Defend press freedom from the Maria Ressas

In its Saturday, March 30, 2019 issue, The P h i l i p p i n e S TA R , t h e c o u n t r y ' s n u m b e r o n e newspaper, carried the arrest of Maria Ressa, CEO of online news service Rappler, deep inside its pages. On page 11 to be exact. The arrest was described, in the same story, by Vice President Leni Robredo and some Otso Deretso senatorial candidates, as an assault on press freedom.

I will not go so far as to call Robredo and the company she keeps as a bunch of clueless clowns. But they sure are being funny without knowing it. If the arrest of Ressa was an attempt to silence critics of the Duterte government and, therefore, an assault on press freedom, one would have expected The Philippine STAR to scream of the incident from the front page.

But page 11? In the country's number one newspaper? Rather than taking up the cudgels for a fellow member of the press, the treatment The Philippine STAR gave the story of Ressa's arrest was instead a stinging repudiation of everything Ressa has claimed to stand for in the name of the press. It was an indictment against her credibility.

My reading of The Philippine STAR's decision to send the Ressa arrest story all the way down to page 11 is that the only reason it carried it at all was that it happened. Neither substance nor relevance was a cause for its printing but its mere occurrence.

Against the posturings of Robredo and her friends on press freedom, I would take the position of The Philippine STAR on the matter all the time. As the leading national newspaper, it should know whereof it stands. And only those who thrive in press freedom and stand in the forefront of its defense can speak credibly about it, not politicians.

I do agree with Robredo on one thing, that we must defend press freedom. But let us do it by defending press freedom against those who would misappropriate it, who would invoke it as a defense when their own accountability is questioned in connection with misdeeds they may have committed.

Press freedom is not a convenient shield for the personal responsibilities of journalists. Maria Ressa is accused of violating the Anti-Dummy Law in connection with the business operations of Rappler. Press freedom has nothing to do with it. It is a specific charge that she must face.

But the best way to sum up the hypocritical position and fallacious defense mounted by Otso Deretso in Ressa's name is to bring to the fore the call of Gary Alejano for Filipinos to defend one of the remaining bastions of democracy. Wow, and to think he was a military mutineer who tried to bring down a duly-constituted government, at great risk to many innocent lives.

‘Press freedom is not a convenient shield for the personal responsibilities of

journalists.’