THE Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) commends the Supreme Court decision finding as not libelous the June 29, 2007 column of Leo Lastimosa in The Freeman.
Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia charged that the newspaper article libeled her, with the ABS-CBN broadcaster using a supposed fish vendor named “Doling” as the object of slander. Lastimosa called “Doling” “a thief, corrupt, arrogant,” in a clutch of defamatory words. The governor alleged that “Doling” was Gwendolyn. The SC ruling said the victim of defamation was not named or otherwise identified, thus acquittingthe journalist.
CCPC has always advocated for public officials to respond in kind to media criticism: with the printed or broadcast word. The aggrieved person has the right of reply. More than that, in the case of high officials such as the governor or mayor, there’s no compelling need to sue because each has the equivalent of a “bully pulpit” and an extensive media apparatus to presentone’s side or refute any accusation.
The final decision — promulgated December 5, 2022 but posted in the internet only this week — took a total of almost 16 years to reach. In 2013, Cebu Regional Trial Court Branch 14 convicted Lastimosa. In 2016 Court of Appeals Nineteenth Division affirmed the conviction, modifying only the damages. In 2022, acting on Lastimosa’s petition for review, the SC reversed the lower courts’ ruling. Or a total of almost 16 years since the year the newspaper column was published and Governor Garcia sued.
The long wait for the high court’s decision produced something new, at least in jurisprudence on libel cases involving Cebu journalists. The court questioned and struck down the claim of the witness, the “third person,” presented to prove that “Doling” was indeed Gwen.
The SC, unlike the RTC and the C.A., didn’t just accept the “say-so” of the witness who identified the victim. “It is material,” the ruling said — for the governor to win her claim and Lastimosa to get convicted — “to establish how such third person was able” to identify “Doling” as Gwen.
Luis V. Teodoro, former two-term dean of U.P. Diliman College of Mass Communication and newspaper columnist, was regarded by his colleagues as a press freedom stalwart. He taught journalism and helped produce journalists skilled in their craft and faithful to its values. He was both educator and practitioner. Seventeen years ago, working with Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, Teodoro and Melinda Quintos-de Jesus, CMFR’s executive director helped three Cebu editors found the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC).
Pegeen Maisie Sararaña , a Cebu Normal University graduate, was described by her paper as a “budding journo” who reported mostly crime stories for Cebu Daily News and Inquirer.net. CDN said she was in Negros Oriental “as part of her assignment to document the Pamplona massacre.” Pegeen told a friend she couldn’t leave journalism “for now because somehow ka feel sad ko nga I belong here.”
Dean Teodoro, 81, died of heart attack Sunday midnight, March 12. News reporter Sararaña, 24, died on a motorcycle Monday night, March 13. She died after an Elf truck crashed into the motorcycle she and her boyfriend rode on, while they were waiting at a street corner in San Jose, Negros Oriental.
Circumstances of their death differed hugely, although the grief of those who knew and loved Luis Teodoro and Pegeen Sararaña cannot differ much.
Cebu just lost a multi-media practitioner whose work in community media had spanned more than three decades. Elias O. Baquero died of cardiac arrest Saturday, January 14. He would’ve turned 64 this July 10.
Elias O. Baquero (EOB) was one of a few Cebu journalists whose work straddled multiple platforms: radio (Aksyon Radyo Cebu DYRC), television (CCTN 47 TV), print (SunStar, Business Week), and in the last few years, digital media.
Baquero helped the growth of Cebu Federation of Beat Journalists (CFBJ), one of the organizations under the umbrella of Cebu NewsWorkers Foundation (Cenewof). He served for a number of terms as president of CFBJ and as chairman of Cebu NewsCoop, steering early growth and stability of the two media-allied organizations.
As program coordinator at 888 News Forum, he had pushed public conversation on major issues. That forum also led to the birth of Cebu Business Week, which Baquero founded and served as its finance and marketing head.
Even as it grieves over the passing of Mayor Ely – he actually served as OIC mayor of his hometown Balilihan, Bohol in post-Edsa era and his friends loved to call him “Mayor” – the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) recognizes and applauds his invaluable contribution and devoted service to community media.
PACHICO A. SEARES, Executive Director
Elias Baquero – broadcaster, reporter, newsman, friend. Photo: from Elias Baquero’s personal Facebook account.
The Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) has condemned and deplored the proliferation of false and deceptive stories in media platforms. On proposals in Congress, however, which seek to criminalize misinformation and disinformation, CCPC has repeatedly called for a clear and specific definition of “fake news.”
CCPC believes the definition of Senate Bill #1296 does not shield journalists from prosecution for mistakes in news gathering or editing. Fake news is defined in the bill as “misinformation or disinformation of stories, facts and news which is presented as a fact, the veracity of which cannot be confirmed, with the purpose of distorting the truth and misleading its audience.”
A Department of Justice lawyer said it is “very difficult to investigate and prosecute.” CCPC fears for something else: The proposed bill might become just another instrument to hit back at journalists and discourage active reporting and commentary.
CCPC DEFINITION. The proposed Senate definition does not exclude honest journalistic mistake or lapse in judgment in the field or in the newsroom — or, for many “citizen journalists,” lack of journalistic training. The definition is so broad that it allows a prosecutor to raise a complaint to court even on shaky ground, so abundant in faith that it gives police and prosecutors unqualified discretion to judge what is fake news.
On March 6, 2018, CCPC defined “fake news” thus: “Fake news is fabricated content presented as factual information in the guise of news. Mistakes in reporting and editing, made in good faith in the rush of deadline are not fake news but such errors violate journalism standards and shall be avoided or promptly corrected.”
(CCPC offers definition of ‘fake news,’ SunStar, March 6, 2018; Why CCPC has defined ‘fake news,’ CJJ Magazine, June 26, 2018)
A media colleague reportedly suggested that Congress refrain from using the phrase “fake news.” An oxymoron: if it’s news, it’s not fake; if it’s fake, it’s not news. The problem is that “fake news” as a term is already widely used, with legitimate media work as among its victims.
Dictionary.com, Merriam Webster and other English dictionaries such as Cambridge, Collin, Mcmillan, and Oxford, and think groups like the Center for Information Technology and Society. It was word of the year in 2017.
What media can help is to have it defined clearly and specifically so that the public will be reminded of what it is not. The reason is more compelling in a penal law that could be used to intimidate and harass media workers. []
Cebu City Ordinance #2657, also called Freedom of Information Act of 2019, was signed into law last July 28, 2022 by Mayor Michael Rama. Today, 67 days after the signing, the ordinance is still inoperative.
The ordinance is not yet complete, legislatively and administratively. The city’s Legal Office still has to list the exceptions to the ordinance and submit to the City Council for approval. And each department head and office at City Hall still has to designate its FOI officer. All the said officials are needed to complete the process of legislation and mechanism of enforcement. And all, except the Sanggunian members, work under the mayor.
City Councilor Francis Esparis, without media’s prodding, called out in a privileged speech last Sept. 21, 2022 – significantly, on Cebu Press Freedom day and during the Press Freedom Week celebration — for the city’s heads of office to appoint their respective FOI officers. Esparis was the lone Cebu City official who publicly worried about the ordinance being incomplete.
Mayor Rama would finish his first 100 days in office October 3. The mayor’s accomplishments of the period may well include the FOI ordinance. He didn’t build a road or bridge by that ordinance, it could help make the travel of news and information from government to citizens easier and faster. Applause. Even though Mayor Rama has yet to complete work on the FOI ordinance, there are still other sets of 100 days ahead. []
