Judging Willie

By Luis V. Teodoro (“Vantage Point”, BusinessWorld, April 15-16, 2011)

Former University of the Philippines law dean Raul Pangalangan says that the public call for an advertisers’ boycott of the TV5 program Willing Willie — and presumably some of the program’s sponsors’ withdrawing their ads — is “fraught with danger” for free expression. I submit that it is indeed fraught with danger, though not for free expression, but for its abuse.

Dean Pangalangan recalls that an advertisers’ boycott has been used before, for example in 1999, to intimidate the press. Reacting to press criticism, then President Joseph Estrada persuaded his friends in the movie-making and -importing business not to advertise in, and to withdraw their ads from, the Philippine Daily Inquirer. More recently, when inducting the new officers of the AdBoard, Benigno Aquino III called on advertisers not to support media organizations (in both print and broadcast) guilty of “sensationalism” and false reporting.

Dean Pangalangan describes the Aquino call as “benign” compared to Estrada’s call. And yet both did have the power of the presidency behind them, and Aquino’s call was noteworthy for its assumption that advertisers can on their own determine whether a media organization is behaving “irresponsibly” or “sensationalizing” its reports.

Since Mr. Aquino had previously criticized the media for their supposed emphasis on reporting the bad news and focusing on his love life, it’s probably safe to assume that what Mr. Aquino meant by “sensationalism” is the media’s reporting whom he’s dating, perhaps their reports on the decline of his trust ratings, or on the latest SWS survey which found that more Filipinos are hungry today than last year. Is it therefore on those bases — and whatever else they can think of — that advertisers can decide which media organizations to avoid putting ads in? That makes the Aquino call nearly as dangerous to free expression today as Estrada’s was in 1999.

In any case, Dean Pangalangan was saying that the call for an advertising boycott of Willie Revillame’s Willing Willie is in the same category of danger to free expression as the Estrada and Aquino calls. This view has led to some confusion, with a number of those applauding the decision by several of Revillame’s sponsors to withdraw their support wondering if they’re being a party to the suppression of free expression.

Read the rest of his BusinessWorld column here.

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