Philippine press advocates - and the country's media itself - are up in arms over a lower court's dismissal of a class suit brought by journalists against the police in November 2007.
On the evening of 29 November 2007, Filipino journalists were rounded up, arrested, and imputed with having obstructed justice, after they refused to abandon the scene of an unfolding emergency in Manila's financial district: an ultimately failed rebellion led by a disgruntled senator and former military officer.
Outraged by their treatment - the journalists were handcuffed and hauled off on military buses for interrogation in police offices -the Filipino media practitioners filed a class suit against the police for unlawful arrest, while warning that the police conduct (eventually rationalized and backed up by government memoranda) would have a chilling effect on press freedom in the country. Human rights lawyer Harry Roque noted that the police after the crisis in November "treated the journalists as suspects in a crime, taking them into custody but without informing them what offense or crime they have committed and without providing them with a counsel of their own choice."
Eventually, he added, "the Secretary of Justice and other members of the President's cabinet, approved of the abusive, arbitrary and repressive manner in which policemen treated the journalists who were covering the Manila Peninsula standoff and threatened to unleash the same treatment against journalists in future news events of similar nature."
Indeed, on 11 January 2008, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez issued an advisory - delivered in all capital letters addressed to the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of media networks and press organizations. The advisory warned the journalists and media companies "may incur criminal liabilities...if (they) disobey lawful orders from duly authorized government officers and personnel during emergencies..."
Believing that leaving the police and government stance unchallenged would threaten press freedom, the Filipino journalists filed a class suit challenging the same. This week, Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Reynaldo Laigo is being reported to have dismissed on 20 June 2008 the same suit.
The Philippine press is decrying the decision on two fronts. First, they are saying that the very nature of the decision's disclosure (or nondisclosure) is suspect. The decision, media reports say, was announced not by the court itself but by the chief of the metropolitan police, Gen. Gerry Barias, one of the defendants in the class suit. Journalist, columnist, and blogger Ellen Tordesillas, one of the signatories in the class suit, said over the weekend that neither the plaintiffs nor their lawyers were yet furnished with copies of the decision, a full week after, according to General Barias, it had been promulgated. One of Manila's leading business papers, BusinessWorld thus called the case dismissal "a coup against press freedom."
More important, Filipino journalists say the decision would have a chilling effect on the work of journalists. The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country's biggest and most influential newspaper, said the dismissal of the journalists' complaint would ultimately criminalize important breaking news. "The effect of his decision, which must immediately be appealed, is to make it a crime to cover the news--merely on the police's say-so," a 30 June 2008 editorial in the newspaper said.
Lawyer Roque says the controversial decision echoes the executive's approval of "the abusive, arbitrary and repressive manner in which policemen treated the journalists who were covering the [November 29] standoff." He warned that this development "threatens to unleash the same treatment against journalists in future news events of similar nature."
