Is the Philippine press too free to be responsible? Is the Philippine press too irresponsible it does not deserve its freedom at all?

These questions are at the core of the debate that has over the last two months animated most of the national and the media in our country. The paradigm has been presented to us by Joseph Estrada: freedom versus responsibility.

He insists that freedom requires that the press must be good and responsible. Instead of information, he complains that that the press has been spreading disinformation. Instead of news, he rues that the press has been foisting lies.

In a recent encounter with journalists in Mexico, Pampanga, the President even coaxed public officials and his friends to fight back, when under attack from what he calls an irresponsible press. He said, “Huwag tayong matakot. This is a free country. Eh, bakit tayo matatakot kung totoo naman ang sinasabi natin? Nakahanda akong lumaban.”

Sounding like a rabble-rouser, he continued: “Binabatikos nila ako ng wala namang basehan at iniinsulto ako ng personal, pati pamilya ko, pati anak ko sinabi nila swindler. We allow media to criticize us pero yung totoo naman sana. Hindi ‘yung imbento, puro insulto, puro paninira. Sa aking pananaw sobra na ang ginagawa nila. So we are a free country, the President has the right to also get mad and air his complaints.”

The President said that all the bad publicity about him has hurt the Philippines’ image.

“Hindi ko naman pino-protektahan ang sarili ko kung hindi this is doing a lot of damage to the country because sa internet pini-pick up ng mga foreign press. Imbita tayo ng imbita, nagpapakahirap tayo to attract foreign investors pero itong isang pahayagang ito (Inquirer) sisiraan tayo dahil gusto nilang kumita. It’s all money. Gusto lang nilang kumita ng pera. Kahit sino’ng masira gagawin nila.”

Venting his ire on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the President said that on the rock of lies, the Inquirer has built its house, and raked in millions. “Ang diyaryong ‘yan lahat ng kasinungalingan gagawin niya para lang kumita. It’s all money. It’s all profiteering.” The Inquirer, he reckoned, has been harping on the alleged curtailment of press freedom under the Estrada administration to keep its profit margin large, and to gain public sympathy.

Furious, Mr. Estrada said there are other “freedoms” aside from press freedom. His lamentations continued: “And there is no such thing that we are curtailing the freedom of the press. In fact, they can write anything they want to write. But there is also freedom for my friends to sympathize with me. Masama ba ‘yon na makisama sila sa akin? Nakikita nila masyado akong minamaliit, iniinsulto na wala sa lugar. Masama ba ‘yon? Don’t they have the freedom to sympathize with their President, with their friend, with their former colleague?”

Mr. Estrada said he was certainly open to guaranteeing access to information for the press, except that, “Magbibigay tayon ng press conference, madali lang iyon, wala nang problema iyon. Dapat naman, at ang gusto natin ay transparency sa lahat, ibibigay natin lahat kung ano ang gusto nilang itanong. Kaya lang merong isang pahayagan dyan na talagang tini-twist lahat ng sagot natin...Sasabihin na meron silang karapatan na insultuhin lahat ng tao at walang paggalang sa Tanggapan ng Pangulo.”

If his son, Jude, had ferried his friends to faraway Cagayan de Oro, by using a presidential chopper, and waylaying local public works officials to foot his party’s fantastic food bill, the President insisted there is nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, he said that many times before, he had precisely fed journalists from the palm of his hands. He retorted: “Eh kayo din naman pinapakain ko, di ba?”

I don’t know what thoughts this story evokes in you. Perhaps you’re squeamish. Perhaps you feel like you want to puke. Perhaps you feel so overpowered by a sense of helplessness that between the media and Erap, you feel like the choices are also between the devil and the deep blue sea.

If Erap inflicts on us such scandalously flawed thoughts, so do the media. Erap seems wanting in the same things that one would expect the media should have, too. Such as a framework for what is public, what is private. The rule of law. Ethics and public accountability. Due process. And yes, freedom and responsibility.

