At long last, a verdict on a protracted and wearisome case

WHAT is our immediate reaction to the reading of the court decision on the cyberlibel suit against Maria Ressa, chief executive officer of Rappler, the online news website? It is not, alas, to exclaim or applaud that justice has finally been served. It is rather to express relief that this long- running, wearisome, tortuous and often mispresented court case is finally over, and we can at last turn public attention to other matters.

We say this because this libel case has demanded more attention and pretended to be of more importance than an ordinary libel could justifiably deserve.

It has been presented to the nation and the world in innumerable ways in order to serve various purposes, particularly propaganda.

Instead of focusing attention on the issues and facts of the complaint, the public and the media are diverted to consider extraneous matters and issues.

The biggest diversionary maneuver is to portray the suit as an emblematic case of freedom of the press under siege by a government bent on silencing its critics in the media.

Ms. Maria Ressa, a Filipino American who carries a United States passport and has never voted in the Philippines, is presented as an exemplary journalist, who is internationally recognized.

The second diversionary maneuver is to portray the libel complaint as an action by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte to silence a high- profile critic and media watchdog.

Foreign media and international media organizations have assiduously portrayed Ressa as a media heroine and victim of oppression. Space and time are accorded to the libel case and Ms. Ressa’s ordeal.

All these are calculated to bury, under a ton of publicity, the fundamental facts of the libel complaint.

These are the facts:

Yesterday’s verdict centered on businessman Wilfredo Keng’s 2017 complaint over a Rappler story in 2012 about his alleged ties to a then- justice in the nation’s top court, the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Keng assailed an article that Rappler first published in May 2012, or four months before the cybercrime law was passed, claiming that Rappler had failed to get his side of the story.

Ressa did not write the article and government investigators initially dismissed the businessman’s allegation. But state prosecutors later filed charges against Ressa and Reynaldo Santos, the former Rappler journalist who wrote the story, under the cybercrime statute.

The court, in it's decision, sentenced Ressa and Santos to the indeterminate penalty of imprisonment ranging from six months and one day of prision correccional as minimum to six years of prision correccional as maximum.

Ressa and Santos were allowed to file for post- conviction bail , and they would do so, Rappler reported.

Is this a press- freedom case?

The court ruled that Rappler Inc. had no liability in the case, as the prosecution also did not adduce evidence against the company.

“[ T] he court is mandated to decide solely on the basis of the evidence presented by the parties and to apply the law. No more, no less,” the judge said.

“The courts are tasked to strike a balance between the enforcement of one’s right to speak his mind and the protection of another’s right against defamation of his honor and reputation without regard to the stature of the personalities involved,” the ruling read.

The court also said if ordinary users of the internet could be held accountable for defamatory posts, so too were journalists. But it stressed: “There is no curtailment of the right to freedom of speech and of the press.”

“The right to free speech and freedom of the press cannot and should not be used as a shield against accountability,” it added. Well said.

The warning of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism of a “chilling effect” on free expression by the cyberlibel law sounds too much.

This is a fitting ending to this case. But then will come the appeals to a higher court, which means we must hear and bear more of this protracted case.