By Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino

The Constitution requires the State to keep its mighty hand off the press. It thus ordains that the press be free. But does it also require that it be fair? In the wake of the spirited discussions that have followed in the heels of proposed legislation to require journalists to print in the same place and space with equal prominence the ?reply? of whomsoever may have been the object of a charge of wrongdoing either directly or by innuendo by a press report or commentary, I get the impression that the press does not think itself obliged to be fair. It is vigilant about its right to be free; it is not convinced though?or so it seems to me?that it ought to be fair.

True, indeed, there is nothing really in the Constitution that binds the press to be fair, but neither is there any provision that binds children to care for their aging parents. When the Preamble, however, announces that it is the intention of the Filipino people to enjoy the benefits of a society under the rule of law where justice, freedom and love prevail, then society has accepted the fundamental obligation to be decent. At one time, scholastic philosophers referred to the prima principia of practical reason, indemonstrable not because indefensible, but because self-evident! Fairness is something like that. When John Rawls asked what the members of society, placed in a hypothetical ?original situation? stripped of the consciousness of their particular interests, inclinations and situations in life, would choose to be the principles by which society was to be organized he arrived at two principles that he believed all would choose. This is not the place to amplify on the finer points of this thesis of political and ethical theory. It is sufficient to characterize the theory?as it has been?as the theory of ?justice as fairness?. In its simplest terms, human beings wish to be treated fairly, and will opt for that system of social organization (including the distribution of benefits and burdens) that is fair.

What reason have press moguls and practitioners so far advanced for their resistance to the right to reply proposal? They believe that it constitutes a legislative intrusion into their zealously guarded freedom. To mandate them to print and publish the refutation with the same prominence that they bandied the charge is for them an unacceptable imposition upon them, denizens of a free society free to write what they think they should write. But that is a fatuous conceit, for there are impositions upon writers and reporters and editors all the time. Why is it that one broad sheet can be counted on to carry the government?s line, and another sells particularly because of its invariable tirades against government and government officials? Because impositions are made by the tycoons or policy makers of the businesses that run the presses and the television channels and the radio stations about what should be talked or written about. This is imposition by those who hold the purse-strings.

Profiting as they do from the blessings of capital, journalists and commentators have formidable means by which to tarnish the reputation of almost anyone. In fact, the airs of influence that many media practitioners visibly put on come from the fact that anyone, including Benedict XVI, is fair game for their sometimes evil games. This influence they enjoy and the power they wield create in legal theory acceptable grounds for exactions on them. The right to reply is a pittance of an exaction compared to the millions they rake in for peddling the sensational and the salacious.

It is not often that I align myself with legislators, but this time I throw my support ?whatever it might be worth?behind the efforts of the members of Congress who are dead set on legislating what should be a habit of the heart: decency. In fact, I find the reason that opponents of the measure advance abhorrent in its brazen display of the disposition not of ?truth-seekers??the honorific by which many media enterprises flatter themselves?but sheer opportunists and profiteers. Why do they not want to be compelled to print the answers and refutations of their targets with the same prominence that they print their charges and innuendoes? The bottom line need not be belabored: the fair process of listening to charge and answer?expressed by the Roman adage et audiatur altra pars...let the other party be heard?is not as marketable as innuendo and outright accusation.

Our legislators might not have found the need to propose a bill on ?the right to reply? had our courts evolved jurisprudence that was as protective of citizens as it was of media players. The impression cannot be avoided that the courts, perhaps even the Supreme Court even, plays to the gallery and to the media. Hardly anyone ever gets convicted for libel and we have even gone so far as to advise public figures, through jurisprudence, not to be ?so thin-skinned?. In other words, our jurisprudence asks public officials to bare their backs to the slings and arrows of those who should be slinged and arrowed instead, precisely because they are public figures. I find this totally ludicrous. Those who pine for public office are often those with a surfeit of ambition but a woeful shortage of capacity, intellectual and otherwise! Those who should be in public office?who have the necessary academic credentials, the acknowledged acumen in business and professional sectors?keep out of public office because the demands are many and the rewards are few! What we should be doing is encouraging the competent, the able and the talented to serve in public office. But if, besides offering no more than a pittance, subjecting them to the many unreasonable and illogical requirements of bureaucracy, we also require them to be prepared to be buffeted and pilloried by agents of media business dead set on holding out just anyone for public condemnation and ridicule as in the detestable witch-hunts of hold, we are certainly not encouraging service in the public sector by those who should be so serving.

Media practitioners claim that they can police their ranks. Now, really? That is hardly any consolation when the media culture we deal with is one that is quick to play the blame-game, the is excited about the slightest whiff of scandal and suggestion of malfeasance, and that readily makes up its mind about who the ?good guys? and the ?bad guys? are before mastering the rules of evidence?or in the very least, acquiring some familiarity with them, or doing some serious study of logic and the theory of knowledge besides real attention to ethics?or being serious about decency.

So what do we do if the media lobbyists get a majority of lawmakers to junk the bill? Not only does money talk; promise of favorable media exposure talks a greater deal. Then I suggest that from grade school, pupils and students be taught that media is just like advertising?a selective presentation of truth, and often, a collection of half-truths. What I am saying is that as an educator, it will be part of my duty to develop in students of all levels a healthy sense of skepticism towards the media and to wean the public through intensive education from the romantic notion that journalists search for the truth, make it publicly known so that the public may make informed decisions. We should then do all that we can to make our citizens appreciate media correctly?as peddlers of what sells, and to treat them accordingly. It should become part of critical thinking skills to constantly ask what may have motivated a journalist to print what he did, or a commentator, to comment as he did, and to eschew the presumption that it was the truth that was the moving force.

This is not an indecent proposal by any means. It is a last-ditch attempt at restoring decency to the business of exchanging information and making it public.

rannie_aquino@rannieaquino.com