(Conclusion)

Unfortunately for the journalists and other sectors working to scuttle Congress initiatives to muzzle the press through ?right of reply? laws, the public seems largely unaware of these attempts to curtail the people?s right to know. And unless the people who get their news from the media start agitating against these incipient attacks on their freedom of information, our lawmakers just might get away with this new attempt to control the press.

Thus, in the middle of last year, the Senate was able to quietly pass its version of the right of reply bill, known in that chamber as SB 2150. Right now, the House is in the process of scheduling interpellations on HB 3306, which is basically the same piece of legislation.

But the members of Congress?as well as officials of the other branches of government?have a stake in seeing a law requiring ?equal time, equal space? replies for everyone who feels aggrieved by media reports. Having been at the receiving end of unfavorable media reports and commentaries ever since there have been both a government and a free press, it is natural for officials to seek ways to preempt media from airing their dirty linen, if only because they will have to devote equal time and space to a reply.

Besides, as some have already pointed out, if a right of reply law were passed, any person who is the subject of a possibly derogatory report will simply refuse to give his side of any story to the press when it is solicited. If and when the report appears, that person will then invoke his legal right to reply, which media cannot refuse to grant.

But under such a regime, media will merely refuse to run a report or commentary altogether, since allowing subsequent replies of equal space and time could be ruinous to them, both financially and editorially. This way, the law will legalize prior restraint of the press under the guise of promoting any citizen?s right to preserve his reputation ?and the chilling effect this will have on all media will be difficult to quantify.

Of course, damaging someone?s reputation is already being done with impunity in nearly every session and committee hearing of both Houses of Congress. But Congress claims a parliamentary immunity from suit? even its most ignorant, bigoted and partisan members regularly seek refuge under this specious cover when they attack someone and, worse, refuse them their right to reply to some ?investigating? senator or congressman.

The dilemma that media would then face is this: Would reporting a defamatory and libelous statement uttered in Congress constitute a violation of the right to reply, assuming that media refuse to grant equal space and time to the person maligned in the Senate and the House?especially in cases where the lawmakers have already denied that same right to the people they summon and investigate? Put another way, would our lawmakers give the right of reply to people whose reputations are damaged by their investigations and expos?s, a right which they insist that the media grant?

If the media were not routinely used by our lawmakers to defame and libel other people while pretending to be impartial investigators acting ?in aid of legislation,? Congress? moves to shut down the press with right of reply laws would probably be more credible. As it is, our lawmakers? actions should be dismissed as the usual self-serving and self-protecting actions of a political elite that wants to remain answerable to no one?especially not to the people who elected them to office.

* * *

Of course, the right to defend one?s reputation from unfair attacks (the presumed motivation for Congress? right of reply legislation) should be given all the legal protection possible. But the truth of the matter is that various means of redress are already available to anyone who claims to have been treated unfairly by the media?an array of remedies from same-day or day-after reactions, to letters to the editor, to taking out paid advertisements, to appealing to higher editorial authorities and press councils to suing for libel can be (and regularly are) employed by people with grievances against the press.

These legal and traditional forms of redress seem sufficient for the citizenry, even if Congress, in its wisdom, doesn?t think so. In truth, there is simply no groundswell of support from the public for the right of reply legislation that our lawmakers are pushing, at a time when most people think they should be addressing unemployment, high prices and other more pressing problems.

Thus, we may be allowed to suspect that what Congress and other government officials supporting this initiative really want is to stop criticism of official misbehavior in the media. And if media were to be subject today to legally instituted right of reply provisions, only our government officials would really be happy about it.

Because this, shorn of the faux concern for private citizens (who are rarely, if ever, the target of media reports and commentary), is what Congress seeks to do by attempting to craft a law on the right of reply. The fact that both versions of the proposed law seem deliberately vague on how this is to be done should make everyone?not just the media?suspicious, as well.

It has long been established, even in jurisprudence, that public officials are fair game for media reportage and criticism. If media were to abdicate this role of watching over the shoulders of our leaders (like it was forced to do during the Martial Law years, for instance) because they are preempted by onerous laws, who knows what official malfeasance and skullduggery would go unnoticed?

And that, at the end of the day, is why media?despite its many faults and failings?should be allowed to do its work with no additional legal impediments in any society that calls itself free. A free, faulty press is infinitely better than having none at all, or one that is so handicapped by ill-intentioned laws that it can only report things that will offend no one.

The newspapermsan?s job, it has been said, is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Let?s not allow our lawmakers to get so comfortable that they start afflicting everyone else by depriving them of their rights.