PRESS STATEMENT OF MAKATI REP. TEODORO L. LOCSIN, JR.

No multiple personality disorder,

Chance to Reply and Right to Retract bill.

I demand the right to reply to the insinuation that I suffer from multiple personalities. A
felicitously written report by the charming Christine Herrera quoted a panel of the
committee on public information as referring to amendments introduced by “Locsin’s
team.”
What team? I never met with anyone nor has anyone met with me on the right of
reply bill. Nor did “we” ever discuss let alone adopt any amendments to the same.
If there was a committee meeting where all this took place, I was not invited. To
be sure, the reported amendments are welcome developments. But they were concocted
without any participation by me. What am I, plural? If anything, I am singular. My
contribution is smarter.
What I did, all by my lonesome, but with generous encouragement from Majority
Floor Leader Art Defensor, was prepare a pithy yet profoundly wise substitute bill
amending the Revised Penal Code on Libel with a single precise paragraph like a silver
bullet.
My proposed amendment makes the voluntary publication of a reply to an
allegedly libelous article or broadcast, an indefeasible ground for extinguishing any and
all liability for libel. So too would a spontaneous and unsolicited retraction by the
publication. It is all contained in one short paragraph, about three lines long. Think of all
the trees we would save.
I would call this not a Right of Reply but The Chance to Answer and the Right to
Retract Bill. Even if a libel suit is eventually won, the expense of defending against it can
be so prohibitive. Libel suits are a powerful deterrent to press freedom and a potentially
fatal financial threat to media. Respected jurists noted this after the highly defective New
York Times v. Sullivan decision unleashed a firestorm of libel judgments from outraged
state judges protective of the reputation of their constituents. That was when the “dancing
in the streets [only of journalists over the NYT decision] stopped.”
In my bill, if the reply of a victim of an alleged libel is published, he loses any
right to sue the writer and the publication, civilly or criminally.
This is the Chance [not Right] to Answer aspect of my short substitute. Joseph
Conrad’s Lord Jim, who asked for a second chance [to redeem an act of cowardice or—in
the present case—recklessness] inspired the second aspect. To wit, a journalist should
have the right to retract and thus be spared the liability or expense of a libel suit by
voluntarily “eating his own words”—if they aren’t worth his trouble to keep the words
out there for someone to sue on.
My substitute bill, aside from possessing the rare quality of brevity and being
environment friendly, removes the smallest element of compulsion. It is this element, the
US Supreme Court said in the Miami Herald case, that was the only objectionable aspect
of a right of reply bill, saying that the right to compel publication is a step away from the
right to repress it. Talk about hyperbole.
The other notable quality of my substitute bill is that it will give me a chance to
explain in my sponsorship speech why US Chief Justice Rehnquist said that freedom of
speech is a value, sure but it is not the only value protected by the Constitution; personal
honor is another. And while Thomas Jefferson extolled press freedom as essential to
democracy, he changed his mind after four years in the presidency, saying words to the
effect that press freedom is as much of a threat.
In short press freedom is not a sacred right because, as everyone knows,
journalism is not a priestly calling. None of its practitioners practice celibacy except
when they have no choice. Indeed, there is nothing sacral about journalism—not by a
long shot—even if its practice involves excessive intakes of heady beverages, frequent
complaints about the shortness of “bread”, repeated grousing about the failure of media
owners to multiply their wages combined with the overcompensation of former
colleagues who are unaccountably transubstantiated into editors and publishers. All this
followed and preceded yet more frequently by blasphemous takings of the Lord’s name
in vain—or, worse yet, someone’s mother. (The PI invective made famous by a
presidential candidate uttered when copy is read.) Any journalist who takes himself too
seriously is not a serious journalist and is probably an academician or a media watchdog.
As Samuel Johnson may have said, “Why do writers write? It’s a job.”
Finally, if a right of reply bill passes, where would that put a right of rebuttal on
the part of the publication? Would the rebuttal be protected from libel? If not, then why
accord the right of reply? Where is the win-some, lose-some aspect of such a bill. What
if the rebuttal is allegedly even more “libelous”? Would that occasion another right of
sur-rebuttal? And so on? Indeed, what if the original reply is libelous, can the publication
sue for libel? This is a bill that requires more thought, though not outright suppression
into the archives.
I have been asked to sponsor the bill. Sure if it will give me the chance to
substitute my own.
A bit of history, the committee on public information was created especially for
me by Speaker Joe de Venecia in the 12th Congress. I scorned it even though Mark
Jimenez tried to persuade me, saying that, with a little imagination, its jurisdiction could
encompass PLDT, SMART, Globe and other communications operations. The young
Gilbert Remulla took it. I wanted Ways and Means. I got nothing. Shet.