of expression, which is everybody’s right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Our worst fear at present is the obvious attempt of the state to suppress press freedom. The state, in this case the Arroyo administration, does it two ways. In her initial years, President Arroyo allowed her sycophant to hire journalists and put them on the payroll of some government-owned corporations. But it can only work so far. It cannot achieve the objective.

The next step is threat of arrest. In fact, the police arrested media persons who covered Sen. Anthony Trillanes in the Manila Peninsula hotel debacle. They were released in a few hours and government apologized.

In what was presented to be a dialogue, DILG Secretary Ronaldo Puno declared that journalists who cover – not exactly join – enemies of the state will be arrested if they do not heed a second warning of the military or the police to stay away.

That scares us more than criminal libel. Libel is a risk of the trade. We have to face it and avoid it by exercising our duty with a higher level of responsibility. Fairness is the rule of the game.