AN ONLINE tug ‘o war on pending right of reply bills has been launched by the House of Representatives.
The online poll posits this question: “A right of reply provision must be incorporated in the proposed FOI (Freedom of Information) statute.”
Agree? Disagree? Join the poll!
The poll was posted on the House’s website a fortnight ago.
As of this morning, Sept. 17, the “No” votes (225 respondents or 80.65 percent) have overwhelmed the “Yes” votes (46 respondents or 16.49 percent) at a significant 4:1 ratio.
Eight other respondents said they were as yet undecided.
The online poll states that while the proposed Freedom of Information (FOI) bill seeks to uphold the citizens’ right to access public spending records and other documents vested with public interest, “several lawmakers” still insist that the FOI bill “must” include a “right of reply” provision.
The poll adds that the right of reply provision will require mainstream news organizations to “allot airtime or print media space to aggrieved parties or to those claiming to be unjustly placed in a bad light by news stories.”
Powered by SimPoll v.1.0, the poll is open to the public. Only one vote is allowed for every IP address, however. The poll features a dynamically generated form that updates the number of total votes and a detailed results page. It also checks for repeat votes.
But the House Committee on Public Information, which is hearing separate pending bills on FOI and right of reply, seems to be the last to know about the online poll.
Atty. Norman Pelinio, supervising political affairs officer for legal affairs of Rep. Jorge Almonte, chair of the House Committee on Public Information, said as much.
Neither Almonte nor the Committee has initiated the poll, Pelinio told PCIJ. The poll, he said, might have been launched just for the purpose of gauging the public’s sentiment.
According to Pelinio, he and the Committee chair learned about the poll only after PCIJ called to ask about it on Monday. The poll has been running for two weeks now.
“As it stands, the right of reply is a separate bill from the FOI. We treat them separately unlike in the previous Congresses. The FOI bill and the Right of Reply bill have separate technical working groups,” he said.
The poll results, he added, “will have no bearing the current deliberation of the committee.”
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) has reiterated that a right of reply provision in the FOI bill is no different from the separate bill since this will send the same chilling effect on news coverage, which will discourage critical reporting.
NUJP, along with news organizations and media groups, “have vigorously fought against the Right of Reply bill before and even more, against its inclusion in the FOI bill.”
“We maintain that media have always recognized the right of reply as a legitimate right of citizens. However, including this as a provision in the FOI bill will be tantamount to prior restraint. It will subsume the media outlets’ editorial prerogative to decide which stories to print, broadcast or upload,” NUJP said in a statement.
The NUJP added that “a right of reply provision in the FOI bill will weaken public discourse, which is the foundation of any democratic society — a kind of society that the Aquino administration has been repeatedly claiming to be.”
“We enjoin all advocates of freedom of expression to go online and vote ‘NO’ so that once and for all, our lawmakers will realize that we will not sit idly by and let them impinge upon our constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of the press and of expression,’ the NUJP said. – Cong Corrales
