Let up, let off and let go of the private media in Quezon
It is with growing concern that the local media in Quezon province has had the sad and chilling experience of being stifled by the seeming weaponization of the judicial process by the official authorities who feel being at the receiving end of the media’s power of free expression in its self-appointed and constitutionally mandated role to serve the public.
It is this long-held realization and pent-up awareness that the local media in Quezon has long been made and is still being made subtly to feel the brunt of the overreach and power of the powers-that-be such that in these parts they are inclined to use the judicial system to get back at the local media who seem to them to have crossed the lines and limitations of what they suppose is the exercise of freedom of the press.
The local media, of course, like all professions in the world, is far from innocent and perfect, and sometimes, get to overstep and exceed what is legitimate and proper in its delivery of information and expression of opinions. But the media, for all its limitations and supposed power and priveleges, easily fold down and crumple to the real naked power of officialdom. All it has really is the power of saliva and the pen in its supposed power to deliver informations and to voice out and write opinions and commentaries that it hopes would make a dent for the awareness of the general public and to influence public policies.
But the print and broadcast media, the so-called press, has supposedly been enshrined in our Constitutions such that the government, and the general public, has long acknowledged it as the 4th estate – the three estates being the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary.
The media, being constituted as the 4th estate mandated to check the excesses of the three branches of the government, has long been one of the pillars of our democratic system of government. Thus the existence of the media cannot just be ignored or treated like a bothersome pest that an official can just flick away when it appears annoying or find it a nuisance.
The very recent incident that has happened to one prominent member of the local media, Mr. Gemi Formaran, a print and broadcast media practitioner of long standing, is chilling. He has been seemingly forced to stop doing his regular radio broadcasts allegedly courtesy of the previous dispensation that have made it a point apparently to use its clout to weaponize the judicial system that have now curtailed his voice in the airwaves.
Mr. Formaran is just one instance in this sorry state of media manipulation and harassment apparently subtly using judicial machinery and processes to make the media bend to official will and use it only for its own official interests.
Mr. Formaran has of course his own reasons to have done what he did as a professional media practitioner, and he may even have overstepped his bounds in exercising his right of free expression when he dipped his toes in the murky waters of political disputes and supposedly to have engaged himself in giving equally what he has got in the process.
However. to have to hound and hobble Mr. Formaran, or any other media practitioners in Quezon, with string of judicial and criminal libel cases filed in separate places, is plain and simple harassment and consequently, simply curtailing his right to freedom of expression as media man.
If any official in Quezon can do it to Mr. Formaran, they can most certainly do it alike or more so to any of his media colleagues similarly situated in the business of dispensing public information and dishing out freewheeling public opinion.
For the sake of free expression and healthy spread of information along with the fair exchange of opinions in public discourse for the consideration and enlightenment of the general public, this humble platform via my opinion column makes an urgent appeal to the authorities and powers that be in the entire Quezon province to let up, let off and let go of the private media in Quezon to do its job its own way.
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