When a newspaper writer would not divulge the name
of his source by saying “the source asked to hide his name” or “the
source asked in condition of anonymity” it means he based on “Deep Background”.
A journalistic term that the information can be
used but no source any kind would be identified in the newspaper just like at
the Washington Post where Bob Woodward wrote on his book’s The Secret
Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat.
Likewise, the Philippine government, just like in
the United States where she copy cats many of its law, has a Shield Law called
Republic Act No. 1477.
The statute says that “Without prejudice to his
liability under the civil and criminal laws, the publisher, editor, columnist
or duly accredited reporter of any newspaper, magazine or periodical of general
circulation cannot be compelled to reveal the source of any news-report or
information appearing in said publication which was related in confidence to
such publisher, editor or reporter unless the court or a House or committee of
Congress finds that such revelation is demanded by the security of the State
(Section 1).
***
I was not spared not to be criticized, just like
other columnists, by a few readers why I would not divulge my source but
instead contented myself on a “blind item” style of writing.
“Hearsay lang iyan, pangalanan ninyo!” One
of the readers of my blog audaciously commented.
I told him newspaper writing is not a trial in the
court where a judge would require a witness to narrate the incident as he
directly saw it and not just like a witness recounting it after he heard it
from another person’s narration.
Prudent writer and those writers who were sued with
libel, just like me, know what they published because those they affronted
could retaliate by suing them with either the heftier Cybercrime Prevention Act
of 2012 or the probation qualified Ordinary Libel found in the Revised Penal
Code.
Being sued with libel is not about badges of honor
to a responsible reporter but a hassle as one would look for monies to bail out
himself in the slammer through ten thousand pesos for every count of the
written defamation filed against him and scrounge for tens of thousands of
pesos for the acceptance fee of a private lawyer if he wants to avoid the free
but overworked lawyer of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) to defend himself
in lengthy trial that runs up to more than ten years, since hearing now is held
once in two months at the RTC, after the Supreme Court finally decides on it,
the thousands of pesos in every appearance of his counsel in court that usually
ensues once a month, and the expenses and inconveniences of hiring a body guard
every time he attends his court hearing since those he offended already knows
the pattern of his itinerary.
It would be worse if an offended party just like
Department of Agriculture & Fisheries Secretary Manny Piñol wanted to hold
the hearing at Kidapawan City, after he charged Baguio City based Rappler.com
reporter Frank Cimatu.
Piñol resides in that Mindanao city.
He sued Cimatu in September last year
when the reporter accused him at social media site’s Face Book with
corruption.
With Kidapawan as the situs, gee whiz, that’s a Mother of All Inconveniences since he would be travelling for almost a day in busses and plane rides from Baguio City to that place vice versa. Unless Cimatu wanted to avoid those hassles by relocating his abode somewhere at the foot of Mt. Apo in Kidapawan, then we would not be talking here about travel inconveniences.
With Kidapawan as the situs, gee whiz, that’s a Mother of All Inconveniences since he would be travelling for almost a day in busses and plane rides from Baguio City to that place vice versa. Unless Cimatu wanted to avoid those hassles by relocating his abode somewhere at the foot of Mt. Apo in Kidapawan, then we would not be talking here about travel inconveniences.
Thank God that Piñol’s lawyers filed the cyber
libel at Quezon City after probably reading the jurisprudence on Bonifacio vs.
RTC of Makati (G.R. No. 184800, 5 May 2010) where the Supreme Court said that
if the offended party is a public official like the complainant, the criminal
case can only be filed in either of two places, namely: (a) in the place
(whether in or outside Manila) where he holds office at the time of the
commission of the crime; or (b) where the alleged defamatory article was
printed and first published.
The DAF main office is in
Quezon City.
But the
Secretary still persisted on Kidapawan City as he wanted the civil aspect of
the crime which would demand monitorial damages in his favor would be filed in
that city in Cotabato Province.
***
***
Don’t you know that quoting a source without naming
the person catapulted some rookie reporters to their present celebrated status?
In one of his countless of books he authored, in
the Secret Man, Bob Woodward said he was only eight months as field
reporter of the Washington Post in June 17, 1972 when he was asked by the
broadsheet’s Metropolitan Editor Harry Rosenfeld to investigate and write the
five men clad in business suits, $100 bills in pockets, and carrying eaves
dropping and photographic equipment that were arrested inside the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Office Complex in
Washington D.C. Their leader the balding and tall James McCord told Judge James
A. Belsen in a hush-hush voice that he was a former operative of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Of course Filipino reporters worth their salt knew
that this story was Watergate Scandal that happened in that fateful night of
June 17, 1972.
Of course Filipino reporters whose worth can be
juxtaposed with the price of salt would be dumbstruck if senior veteran
reporters quiz them about Watergate Scandal and its contribution to Filipino
journalism.
