THE HOUSE leadership should seriously reconsider its new rules for media coverage. Some of its provisions are tantamount to prior restraint and control over the news.
The new media House rules can be used as a pretext to pressure media not to cover, publish or air criticisms or opposition to the leadership and the majority as it may be interpreted as besmirching the House or its members. For example, incidents like what happened to Negros Occidental’s Cong. Albee Benitez when he fell off a bridge a few days ago; this may be interpreted as besmirching the House and its members if reported to by accredited House media members.
Based on the new House media rules journalists who “besmirch the reputation of the House of Representatives, its officials or members” may lose their credentials to cover the chamber. Other grounds for revocation of media credentials are the following:
* if applicant/bearer is found to have made false claims
* if applicant/bearer is involved in activities that run counter to or violate the policies of the House
* if bearer abuses the privileges and entitlements extended to House-accredited media
* if bearer is found guilty of gross misconduct
* if the bearer commits any other similar acts or misdeeds
Also based on the new rules, there will be no stand-up or live reporting and ambush interviews of House members, resource persons, invited guests, or any other personage in the corridors or hallways of the House buildings.
What can we say? These rules can really hinder freedom of the press as well as the right to self-expression. They come in the heels of reports that members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines were prevented from covering Labor secretary Silvestre Bello III in Singapore.
Is there an intensifying trend in the Duterte administration to control, even muzzle, the media, especially now that its approval ratings are going down?
The House leadership should reconsider and strike off provisions of the new rules that would stifle not only the media but members of the House of Representatives themselves and the constituents that they represent to voice out their position and sentiments.
