Warning to Media

FOI and ROR bills in Congress

A total of 24 bills on FOI and four on the Right of Reply (ROR), which media advocacy and journalists’ groups oppose, are pending in both houses of Congress. The Senate and the House of Representatives (HOR) each have 12 FOI bills  pending in Congress. A bill on the ROR has been filed before the Senate; three ROR bills are in the Lower House.

FOI bills will sanction government officials and agencies which refuse information not among those that are restricted requested by the public.

ROR bills, on the other hand, would compel editors, publishers, and/or  broadcast station managers to publish or broadcast the replies of  persons or  organizations to  “derogatory” articles—whether opinion or news items—about them.

These bills, together with a number of other bills on the rights of the media such as a proposed Magna Carta for Journalists, are some of the bills the media have to monitor to make sure that what’s eventually passed by Congress will enhance and protect press freedom rather than undermine it.

Malaluan said that while most senators have agreed to support  an FOI bill, the House of Representatives has been lukewarm to the idea.

He mentioned the statements of 1st District Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles and Camiguin Rep. Pedro Romualdo that an FOI bill could be used by the media to harass the government, and that any FOI bill should not be used to “dig up” information on past administrations. In fact the  FOI bill filed by Rep. Nograles  has a retroactivity clause, which declares that the law cannot be used to access information on administrations prior to its  enactment.

Rep. Karlo Nograles is the son of Prospero Nograles, House Speaker in the 14th Congress when the FOI bill failed to pass into law. (See related article, “14th Congress kills FOI bill“)

The pending ROR bills are equally disturbing. Some of  lawmakers, among them Senator Manuel Villar, and Reps. Nograles and Romualdo, who have filed their versions of the FOI bill, have also filed ROR bills.

“The lesson we should keep in mind as far as the ROR bill is concerned is that we really have to monitor and attend Congressional hearings. During the last Congress an ROR bill passed the Senate without even Senate reporters’ noticing,” said Rowena Paraan, secretary-general of NUJP.

Paraan also said  the media should dissociate the FOI from the ROR bills, given the tendency of some lawmakers to make Congressional approval of one dependent on the passage of the other.

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