THE HOUSE of Representatives’ Press and Public Affairs Bureau (PRABB) has released the tongue-twisting “institutional codified rules for media coverage,” which threatens to revoke the accreditation of journalists who “besmirch the reputation of the House of Representatives, its officials or members.”
News reports said the PRABB explained that the rules were prompted by “a need to give more teeth to the House’s efforts of ensuring a systematic and orderly media coverage that will be beneficial to both the House and the media, and ultimately to the citizenry.”
“Give more teeth” is a dead giveaway.
It bears remembering that there are those members in the lower house that do sterling jobs of besmirching themselves through their own words and deeds. Media simply report these faithfully.
This is about controlling the narrative. This is prior restraint, plain and simple. This, lest they forget, is unconstitutional: Article III, 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.
Article III, Section 7: 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 is not surprising, though, that a chamber whose members have time and again proven themselves to be exemplary lapdogs of whoever is in power should seek to imitate, if not outdo, their principal.
We urge our colleagues covering the House and the independent Philippine media to unite in opposing this brazen attempt to trample free expression and information. We owe it not just to ourselves but, most of all, the people whose right to know we serve.
(Statement of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines on the House of Representatives’ new rules for media coverage a prior restraint, signed by chair Atty. Jo Clemente, April 27, 2018)
