House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano sponsored a bill that would provide ABS-CBN a 5-month provisional franchise and this was approved by the House Committee on the Whole. But this is hardly the solution to the problem.
This is hardly Congress doing their job as pending legislations for ABS-CBN’s franchise—11 to date—has been sitting in the dust for three years or since Duterte came to the presidency cursing and rambling against the network. No thanks or commendations are in order for them as they are still not doing what they should have done long ago.
Cayetano said he wanted time and didn’t want to “sweep under the rug” the allegations on ABS-CBN’s violations. He had all the time to do that before the nation was greeted by a black screen. They had to cause a network to go off the air, only due to Duterte and his minions’ sheer negligence, incompetence or vindictiveness.
This provisional franchise is merely Cayetano saving face after the blame game he played with Solicitor General Jose Calida and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). All three of them conveniently served as Duterte’s scapegoats. It is an attempt also to turn around their negative public image on the issue.
It is also an attempt to paint them the hero when ABS-CBN goes back on air and hopefully bury the issue and the criticism. But even this provisional franchise has a lot of processes to go through – the same if they would tackle the 25-year franchise extension itself—and would take time. It also needed to go through the Senate and for Duterte’s signature to approve a stunted franchise.
The provisional five-month franchise is a short leash Congress is putting around ABS-CBN. It is not implausible to see this as a thinly veiled threat for the network to toe the line or another black screen episode is probable by end of October, for all the reasons they could muster.
Cayetano said that ABS-CBN being able to continue to publish or report their stories online makes this not an issue of press freedom.
This statement is glossing over the fact that the medium of television and radio, for which ABS-CBN applied and maintained a franchise over 50 years, has the highest penetration in the country, especially in many areas still not reached by the internet. That TV, as a mass medium, remains as the main source of news of the Filipino people, reaching millions and millions at the same time. And it is also for these qualities that these media channels become a potent tool, a threat to a tyrant averse to criticism or to even just the facts or the truth, especially when he has done a lot wrong.
The statement that this is not an issue of press freedom further tramples on press freedom as it obfuscates and chips away at this hard-won liberty. Press freedom is a right, a civil liberty that is not to be pitted and then squashed in preference of some other rule or law. The business side of the franchise or legal issues has been used to take away a network’s main channel of communication when it could have been given a chance to rectify any wrongs as allowable (and even for this particular instance it has been established the franchise had no violations). Instead, they were put out.
In supposedly the “freest press in Asia,” the media in the country has always been pushing towards self-regulation, not more government regulation, and definitely not a shutdown. That we can publish as we adhere and aim for the highest standards of journalism is what press freedom is about. But press freedom is not when the government chooses only who can publish where, beyond any reason. It is not when the people lose their right to choose where they want to get their information because government has made the choice for them.
The scariest thing about this is finding out that the politicians and government officials who follow Cayetano’s reasoning do not understand press freedom. Because it would mean that, basking in their power and wealth for however long, they would also be hard-pressed to truly understand and practice democracy. In many instances during this lockdown, many government officials have demonstrated their privileges and the double standards demanded by them and accorded to them. And how the law, how harsh it may be, does not apply when they are at fault.
They would then surely be in a shock when the people take their power and dump them in their rightful place in the annals of history.
#NoToABSCBNShutdown
#DefendPressFreedom
