License to kill

INTRODUCED IN the House of Representatives by Congressmen Angelo B. Palmones of AGHAM Party list and Lord Allan Jay Velasco of the lone district of Marinduque, House Bill 6391 declares in its Section 1 that Title 13, Crimes Against Honor—libel, of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) , RA 3815 Book 2, from Article 353 to Article 364,  “shall be amended as to declare that libel is no longer considered a crime.”

The bill’s explanatory note, at four single-space pages far longer than the body of the bill itself, recalls the definition of libel in Article 353 of the RPC, and the penalty for it as specified in Article  355, which is imprisonment, a fine, or both, in addition to civil action.  The RPC, notes the bill further,  also imposes the penalty of imprisonment, and a fine on any reporter, editor or any other decision maker in a newspaper or magazine, who publishes information on the private life of another person even if the publication is made in connection with any judicial or administrative proceeding.

The bill then goes on to quote Article X1X of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which among others, declares that “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference,” and that the right to free expression includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds through any means.

The bill also quotes the 26 October 2011 declaration of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in relation to the RPC provisions on libel, declaring them “incompatible with Article XIX of the ICCPR,”  that “the sanction of imprisonment for libel fails to meet the standards of necessity and reasonableness,” and that, therefore, the Philippine libel law being “inconsistent with freedom of expression,” the Philippines should consider the decriminalization of libel.

From that explanatory note, the bill then declares itself to be expressly for the decriminalization of libel, describing itself as “An Act to Decriminalize Libel and For Other Purposes.”

So far so good—but, as it turns out, only as far as the title and Section 1 are concerned.

Section two of the proposed bill requires the organization of and registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission of “professional organizations” which shall prescribe ethical standards as well as “rules and regulations” in the practice of the communication and media professions.

Section 3 mandates membership in such a registered professional organization, and declares that “no mass media practitioner can practice his or her profession unless he/she is a member of a registered professional organization.”

The bill does not use the word, but what it is proposing is a version of licensing by government. While it is membership in a “professional organization” that will qualify anyone for media practice, the professional organization itself will have to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, thus explicitly endowing it with the power to decide which “professional organization” to recognize and which to deny registration by expressly linking registration and membership to media and press practice.  Section 4 orders the Department of Justice to issue within 90 days the Act’s implementing rules and regulations from the date of approval of the Act, thus further emphasizing government involvement in the system the bill would put in place. What the bill is proposing is a form of government regulation, albeit an indirect one.

Indirect or not, government regulation is still government regulation, which, in the experience of the Philippines and other countries, won’t strengthen the exercise of free expression, and on the contrary could kill it by requiring not only the registration of the organizations of which  media practitioners would have to be members in order to practice, but also the compulsory membership of every potential and actual practitioner.  Both requirements would substitute external regulation for self-regulation.

A number of organizations that encourage media practitioners to observe the ethical standards of journalism and other media and communication professions, including public relations and advertising, already exist and are registered with the SEC.  Among them are the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP), both of which encourage compliance with the standards of ethical and professional practice, and have developed their respective mechanisms for the implementation of those standards.

Membership in both PPI and KBP is voluntary.  Voluntary membership in such organizations, currently on an institutional basis,  is in keeping with the self-regulatory regime implicitly sanctioned by Article III Section 4 of the Constitution, which prohibits the passage of any law abridging press freedom, free expression and freedom of assembly.

The decriminalization of libel has been a long time coming, the Philippine libel law being all of 82 years old. But it should not be conditioned on putting in place a licensing system, no matter what the name.