The burglary and the installation of
those bugs, slang for listening devices, at the Watergate’s office were the
handiwork of President Richard Nixon, a Republican, to spy on the Democrat
Party’s officials.
But because of the expose’ of Woodward and his
experienced co-writer Carl Bernstein, it cost Nixon to resign from the
presidency to avoid an impeachment trial by the Senate who were gung-ho to
scalp him off as he procrastinated, just like what he did with the U.S Supreme
Court, to submit the tapes he installed in the White House, son of gun, to spy
with his fellow Republicans.
We Filipinos have leveled up since Watergate.
In the 1970s, when someone mentioned “tape”, people
interpreted it as the Watergate Scandal’s tapes.
Under President Rodrigo Duterte’s
administration in 2017 and at present when somebody shouted “tape”, we
construed it as Senator Leila de Lima and her paramour driver-body guard Ronnie
Dayan’s sex tape that until now the feisty president has to show to us its
prurient content as he keeps promising in his speeches when he became livid
with the matron solon.
***
While exchanging pleasantries with Bayambang
Pangasinan Billionaire Mayor Cezar T. Quiambao at his sprawling mansion, I told
seasoned media men Ruel Camba (former Information Officer of the Provincial
Government), Jun Velasco of the Manila Bulletin and contemporary of
Piñol when the latter still cut his teeth in journalism, Editor Ruben
Rivera, others about the source of Woodward he cited as Deep Throat.
“No it
was not Deep Throat of the 1970s Eastman Color porn movie with a subtitle: How
far does a girl have to untangle her tingle,” I reacted when Cris, the driver of Cable News
King Jesse Perez interdicted in a supposed intellectual conversation about the
highly sexually charged flick where a pretty female specie swallowed a “police
night stick” down to the lowest recesses of her larynx he saw when he was a
teenager in Avenida.
The Deep Throat that Woodward got his invaluable
information that saw the White House came crashing down was Assistant Director
Michael Felt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I told these senior media
men in my huge province.
“You know
that Deep Throat was the smarting FBI Assistant Director Felt as Nixon did not
appoint him to head the powerful agency after the death of the controversial
Agency’s Director J. Edgar Hoover,” I said.
The president appointed his protégée Assistant
Attorney General Partrick Gray, a former submarine commander in World War II,
to head the FBI.
But you did not know that Woodward meet Felt two
years before the burglary ensued at Watergate? I posed.
Aksidente
lang ang kasikatan ni Woodward, I said
in the vernacular.
He met Felt at the office of the National Security
Adviser in the White House in the early 1970 when Woodward was a Navy
Lieutenant (Captain in the military) and Felt was FBI Assistant Director on
Inspection Division.
After that meeting Woodward regularly sought the
advices of Felt, his father’s age, who told him not to choose journalism as
profession but instead go to law school just like his (Woodward) father.
Felt, a lawyer, told him that his decision to work
as reporter was crazy.
Newspapers were too shallow and quick on the draw.
Newspapers didn’t do in-depth work and rarely got to the bottom of events, he
cited.
***
Another Post reporter and syndicated columnist, who
sourced his information in the government top echelons, was Robert D. Novak.
In his biography's The Prince of
Darkness, he said that in his 50 years stint in journalism mostly held at
the citadels of power in Washington DC, his sources were Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) Bill Harlow, Deputy of State Secretary Richard Armitage, and
President George W. Bush’s Senior Political Adviser Carl Rove.
His associations with the last two officials nearly
compromised him to jail when he wrote a column naming CIA Operative Valerie
Plame who sent her husband former Ambassador Joe Wilson to sleuth in Niger if
Iraq Butcher Saddam Hussein really bought uranium there to complete his nuclear
missile systems.
President Bush used this alleged uranium purchased
to invade Iraq where hundreds of American soldiers died and billions of U.S
dollars of taxpayers’ money went to the drain despite Wilson’s dismissal of of
uranium sale to Iraq in Niger.
Although it was illegal for anyone in the U.S to
distribute classified information without authority as stated in the U.S Code,
Title 18, Section 793,Paragraph e, Novak was never criminally charged by a
federal investigation because there was no evidence that he knew Ms Plame was
covert agent.
In that two and a-half years of investigation he
shielded not to reveal Armitage and Rove by citing journalistic privilege under
the First Amendment (Freedoms of Speech and Press in the Philippines
Constitution).
(You can
read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and
articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at
totomortz@yahoo.com)
Follow me on Twitter Send me a secure tip.
MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
I am a twenty years seasoned Op-Ed Political Writer in various newspapers and Blogger exposing government corruptions, public officials's idiocy and hypocrisies, and analyzing local and international issues. I have a master’s degree in Public Administration and professional government eligibility. I taught for a decade Political Science and Economics in universities in Metro Manila and cities of Urdaneta, Pangasinan and Dagupan. Follow me on Twitter @totoMortz or email me at totomortz@yahoo.com.
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento