Editorial

Unacceptable compromise

SEEKING to douse the firestorm of protest from the press, the principal author of the right-to-reply bill is offering to water down his unpopular proposal, which has already been passed by the Senate.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. now says that any person who uses the law to gain the right to reply to a defamatory news article or opinion piece will no longer be allowed to sue for libel for the same item.

The bill will also be amended to give newspapers and broadcast stations more flexibility on how to handle replies.

On top of this, the senator promises to press for the approval of the bill to decriminalize libel.

Unfortunately, none of these concessions addresses the main defect of Mr. Pimentel?s bill.

Plainly put, telling the press what to print or air is no less a violation of free speech than telling the media what it may not publish. No amount of back-pedaling and watering down will make the right-to-reply bill any less of a violation of the constitutional guarantee to free speech and a free press.

There is a dangerous tendency these days to think our basic freedoms are somehow subordinate to a new reality, that the circumstances that gave birth to press freedom are no longer what they are today, and that it is time to look beyond the traditional parameters of press freedom. The implication here is that we already have a free press and can therefore afford to let our guard down, a view that naively ignores the desire of all politicians to bend the news media to their will.

There is no denying there are abusive journalists?but this is why we have laws against libel. Passing the right-to-reply bill to assuage the hurt feelings of politicians makes as much sense as dousing ourselves with boiling oil to stop an itch.

There is no middle ground on this issue. Wittingly or not, lawmakers who vote for this bill, no matter how watered down, are casting a vote against free speech and freedom of the press. We will not quickly forget.