THE Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance has joined the growing outcry against the dismissal of class action suit filed by Filipino journalists who were arrested while covering last November’s standoff at the Manila Peninsula Hotel.
The coalition of press freedom advocacy groups in Southeast Asia said in a statement said the June 20 decision of Makati Judge Reynaldo Laigo declaring as lawful the arrests, handcuffing and “processing” of the journalists “immediately brings uncertainty and danger to media practitioners in future urgencies–uncertainty and danger not from the inherent risks of emergencies, but from the mandate that police and the government have granted themselves (now with court backing) to dictate what would be out of bounds for news coverage.”
In Manila, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, a media NGO and a plaintiff in the case, said Laigo’s decision “could yet be the biggest blow to press freedom to date.”
“(T)he RTC decision would not only legitimize an illegitimate attempt to subvert press freedom, the Constitution and democracy. It would now embolden and arm the regime with the license to repeat the offense, as it has several times threatened to do,” it said.
SEAPA statement:
The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), a coalition of press freedom advocacy groups in Southeast Asia, joins the Philippine media community in denouncing a dangerous court decision that could have a chilling effect on how journalists will henceforth cover unfolding crises or emergencies.
On 20 June 2008, a lower court in Manila dismissed a class suit brought by journalists against the national police.
The suit stemmed from the evening of 29 November 2008, when the journalists were rounded up, arrested, and imputed with having obstructed justice, after they refused to abandon the scene of an unfolding story in Manila’s financial district: an ultimately failed rebellion led by a disgruntled senator and former military officer. After the news events of that day, the journalists were handcuffed and hauled off on military buses for interrogation in police offices. Imputed with having “obstructed justice”, and worse, being complicit in the failed rebellion, the Filipino media practitioners filed a class suit against the police for unlawful arrest, while warning that the police’s conduct (eventually rationalized and backed up by government memoranda) would have a chilling effect on press freedom in the country.
Human rights lawyer Harry Roque notes that the police after the crisis in November “treated the journalists as suspects in a crime, taking them into custody but without informing them what offense or crime they have committed and without providing them with a counsel of their own choice.” Eventually, he added, “the Secretary of Justice and other members of the President’s cabinet, approved of the abusive, arbitrary and repressive manner in which policemen treated the journalists who were covering the Manila Peninsula standoff and threatened to unleash the same treatment against journalists in future news events of similar nature.”
Indeed, on 11 January 2008, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez issued an advisory – delivered in all-capital letters addressed to the chief executive officers of media networks and press organizations. The advisory warned that the journalists and media companies “may incur criminal liabilities…if (they) disobey lawful orders from duly authorized government officers and personnel during emergencies…”
Believing that leaving the police and government stance unchallenged would threaten press freedom, the Filipino journalists filed a class suit challenging the same.
The dismissal of that suit on 20 June 2008, and the executive rationale behind the police’s arrest of the covering journalists to start with, immediately brings uncertainty and danger to media practitioners in future urgencies – uncertainty and danger not from the inherent risks of emergencies, but from the mandate that police and the government have granted themselves (now with court backing) to dictate what would be out of bounds for news coverage.
As the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), a founding member of SEAPA, has stressed: “Deciding whether 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. No regime has the right to dictate that a decision to stay and cover is wrong and can be penalized. These issues, all vital to the capacity of the press to do its mandated duty of providing the public the information it needs, are among those that the class suit sought to resolve in favor of press freedom.”
SEAPA encourages and supports the Filipino press community in their stated intention to immediately appeal this decision before the higher courts. A truly free press works for the people’s right to information, and must therefore be protected in its mandate to cover events of public interest. Moreover, members of the press must, as their original suit insisted, be free from harassment and threats from government agents that could have a chilling effect on their work as journalists.
CMFR statement:
THE Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility looks at the dismissal by the Makati Regional Trial Court of the class suit it filed with other media organizations and individual journalists as particularly alarming, and agrees with counsel Harry Roque that it could yet be the biggest blow to press freedom to date.
The ruling 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, as well as to stretch to the limit what is legally allowed, to deny the press its Constitutionally- guaranteed right to cover events of public interest, and, therefore, the public’s right to information on such matters. The arrest of journalists during the Peninsula incident was not only an attack on the press but on democracy itself.
In that incident, the regime stretched the definition of obstruction of justice to include press coverage, and used that excuse to abuse journalists even after the so-called military rebels had been taken into custody. It arrested and handcuffed the journalists and media technicians present without even the courtesy of stating why they were being so treated; and under the pretext of determining who were legitimate journalists and who were not, hauled them off to a police camp for “processing”.
This incident was the worst of its kind in the history of the struggle for press freedom since 1946. It was worse than any attempt by government to restrain the press during the several coup attempts against the Aquino government. The system for control of the press was clear during the Martial Law period, and there was little of this kind of manhandling of journalists at work. There is no such clarity for the protection of the press during this administration.
The license appropriated by this regime, its stretching the meaning of the law to include putting the “right” of the government to arrest those it claims to be obstructing justice above the constitutionally protected freedom of the press had to be stopped, together with its presumption that there’s a right way and a wrong way for the media to respond to crisis.
Deciding whether 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. No regime has the right to dictate that a decision to stay and cover is wrong and can be penalized. These issues, all vital to the capacity of the press to do its mandated duty of providing the public the information it needs, are among those that the class suit sought to resolve in favor of press freedom.
And yet the RTC decision would not only legitimize an illegitimate attempt to subvert press freedom, the Constitution and democracy. It would now embolden and arm the regime with the license to repeat the offense, as it has several times threatened to do. CMFR is prepared to take the fight to reverse this decision and to affirm the primacy of press freedom all the way to the Supreme Court.