PAPI members said the recent push to decriminalize libel in Congress is a "long-felt need to liberate full expression from restraints and threats."
Decriminalizing libel will be a big boost for press freedom in the Philippines, said a statement of the Publishers' Association of the Philippines (PAPI) on Sunday.
PAPI, chaired by Juan Dayang, hailed the recent move of the Makabayan bloc in Congress to push for the decriminalization of libel in the 19th Congress.
Dayang, PAPI Chairman Emeritus and chair of the recently-held Local Press Assembly 2022 which sought the decriminalization of libel, hailed the measure as "a meaningfulpursuit of the [sic] Press freedom."
Dayang said the criminal provision, under the Revised Penal Code, is no longer relevantin the exercise of fuller Press Freedom.
Meanwhile, veteran broadcaster Rey Langit, chairman of the Boracay Global Press Corps, Inc. (BGPCI) and Community Newspaper Publisher Joseph Punay, vice-president of the Provincial Press Clubs of the Philippines. Inc. (FPPCPI) also lauded the measure as a "long-felt need to liberate full expression from restraints and threats."
Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Partylist Representative France Castro, who refiled the bill at the House of Representatives Saturday (July 16), said the current laws on libel “has resulted in the prevalence of onion skins amongst government officials and public figures.”
Castro added that the criminalization of libel has "caused the gagging of media practitioners, the concealment of the truth from public knowledge, prior restraint and chilling effect, and the resulting incapacitation of the people from gaining a meaningful understanding of the various public issues that are of paramount concern."
United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan has also called on the administration of Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to put an end to the use of libel laws against journalists.
"The criminalization of journalists for libel impedes public interest reporting and is incompatible with the right to freedom of expression," Khan said last July 12.
Tags: #PAPI, #publishing, #journalism, #pressfreedom, #libel