Let us spell out the basic premises here: freedom, I believe, is a precondition for the press to be good and responsible. The equation cannot be reordered, as Erap seems to want to suggest.

It is no accident, Benjamin Bradlee of the Washington Post said, that in the US, press freedom comes first - or is also known as the First Amendment - in the American Constitution. In the Philippines, press freedom is a protected freedom, too. But the journalist must always be reminded that that freedom belongs to the people first, and last, before it could belong to the members of the media.

All the frailties that we see in Erap the president seem all too present also in us.

First, we both suffer from a poverty of purpose. Is it public service, more than profit-taking, sales, ratings and market forces that drive the news? On the other hand, what is it, by way of key promises or anchor programs or themes that drive the Erap administration?

Second, we both manifest a poor understanding of concepts. Erap manifests an oversensitivity to criticism or any and all sorts, yet fails to grasp the basic point that as president, he is the most important news subject in the land and that everything he says or does - or does not say or do - carries the weight of policy. Or makes news. Worse still, anything and everything he says or does against the law and canons of good taste and conduct makes even bigger news.

Conversely, the media does not seem to fathom enough that beyond two words, press freedom as a concept in law and journalism history entails a lot more.

The laws enhance the constitutional protection of press freedom with these guarantees: the freedom from prior restraint, the freedom of access to information, the freedom from subsequent punishment, the freedom of unhampered circulation.

Yet also, the same laws prescribe the bounds of freedom. These include the laws on libel, obscenity, sub judice litigation, and national security.

The best traditions of a free press moreover lay out minimum expectations of the press so it could deserve that freedom. These are all very basic concepts but which are all very hard to observe. We shouldn’t for a moment lose track of them: truth-telling, professionalism, ethics, and integrity in all our writing.

A scan of the media environment is hardly encouraging.

Corruption in the Philippine media remains endemic, almost systemic. It afflicts generally all levels of the organization in most of the newspapers, tabloids, radio and television networks. The bribe-givers and bribe-takers have evolved a subculture and language all their own. PR agents and publicists of the government and the private sector have significantly eroded editorial discretion. Enterprise stories are rare and in many instances, news subjects dictate and control the flow and focus of the news. There is apparent breakdown of command and discipline in many newsrooms - editors think many reporters are inferior of crafts, intelligence and integrity while many reporters harbor only grudging respect or none at all for their editors. The press corps has become the single biggest influence on many reporters.

In the hands of the unscrupulous, press freedom becomes the freedom to sell stories, the freedom to market the news as commodity, the freedom to turn the mass media into mass mediocrity.

Let us talk specifics. I belonged to the Philippine Press Council, the committee of editors from the national dailies tasked with promoting and industry Code of Professional and Ethical Conduct. We’ve conducted meetings on the Code in half-a-dozen newspapers and learned - to our shock and shame - about the various forms and methods of media corruption.

In some cases, the transactions are blatant, the ethical issues black and white. Money or cash bribes have changed hands too often.

“Smiling money” is what’s given after publication of a story, supposedly as a source’s gesture of thanks.

“Blood money” is what’s before the fact of the story - to kill a critical piece or to promote a story or news peg favorable to the bribe-giver no matter how untrue.

There are ACDC reporters and columnists, too. They attack and collect, then defend and collect.

Money is given directly by sources to reporters at press conferences. Or the amount is deposited in the reporters’ ATM accounts. In all cases, the transactions are paperless deals. For the menfolk, some transactions have transpired in the toilets, so it is not unusual to see four legs in a CR cubicle after some press cons.

There are journalists on the monthly payroll of or on retainer with certain politicians, government officials, military and police officers, gambling and drug lords, businessmen and corporations. The sums involved range from a few thousand to tens of thousands of pesos every month.

Lump sums are given selectively to some reporters and editors for extended runs of positive publicity, such as what is happening now because of the election campaigns. The media handlers of the candidates have tried to top off one another with the biggest and most popular media stars offered from P100,000 to P400,000. Editors and radio-TV anchors are the most ardently sought.

