Media Helping Media

Alecks Pabico

The class suit also counts media organizations like the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, and The Daily Tribune as co-complainants, all of which Arroyo seeks to disqualify for having no legal grounds to file such a case against him.

Arroyo’s basic arguments are summarized as follows:

• He has not sued them for libel;
• It cannot be a class suit because there is no juridical entity known as “The Philippine Press;” and
• They are “not individual media practitioners who are protected by the speech and press clauses of the Constitution.”

Of these rather curious propositions, lawyers, primarily civil libertarians, whom the PCIJ consulted have generally similar reactions: It’s an absurd, preposterous, never-heard of line of reasoning.

“They must be referring to Martian law,” sarcastically remarks Harry Roque, University of the Philippines law professor and legal counsel of the journalists in the class suit.

“The claim that media outfits such as the PCIJ, CFMR and other journalists groups cannot sue Mr. Arroyo for undermining the freedom of the press is grossly ignorant of the law.”

“Definitely not,” avers lawyer Joel Cadiz, president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. “Reporters or newspeople write or speak through newspapers, TV and radio stations. Therefore the newspapers, TV and radio stations are the vehicle of press freedom, so how can they not be covered?”

An absurd situation would ensue, he says, if a journalist is covered by the free-press clause but the newspaper he is working for is not.

Marvic Leonen, also a U.P. law professor and the university’s vice president for legal affairs, says the formulation of the Constitutional provision on free speech, free expression, and a free press is such as to emphasize their protection, and does not make any distinctions as to who should enjoy such rights.

Section 4 of Article III, or the Bill of Rights, of the 1987 Constitution states 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.

Nonetheless, Marlon Manuel of the Alternative Law Groups insists that the free-press clause is broad enough to include groups like the PCIJ. In fact, he adds, press freedom is considered a public right.

On the other hand, U.P. journalism professor Marichu Lambino, a lawyer, says press freedom covers all media practitioners — the press as an institution and individual journalists.

She and the other lawyers remind their compañeros that prior restraint and the chilling effect on press freedom have been applied not only to individuals but also to organizations, citing the case of New York Times v. Sullivan — which incidentally is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in defense of press freedom as it established the actual malice standard before press reports could be considered defamatory and libelous.

On the issue that there is no juridical entity known as “The Philipine Press” with legal standing to file the class suit, the lawyers point out that such a status is not even a requirement.

Under the Rules of Court, a class suit is resorted to when parties in a case are too numerous to be named that several individuals file on behalf of the others who are similarly situated and represent them, as in the case of the Marcos human rights victims.

“As long as you enumerate the natural persons, you can say that collectively this is The Philippine Press. When you refer to these as a juridical entity, you can say it’s The Philippine Press as long as you enumerate,” says Cadiz.

It is true that Arroyo has not filed a libel case against the PCIJ, or even CMFR, for that matter. But the PCIJ and other media organizations and individual journalists who joined the class suit against the First Gentleman did so on the contention that the unprecedented number of libel suits Arroyo has filed already constitutes an abuse of his right.

The journalists’ complaint, in fact, maintains that the libel suits are baseless — as the reports are fair commentaries on matters of public interest, the First Gentleman being both a public figure and a public officer — and have the effect of chilling the exercise of freedom of the press by all media practitioners and not just by those Arroyo has sued.

The complaint does not dispute the First Gentleman’s legal right to file these suits, but contends his actions are “an abuse of his right to do so in a deliberate and systematic effort to curtail press freedom, and thus further weakens Philippine democracy.”

But in their resort to technicalities in Arroyo’s motion to dismiss the journalists’ class suit, the First Gentleman’s lawyers may have overlooked one thing. Notes Roque, “There is not a single denial that Mr. Arroyo abused his right to file these cases. He only claimed that he had a right to file these cases, which my clients do not dispute. In the absence of such a denial, the effect is an admission.”

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