EDITORIAL - Libel is not censorship

It is wrong to keep on harping about martial law and what it did to democracy while in the same breath misrepresent democracy now that it is back and well. If we truly love democracy so much, let us not kill it again with our own abuse.

Democracy is not about unbridled freedoms. It is the ability to exercise such freedoms with responsible restraint. Indeed, it is not freedom that best exemplifies democracy but the ability to keep truth alive.

And nothing best underscores this fact than in the way so-called freedom-fighters are waging their war against the new Cybercrimes Prevention Act that President Aquino very recently signed into law, particularly its provision on libel.

These pseudo freedom-fighters have maliciously misrepresented libel as censorship, or the clamping down of free expression. Neither the new law nor existing laws on libel say such thing. Libel is not censorship, and those who say it is are liars.

There is no democracy if only one side can get to enjoy the protection of laws or get to exercise freedoms. Democracy is for everybody. If a person has the right to say anything, the other person cannot be left defenseless against what is said against him.

That defense constitutes his own undeniable right and can come in many forms, including libel. In fact the protection from libel forms the best argument for democracy in action. Lose the equal protection of law in democracy and we slide to anarchy.

Nobody said it better recently than Senator Vicente Sotto III in a forum organized by The Freeman and corporate partner Megaworld during the 18th Cebu Press Freedom Week celebration: “If mainstream media are governed by laws such as libel, why can’t those on the Internet.”

Sotto’s argument is that if professional mediamen, who spend years learning the craft and whose work go through a number of editing and other safeguards, are answerable to libel, so should every Tom, Dick and Harry whose only qualification is having access to the Internet.

It is not a question of whether libel is decriminalized or not. The issue is making those who use the Internet responsible and accountable for their actions, just like the rest of the citizens in this country. There should be no sacred cows upon whom the law cannot apply.