Journalists who have organized PR outfits - even as they continue to run columns or file stories - have also received fat budgets for doing crisis-PR or twirling spins for their patrons. In one instance, a demolition job against a candidate reportedly earned a journalist P100,000.

To air on broadcast media, politicians are asked to pay P3,000 per question answered on cam or on tape. In one sitting, a politician was asked three questions. He had a change of wardrobe three times, to give the impression that the interview was conducted on three separate occasions and could thus run for three days.

Video footage of the candidates barnstorming in the provinces is circulated among the top TV networks by a messenger riding a bike. Thus, the contact persons in these networks have come to be known as “the bicycle gang.”

Press conferences by some public and private agencies are never considered over until after “the main event” - the distribution of envelopes stuffed with cash. Some sources apparently think this is the norm. From P500 to P2,000 is given to each reporter or photographer, supposedly as gas or taxi money.

Other than cash, some sources have been generous with gifts of all sorts. For instance:

Junkets, all-expense-paid often, to various local and overseas destinations have been offered by some airlines, hotels, resorts, congressmen, to some journalists and their family members on occasion.

Gift certificates of a few hundred to a few thousand pesos are clipped to press releases.

Vanity products and expensive household items have been showered upon some editors and columnists. These include designer clothes, art pieces, perfume, Cartier watches, fountain pens, and home appliances are raffled off during Christmas and other parties.

Some sports and business editors and reporters are allowed regular access to golf clubs. Sponsored media sports events are not uncommon.

Some editors and reporters have been given shares of stocks of companies launching their IPOs.

At the police beat, some reporters are being given monthly gas allowances and treated to girlie bars on occasion. Years back, a few reporters obtained concessional loans from the Armed Forces’ retirement benefits fund, a privilege exclusive to paying member-soldiers.

A variety of other amenities has been extended, including all-season movie passes for those designated as “deputies” of the movie censors board, Gerber supplies for the baby, a Bible, the statue of a saint, fighting cocks, etcetera, etcetera.

This is not to say that only the sources are the agents of corruption, and that journalists are always the passive parties. Some journalists do solicit and extract bribes. But a good number of them are not even from the legitimate and creditable media agencies. We call them “hao-shiaos,” or pseudo-journalists. Indiscretion is a certain mark of the hao-shiaos. They have the stamp “PRESS” splashed on their cars, caps, and on the lapels and the back of their vests. They flaunt their PRESS cards for all to see. The rule is the bigger the ID card, the greater the possibility one is a hao-shiao.

How do journalists extort from sources? In many scandalous ways. Reporters or photographers would show a source clippings of vanity photos and stories, a signal for the source to shell out cash. Some journalists pour out sob stories of a spouse or a child or a relative who is sick or in the hospital or had died. Sometimes, a relative declared dead multiple times so that the journalist could collect money multiple times from multiple sources.

We’ve heard complaints about journalists physically pulling out the wallets of PRs from the PRs’ pockets. We’ve heard PRs complain about the press corps requiring politicians to host the press corps’ induction party, or the birthday parties of the press corps members.

Please do not think these are all so laughable because in fact they are tragic and truly embarrassing. The point is we could talk about these cases openly now because we have started to take vigorous, if very modest, steps to curb corruption in our ranks.

We - editors, publishers, professional journalists who belong to the Philippine Press Institute - have decided that we just can’t surrender and lose by default. We agreed that we must recognize that we have a big problem in our hands, we must understand it in all its facets, we must encourage free and full discussion of the problem, and we must build consensus that if we are all part of the problem then we must all be part of the solution.

A detailed Code of Professional and Ethical Conduct was drafted in 1999 by a committee of editors and reporters. It consists of three sections - the first is on covering the elections (this was the urgent impetus for crafting the Code), the second on conflicts of interest cases and the third, on writing the story.

