Media group capitalizes on warrant against journo to renew calls vs libel law

By Shiela Mae Butlig and Paola Gaabucayan

THE Cagayan de Oro Press Club (COPC) yesterday capitalized on what it called as a “ridiculous” case against a journalist here to renew calls for the decriminalization of libel in the country.

This came after a regional court issued an arrest warrant against The Gold Star Daily editor-in-chief Herbie Gomez who was named as one of the respondents in a libel case filed last year.

The case was filed in connection with a September 2012 notice to the public on an advertising space in this paper that was placed by a group claiming to have the controlling shares in the firm called PJH Lending Corp..

The notice, a response to another group that placed a similar public announcement earlier, denied that the company ever engaged the services of three lawyers to represent the firm in civil cases pending in a regional court in Cebu City.

COPC president Jerry Orcullo cried foul over Gomez’s inclusion in the criminal case, saying the editor had no hand in the publications.

The publishing firm Mindanao Gold Star Daily Corp. quickly bailed Gomez out, preventing the journalist’s arrest. Orcullo and Gomez subsequently showed the police proof that the bailbond has already been posted in connection with Criminal Case no. 2013-708.

“The COPC is making a strong political statement against the archaic Philippine libel law and its fruit, the online libel provision in the Anti-Cybercrime Law,” said Orcullo in a prepared statement. “The COPC is highlighting this case and bringing to the public’s attention the plight of Gomez who was unnecessarily dragged into a criminal case of libel that he has nothing to do with.”

Orcullo said the Gomez case also highlights the lack of understanding if not, the glaring ignorance of some sectors about the role and specific responsibilities of journalists.

“Journalists have nothing to do with advertising materials and spaces. Advertising is not journalism. In this particular case, the public notices published were not part of Gomez’s responsibility. A journalist cannot answer for newspaper ads just as he does not edit these materials. That is not journalism,” he said.

Orcullo said the prosecutors need to give a clear explanation on why they did not see any merit in Gomez’s explanation in his counter-affidavit and why they proceeded to bring the case to court.

He said the action made a crime suspect out of the journalist “all because of a ridiculous case based on a ‘medieval’ law.”

“It is a bad law that always places arrest warrants over the head of journalists,” Orcullo said.

Orcullo called on Congress to work for the decriminalization of libel which, according to the COPC president, has been used time and again as “a tool to inconvenience, scare, intimidate, supress information and even harass journalists.”

He added: “Now, we are seeing how a journalist is being made to answer for advertisements that are not his handiwork. That is simply absurd!”

For his part, Gomez described the libel case against him preposterous, adding that freedom of expression or of the press were not even issues “because I never expressed, wrote or edited anything that concerns my accusers or the co-accused.”

“I don’t know any of the co-accused or any of those who sued me, and I completely have no concern or interest about their internal bickering… That they dragged an innocent journalist into their mess and caused the issuance of a warrant of arrest against me is truly deplorable. And now I ask: do we send journalists to jail in this country now over advertisements? That’s just crazy from whatever angle one looks at it. It’s time to decriminalize libel,” Gomez said.