YESTERDAY broadcast journalist Atom Araullo filed a complaint for damages against show hosts Lorraine Badoy and Jeffrey Celiz of Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) for the alleged malicious publication of defamatory statements against him.
Assisted by lawyers from the Movement Against Disinformation (MAD), Araullo initiated the complaint to exact accountability from the SMNI hosts “to highlight how red-tagging foments hate, abuse, and violence against journalists and truth-tellers.”
MAD says that the filing of the case is part of a “broader push-back against red-tagging and the spread of disinformation suppresses democratic discourse and the rule of law.”
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Badoy and Celiz are hosts of SMNI show Laban Kasama ng Bayan.
Badoy was appointed communications undersecretary under the regime of former President Rodrigo Duterte. She also used to be the spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), which was created in 2018 as part of a final push to end the communist insurgency.
The NTF-ELCAC has also formally opposed the decriminalization of libel, which it said “will result in an unbridled exercise of freedom of expression that will no longer allow for any form of legal restraint.”
Its opposition was submitted against a pending bill at the House of Representatives that seeks to repeal libel provisions in the Revised Penal Code.
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Araullo has clarified that what he filed was a civil action for damages, not a criminal complaint for libel. The reason is that criminal libel is said to be anathema to free expression.
According to Araullo, red-tagging has brought him distress. It has invited hate speech and death threats. A civil action based on wrongdoing against a fellow human being may indeed be filed.
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The NTF-ELCAC position that removing criminal libel from the statute books because it “will no longer allow for any form of legal restraint” is wrong because, as exemplified by Araullo’s recent move, an independent or separate civil action for libel is allowed by our rules.
Redress for the person defamed may still be prayed for in a civil case. Further clogging the criminal dockets is not necessary.
The olden reason for the inclusion of libel in criminal law is that a person’s reputation is as valuable as life itself. Injuring a man’s name is likened to injuring his body.
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In a recent opinion, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Marvic MVF Leonen agreed that a civil action for damages gives enough protection against one who defames another without sacrificing constitutionally protected expression.
Justice Leonen observed that criminal libel is being used not to prosecute wrongdoing but to deter speech. Removing libel from our penal code does not mean that unwarranted attacks against the name of a person will not be legally addressed.
Indeed, as done by Araullo, the legal relief is civil in nature under the chapter on human relations in the Civil Code.
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Sadly, the Philippines continues to be part of the greater community of nations that continues to criminalize defamation.
Decriminalizing libel as a reaction to SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Pubic Participation) is facing a great challenge – fear of the internet. Our own Congress passed cyber-libel as a rider to the cybercrime prevention law and even increased the penalty listed in the penal code./PN