We agreed that the effort to promote the Code should be a normative process - which means we’re looking at decades before we can say that we’ve licked corruption in our ranks.

We agreed that we must encourage exposure of cases of journalists accepting bribes - and sources offering bribes - without having to mentions names or singling out newspapers for now. There are no sanctions as yet although some newspapers have already integrated the Code with their collective bargaining agreements with their unions, or their office personnel handbooks. This means that violations could be penalized in certain newspapers with suspension or expulsion from the job.

We agreed that the Code should set the right tone and perspective, such as that spelled out in its preamble.

“Professionalism is the key to upgrading and enforcing ethical standards in the media. In the newsroom, at the beat, in the boardrooms and wherever it is we meet with our sources and make editorial decisions, the Code should serve all members newspapers of the PPI a reference of conduct.

“This Code assigns publishers/owners and editors the primary role in upholding professional and ethical standards. Fulfilling the spirit and intentions of the Code on the field requires the full, unqualified support - in terms of money, resources and corporate leadership of the newspaper owners. Applying the Code to day-to-day operations and decision-making in the newsroom, and to the performance evaluation of (staff members) is the task of editors as gatekeepers.”

You might ask: How have we come to such a dismal state? We are so corrupt even as we are so free. We have so many good as we have so many bad journalists.

The paradox is obvious but the answers, elusive.

For indeed, where do good journalists come from?

Do they march out of journalism schools as soon as they’ve learned the five Ws and the H, the rigors of the interview, honed a nose for news, and mastered the color, the logic, the rhythm, the texture of ideas and events?

Do they spring from the furnace of cataclysms like repressive regimes, insurgencies, people-power revolts, or long periods of imprisonment?

Do they flourish under the most destitute working conditions, the most meager pay and perks, the choking care of the most psychotic editors in the neurotic news rooms?

Indeed, where do good journalists come from?

Do they sprout from the soil, like seeds grow into sturdy trees, given adequate warmth, water, wind? Are they born of honest and honorable fathers and mothers?

Or do they fall from the skies like manna from heaven?

And where do bad journalists come from?

There are no easy answers. At bottom, it seems like the good and the bad journalists co-exist in the same milieu.

One cannot say that we have only bad eggs in repressive regimes, and only good ones in ancient and retouched democracies.

One cannot say that the most adverse working conditions have developed only bad journalists, or that the most comfortable work environment has cultivated only good ones.

One cannot say that the best journalism schools and the most upright homes have produced only good, and no bad, journalists.

In many Asian societies, the good, the bad, and the ugly mix. That is because in many newsrooms, there seems to be inordinate focus in assessing journalists against only craft, while ethics has been largely ignored, hardly discussed. Codes or standards of media ethics are often not spelled out nor written down, nor prescribed among the terms of employment of reporters, columnists, photojournalists, editors and publishers.

Media ethics remains an intractable issue to journalists themselves. It is deemed taboo to talk about which journalist or newspaper is committing breaches, except in whispers in little, private circles.

For why indeed must the mighty media admit to its own weaknesses, its own ugliness?

Exposing those on the take is an invitation to certain ostracism by peers, if one were a reporter or courtship of innumerable demands from rank-and-file for higher pay and more benefits, if one were an editor or publisher. Whistle-blowers can expect no rewards, nor awards. It’s become more convenient to err on the side of silence, and keep our hideous secrets hidden from public view.

Yet with all our vile and venom, we relentlessly pursue criticism of all others who are not of our kind. We ruin reputations built over lifetimes at the snap of a finger. We inflict our poison on those we deem to be crooks, dregs, vile, amoral, immoral, profligate, lewd, sinful in society - all of them to the last, except those from our ranks. We take on the biggest, grandest, noblest, boldest, bravest, coolest, hottest of crusades, offer all sorts of cure, and even aspire to cleanse and rescue all institutions, except our own.

