Press Freedom and Government Secrecy

PRESS FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT SECRECY

– NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

"I fear the newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."

– TOM BROKAW

"The business of being a journalist, is death-defying."

– BENJAMIN DISRAELI

“The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy.”

Secrecy in government is illegal.

Government power is not absolute.

• No government can claim any legitimate right to keep secrets from the sovereign body politic and still maintain its claim to being democratic.

• A Constitutional government may not legally and legitimately violate its own Constitution for the avowed purpose of defending it.

Suspending the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus

Declaration of Martial Law

LAUREL

• President Jose P. Laurel of the wartime Second Republic placed the Philippines under martial law in 1944 through Proclamation No. 29, dated September 21.

MARCOS

• The country was under martial law again from 1972 to 1981 under the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos. Proclamation No. 1081 Martial law was declared to suppress increasing civil strife and the threat of communist takeover following a series of bombings and a government-staged assassination attempt on then Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in Manila.

ARROYO

• President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo placed Maguindanao province under a state of martial law. The Ampatuan family was implicated in a gruesome massacre that saw the murder of 57 persons, including women members of the rival Mangudadatu clan, human rights lawyers, and 31 media workers, in the worst incident of political violence in the nation's history.

• It has also been condemned world-wide as the worst loss of life of media professionals in one day in the history of journalism.

The Press, the Public and the Constitution

The Fight for the Right to Expression

BILL OF RIGHTS (Art. 3)

• Article III enumerates the fundamental rights of the Filipino people. The Bill of Rights sets the limits to the government's power which proves to be not absolute. Among the rights of the people are freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, and the press. An important feature here is the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus which have three available grounds such as invasion, insurrection and rebellion.

Section 4

• No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.

Section 7 (Provisions)

• The right of the people to information on matters of public concern shall be recognized. Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be provided by law.

• It should be noted that the said provision is practically used in the 1973 Marcos Constitution, differing only in the earlier exclusion of government research data.

UDHR (Art. 19)

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

• The right to information is an essential premise of a meaningful right to speech and expression. But this is not to say that the right to information is merely an adjunct of and therefore restricted in application by the exercise of the freedoms of speech and of the press. Far from it.

• The right to information goes hand-in-hand with the constitutional policies of full public disclosure and honesty in the public service. It is meant to enhance the widening role of the citizenry in governmental decision-making as well as in checking abuse in government.

The Government and its Secrets

Instances of Government Secrecy in the Country

Negotiations with Foreign Countries

• The Supreme Court stressed “that secrecy of negotiations with foreign countries is not violative of the Constitutional provisions of freedom of speech or of the press or of the freedom of access to information.”

Negotiations with Foreign Countries

• Negotiations with the US military bases conducted in 1988 were held while the Philippine government was yet to make public a definitive basic policy on these bases, and the shroud of secrecy was placed upon the demand of the US panel.

• The negotiations were carried out behind closed doors, despite the statement made by FA Secretary Raul Manglapus during the opening session that it was taking place “under a different political climate marked with greater openness to the public.”

Country’s External Indebtedness

• The talks that led to the formulation and finalization of the Philippine government’s Letter of Intent submitted to the IMF in 1989 were held behind closed doors, and even the members of the Congress, the policy-making body of the Republic, were not informed of the government’s negotiating positions and proposals.

The Search of the Stolen Wealth

• PCGG, the gov’t body tasked with recovering the wealth stolen by deposed Pres. Marcos and his cronies. Some persons were apparently offered certain immunities and reportedly certain commissions, on the condition that they testify against the other suspects and/or turn over part of the missing funds that they have control over. The people have been kept in the dark on these transactions.

Japan and Fort Bonifacio

• Neither have clear criteria and proper procedures been promulgated in the matter of bidding out the Filipino people-owned real property in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, Japan, or in the matter of issuing permits to a foreign treasure-hunting firm to dig for gold at the Fort Santiago national shrine.

The Media During the Martial Law

Oppressing the Press

• During the Martial Law era, journalists were among those who were viciously assailed by the authoritarian government.

• Upon Marcos’ proclamation that there was a “Leftist-Rightist conspiracy to overthrow the government,” he declared Martial Law which in turn paved the way for the arrest of journalists and the padlocking of the presses.

• National List of Target Personalities:– Rosalinda Galang (Manila Times)–Amando Doronia (Daily Mirror)– Bobby Ordonez (Philippine Herald)– Ernesto Granada (Manila Chronicle)–Manuel Almario (Philippine News Service)– Luis Beltran (Evening News)

– Rolanda Fadul (Taliba)– Juan Mercado (Press Foundation of Asia)– Luis Mauricio (Graphic magazine)– Ninotchka Rosca (Asia-Philippines Leader)– Napoleon Rama (Philippine Free Press)– Jose Mari Velez and Roger Arrienda

(Broadcasters)• With their arrests and detention at Camp Crame,

all media organizations were shut down.

• “In the morning of September 23, people awoke without a newspaper on their doorsteps and with only the hiss of empty air over their radios.”

• With the press paralyzed, people were left ignorant of the country’s real situation. The exorbitant cost of the Bataan Nuclear Plant was only known by the time of EDSA I.

• “The gross violations of human rights – the torture, the bombing of entire villages, the massacres, the summary executions, the rapes, the ham-letting of communities suspected of harboring guerillas – continued without the knowledge, even today, of millions of Filipinos.”

Press Freedom and Government Secrecy