Category: Political Humor

#JunkCyberLibel! – A new call for People Power

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

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MUCH has changed since Ferdinand Marcos was toppled during the People Power Revolt in 1986. But as many have pointed out, there are many things that have also remained the same.

As the nation celebrates the 28th anniversary of the revolt that toppled an overstaying regime, media and civil society groups have banded together for a new call for People Power: A call to junk the Cyber Libel provision of Republic Act 10175.

For this, media, netizens, and civil society leaders are launching an online and offline campaign to junk the Cyber Libel provision of R.A. 10175 and decriminalize libel.

Members and supporters of these groups are encouraged to post anti-cyber libel memes on Facebook and Twitter, and press their local legislators to act on calls to amend the libel provisions contained in the Revised Penal Code.

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meme4The groups will also assemble at the Edsa People Power Monument at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25, to mark the 28th anniversary of People Power as Black Tuesday.

The recent Supreme Court decision affirming online or cyber libel had raised an outcry from advocates of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. At a time when the same groups are having difficulty convincing government to pass a freedom of information law, R.A. 10175 moves these freedoms backward by expanding the coverage of libel to the digital domain and increasing the penalties for the crime.

For these groups, the decision is a regression of the gains made in EDSA 1986, when press freedom was restored. Now, more than ever, everyone, not just journalists, are in danger of being slapped with the charge of libel, a crime that now carries a six-year prison term if committed online.

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The greatest irony of all: While freedom of expression and freedom of the press advocates have been campaigning to decriminalize libel, government has in fact expanded the scope of the crime and increased the penalty. This, even as the government continues to delay passage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill, which has been waffling in the legislature for a decade and a half.

The Philippines, touted as having the freest press in Asia, still subscribes to an archaic and restrictive libel law. Article 353 of the Revised Penal Code considers libel a criminal offense punishable with a prison term, and presumes that the allegedly offensive material is malicious until proven otherwise.

 

Freedom won, freedoms lost; Black Tuesday on EDSA anniv

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

FREEDOM WON 28 years ago. Freedoms lost last week.

Media organizations and netizens mark the 28th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolt with a Black Tuesday campaign to protest the Cyber Libel provision of Republic Act 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act.

The Supreme Court last week declared the Cyber Libel provision of R.A. 10175 as constitutional, effectively expanding the coverage of the country’s 80-year old libel law into the digital domain.

Media and online groups have protested the ruling, saying the decision reverses what already appeared to be a libertarian trend in the courts in the interpretation of libel laws.

Libel is defined in Article 323 of the Revised Penal Code as a criminal offense, punishable with both a prison term and damages. Media and lawyers groups have been pushing for the decriminalization of libel, saying the law has been used to harass and cow the Philippine press.

In addition, the Philippines is unique in that an allegedly libelous statement is presumed to be malicious until proven otherwise by the accused. This implies that the accused is already presumed to be guilty until he proves himself innocent before the courts.

Exactly a week ago today, Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of R.A. 10175′s cyber libel provision, which recognizes that libel can be committed online, but only by the original authors and producers of the material. Not included in the crime of cyber libel are those who receive or respond to the material.

At the same time the Tribunal struck down several provisions of the law as unconstitutional, particularly the “take-down” clause which would have allowed the government to deny or restrict access to digital hardware and material even without a warrant, and the real-time collection of traffic data.

The decision came exactly a week before the nation commemorates the 28th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolt, when press freedom was restored in the country.

Media organizations have pointed out that the Cybercrime Act and the SC ruling on the law effectively reverses many of the freedoms gained in EDSA by unduly restricting freedom of expression and freedom of the press even in the internet.

To mark this day, online groups and media organizations including the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, have declared today as Black Tuesday.

The groups are launching this noon an online protest to ask the Supreme Court to reverse its ruling on cyber libel, and to press legislators to amend the libel provisions in Article 353 of the Revised Penal Code.

At noon today, Feb. 25, the media groups will release several memes to show their opposition to cyber libel, and to highlight the regression of basic freedoms that had been won in 1986.

Several groups will also be assembling at the EDSA People Power Shrine at 3 p.m. today to make their voices heard, online and offline.

Have newsrooms given up on investigative journalism?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

“IS INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING in ICU?”

Columbia University professor and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) founding Executive Director Sheila Coronel asks this provocative question in her latest post in her blog Watchdog-Watcher.

Coronel, who now heads the Tony Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia, takes note of how more and more newsrooms are disbanding their investigative reporting units in a move to cut costs and change business models. Curiously, the moves come even as many newsrooms pour money into the production side of news, to make their newscasts more, uhm, glossy and modern-looking. The result is, obviously, glitzy, glossy newscasts that look more like Inside Edition – and sound like Inside Edition as well.

An interesting, if not morbidly amusing, reference would be the investigative satire done in Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, viewed below.

 

But before the eulogies start coming out, Coronel is quick to point out that many organizations, both big and small and both independent and commercial, are still keeping the spirit of investigative journalism alive – no matter how difficult it may be getting.

In fact, one should be careful not to wallow too much “in the narrative of investigative reporting’s slow and inevitable demise,” lest we end up only making our fears self-fulfilling.

While it is true that the digital revolution is upon us, Coronel argues, we as journalists should be far from passive watchers; in fact, we journalists must be at the forefront of making sure that we are the ones who transform the revolution, and not the other way around.

Read Coronel’s full blog post here.