Black and white ethics cases such as bribes in cash or in kind are facile to handle, we think. But ask journalists how they would handle many of the largely gray cases of media ethics, and we’d be swamped by a bounty of rationalizations and long-winded, unintelligible answers.

Ask them to define conflicts-of-interest cases, real and potential, and many would find that to be a conundrum.

Ask them what should be the true test of a good story - the time-honored tenets of accuracy, balance, fairness, the other side on the first take, or the market norms of dales and ratings like what bleeds leads, the bizarre flies and muck makes money? We’d provoke a mortal combat.

How well or poorly we measure against our own professional and ethical standards is a story that we find extremely difficult to write or even tell, story-tellers that we all are.

A Filipino publisher says that in the field of ethics, editors and publishers must own up to one sin - benign neglect.

The gray ethics divide stumps us. Such as this question: Is it ever all right to bribe, lie, cheat, seduce or steal to get a story?

Here’s a second spooky query: Should we go for the story at all cost though that could entail putting the job or the life of a source in danger; go for the story though that could entail invading privacy and mocking grief; and yes, go for the story in the face of dying or death, even ahead of helping rescue victims?

A third tricky question comes up: Should we use information we’ve gathered to make a killing in the stock market and enrich ourselves, to be advised when to pull out of a crashing bourse, or to plug into contacts we’ve made to push contract or job for family and friend?

In gist, these posers should hound us all: Should journalists be virtuous and spotless? Should journalists be reverent of all social institutions? Should journalists be condemned to a life of perpetual poverty? Should journalists be all these to do right by media ethics?

In theory, that should be the ideal but is never the reality. We can’t be saints every day of the year and this is such an imperfect world.

Ethics is “what we ought to do to be professionals.” Ethics is “reasoned, principled and consistent thinking about how we can maximize our truth-telling obligation while acting independently and minimizing harm.” It is principally the individual journalist’s call.

But doing ethics in media requires a collaboration of efforts, a community of journalists working together to do right and decide right at every story they publish or air. Putting the media back on the track of ethics is a task bigger than the journalist alone.

This is because a journalist does not live apart from the dictates and directions or the editor and the publisher, nor distinct from the abominable creatures - seemingly with lives of their own - that we call the newspapers, radio and television. Doing ethics means money - media owners carrying the full cost of coverage and making sure that journalists live “above the level of corruption.” This does not mean that poverty could ever absolve a journalist of violations of ethics, or that the best-paid editors and columnists are always the paragons of virtue.

Doing ethics compels editors and publishers to set the “tone at the top,” adopting media ethics as the only appropriate corporate and industry culture for the media.

Doing ethics entails a discussion too of what the supply side, or the bribe-givers, ought to know and do, when dealing with journalists.

The journalist must contend with the wishes of those who control the purse strings in media - advertisers with all sorts of bad, harmful and useless products to peddle, and newspaper dealers who operate like little Mafia lords in their respective turfs. Doing ethics would come to naught if those with real power to build or bring down media agencies were not brought into the picture.

The journalist must work well within the limits of the laws and the recognized authorities, although ethics and law are nor identical concepts. The Society of Professional Journalists of the US explains: “Ethics deals with ideal behaviors while law deals with minimal standards. Ethical constraints are not the same as legal rules…which are the bottom line below which we should not fall.”

The journalist must thrive under all sorts of social regimes and governments, including the most rigid, the most effete, the most corrupt, and the most violent. In a very real sense, while journalists must work to deserve what is in all democracies a protected freedom - the freedom of the press - so must all of civil society help to preserve that freedom.

For the freedom of the press belongs to the people first, and to journalists second only. Which is why we in the media like to call ourselves the public’s advocate, their private eyes in the public arena. This why the media is considered a quasi-public institution that must serve the public good, private enterprises that they are, with profit their common bottom line.

Credibility, they say, is what others think of us. Ethics is what kind of people we are. Corruption destroys both. It is a problem we cannot ignore. As a first step, let us acknowledge it is a problem, and let’s talk it over.