*Speech Justice Arturo S. Brion delivered on the occasion of the 50th Foundation Anniversary of the Federation of Provincial Press Clubs of the Philippines held in ASU and Boracay, Malay, Aklan on January 15 – 17, 2014.
by Justice Arturo S. Brion
(1st of three parts)
Good evening to everyone!
I am not only very happy to speak before you today; I am in fact very much honored that I shall be sharing my thoughts with one of the most important groups in the country – the members of the provincial press. The value of the press is a lesson that I learned early on from Ka Blas Ople who I had the good fortune to share as mentor with your own Johnny Dayang. Ka Blas, as you must all know, was a statesman who in his life and in his own grave proudly proclaimed to all that he was a journalist. When I was with him at the then Ministry of Labor and at the Batasang Pambansa, he always lectured us about the press, particularly on our dealings with newsmen. He was forever asking us for news and developments that we could share with newsmen. His constant reminder that – “newsmen are our allies and we must make sure that they are assured of their news to report for the day” – is one that is hard to forget.
Now that I am with you, my thoughts unavoidably run back to him. These memories and this occasion make my day both significant and memorable. Since then, I have had my own share of government service and I now fully realize, first hand, why the West respectfully refers to you as the fourth estate. You are one of the principal catalysts of change in our country: you are not only purveyors of information and active agents in ferreting out the truth; in our society, you are also persuasive molders of public opinion and, most importantly, active participants in setting the national agenda. These multiple roles place you at a level of importance so high that the nation cannot – without risk to itself – allow you to be ineffective.
I come with these thoughts in mind, and with the awareness that Johnny Dayang did not just happen to think of me as you planned your convention. Since this is your organization’s half-century celebration, I know that you invited me, not simply as Johnny’s friend, but because of the institution I represent. Hence, I come here as a justice of the Court and will speak to you wearing this hat.
Speaking before the media is not difficult for a member of the Court because our tasks – those of the media and the judiciary – converge in many respects, although we may differ in methodologies. We commonly bear obligations that run parallel to each other in various ways, but essentially end up at the same objective. If our obligations differ at all, the distinctions are only in strengths and standards, some of them bearing harder on you and some on us. Lastly, we – individually and institutionally – also have many faults and weaknesses that are best brought to light rather than covered and allowed to fester; like cancer, these infirmities, unless addressed and beaten at the earliest opportunity, can ultimately impair us and our institutions to the point of ineffectiveness. As I said, this, the nation cannot afford to place the press at risk, and this objective should be one of the reasons we are all here.
Bringing Out And Relaying The Truth
Our common overriding task is to serve the public and its interests, particularly by bringing out and relaying the “truth” to the public we serve. While you expose the truth and start the way into the redress that the truth should bring, we carry our task a little farther by acting on what is proven by evidence to be the truth. That we undertake our tasks as public officers while you act largely within the private sector, is not a very substantial difference. It may in fact be a desired characteristic, for it allows us to check on one another for our respective institutions’ ultimate effectiveness.
This arrangement, perhaps, is how things should be as we only replicate what happens in the harsher world of nature where one specie checks on another and the latter is itself checked by others, leading to a balance in a harmonious yet diversified world. Of course, this is not only true with nature. Check and balance is also the way of our government in a system where the executive, the legislature and the judiciary exist as co-equals, acting separately in their assigned tasks, and checking one another along the way so that governmental powers are ultimately exercised fittingly and without abuse. That we are as yet far from the ideal and that abuse exists in many places, are not reasons for us to lose hope in our system. Our society’s imperfections are our respective institutions’ reason for being and should give us life and energy because of the need they create.
Ultimately, we carry the same burden. To serve and to achieve our common goals, we are governed by the laws of the land and by the higher moral law that underlies everything we do on this earth. Our common overarching source of protection is the Constitution that guarantees, in your case, the freedom of speech and the press. The judiciary, for its part, has its guaranteed independence that enables us to undertake our duties under the government’s separation of powers system.
These same Constitution and laws also commonly limit our actions. Governmental action is limited by the Bill of Rights and its due process clause whose protection the Judiciary must guarantee to everyone. For the press, the limits are more in terms of our civil and criminal laws which seek to ensure that you do not trespass beyond limits that society allows. Underlying all these, for both those in the government and in the private sector, are the sense of fairness and the values that we should all have and observe as members of the community of men.
You will note that if only we would all observe essential fairness and the proper set of values, then laws and rules in society would largely be a surplus age. And lawyers, and even the courts, would no longer be necessary as they have very limited use in a harmonious world. In this sense, journalists are luckier than lawyers as men, even in a harmonious world, need news. But levity aside, these standards are also the same ones that can serve our respective institutions well; following them shall result in actions on a higher moral plane – a level from where both the judiciary and the media can act with immense strength. (to be continued next issue) /MP
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