Constants for a free press

By JUAN L. MERCADO, juan_mercado77@yahoo.com
April 19, 2012

Seventy six national and community newspapers will gather for a two day Philippine Press Institute conference on “Media Accountability and Public Engagement.  President Benigno Aquino will key note this two day meeting.

Discussions will include sessions on a Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism presentation on an “Asian Media Barometer”, “Self-Regulation” to “Reporting the Environment”.

It promises to be a useful exercise. Far too many today take liberty of expression as a constitutional given, “constant as the northern star,” Shakespeare would write.

This was not always so. In fact, a free press had to be fought for every step of the way from World War II resistance papers to the “mosquito press” that struggled against the Marcos dictatorship’s gag. That, too, remains a “constant.”

“When you do battle for press freedom, don’t put on your best trousers,” old editors tell their cubs.   But we’re also craftsmen with abbreviated memories.

“Baby-boom-ers” in our newsrooms never saw Juan Ponce Enrile’s photocopied arrest-and-seizure orders.  Few recall how Metrocom troops padlocked the Manila Times and Manila Chronicle as well as various radio stations.

The name of columnist Antonio Abad Tormis, who was the first to be gunned down for exposing corruption in Cebu rings few bells in the young. Tormis’ killing foreshadowed today’s body count. Since 1986, over 130 journalists have been murdered. In a “culture of impunity,” no one has been called to account.

“The Philippines is in danger of becoming the new Colombia as one of the world’s most dangerous places to practice journalism,” the International Federation of Journalists warned in 2003.

Just last Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists published in New York, it’s 2012 impunity survey. A dysfunctional justice system wedges the Philippines, third among the four nations, failing to nail journalist murderers.  The other three “black sheep” are: Iraq, Somalia and Sri Lanka.

Journalism students learn, early on, the law shields reporters from revealing their sources of information. But who recalls that five newsmen chose jail in the 1950s, rather than finger their news sources? Congress thereafter wrote into the books “journalism’s most inflexible rule.”

Joaquin “Chino” Roces and Teodoro Locsin Sr. didn’t flinch when the dictatorship seized the Manila Times and Philippine Free Press. Marcos claimed this ensured “press responsibility.” That “New Society” excuse was a patent fraud.

Sadly, it resurfaced in bills, filed, to legislate right of reply, already a recognized duty in our Code of Ethics.  If enacted into law, this would convert government into editors.

Failure, by some in our ranks, to curb “abuse of press freedom as a marketing strategy” would be compounded by government intrusion – minus military jackboots – into a constitutional no man’s land.

The media meanwhile basks complacently in these liberties. The Philippine Press Insitute conference reminds us that “we drink from cisterns we never built; and we reap from vineyards we never planted.”

The People Power Constitution, indeed, guarantees a free press. “Liberty is the right not to lie,” Albert Camus reminds us. Thus, the flip side is: The press itself should guarantee a fair – and a perceptive – one.

That task demands unflagging dedication to standards for daily truth-seeking, a grueling task in a society of skewed privileges. Here, “the powerful extract what they want and the poor grant what they must.”

New technology’s ever-accelerating speed renders the job more complex. Google’s News Frontpage, for example, is “rematted” every 15 minutes worldwide. And the fax, cellphone and e-mail have loosened traditional editorial oversight.

“Cadres of people who pronounce” deafen us with unedited bombast. “Visual tv soup” spills from tar-and-feather exercises, dolled up as legislative probes. Police blotter-type reporting is applied to complex issues to democratic survival.

As a consequence, lies are re-cycled in print or aired without challenge. This is journalism of unedited assertion.

Media do not operate in a vacuum. We live in a “constrained democracy.” Institutions rebuilt from Marcos’ scorch-earth rule remain frail. They’re constantly besieged by power-seekers, through “coups for rent” or systematic smearing.

Have our constitutional reflexes so atrophied, we glamorize junta builders? And why are we so superficial? Are we addicted to the soundbyte, rather than substance? Do we prefer the obvious instead of reporting “deep-running currents? Corruption in our ranks?

And what can we do as the country stumbles into what will be probably the most bitter election of this century?

Those called to the “priesthood of journalism,” Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez insists, must examine ourselves. Do we measure up? The call is for balance. We all need perspective. What advances the common good – not what entertains – should command priority.