MANILA, Philippines – Veteran broadcaster and journalism professor Cheche Lazaro posted bail on Friday, a day after a Pasay City court ordered her arrest for allegedly violating the anti-wiretapping law.

Accompanied by her lawyer and executives of broadcasting giant ABS-CBN, Lazaro showed up at the sala of Judge Josephine Vito Cruz of the Pasay City Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 47 around 1 p.m. to pay the P12,000 bail.

Judge Restituto Mangalindan Jr. approved Lazaro’s application for bail as Vito Cruz was not around.

Vito Cruz issued the arrest warrant against Lazaro on the recommendation of assistant prosecutor Dolores Rellora on April 29.

Lazaro’s arrest stemmed from a complaint filed against her by Ella Valencerina, the vice president for communications of the Government Service Insurance System, for allegedly recording and airing a phone interview with her without her knowledge.

But Lazaro said the case was just meant “to harass and threaten me and the thousands of journalists in this country from pursuing the truth.”

“This is plain harassment and intimidation,” Lazaro told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.

“It is mind-boggling why I am being singled out for prosecution for following the tenets of responsible journalism,” Lazaro said in a statement sent to media offices Friday. “If raising the concerns of underpaid public school teachers deprived of their benefits by a publicly accountable government institution and giving my accuser the airtime to explain her boss's side of the story are now considered crimes under our laws, then I plead guilty.

“This is a small price to pay for bringing a perfectly legitimate public interest issue out in the open. Probe will not be intimidated into submission. I just wish my accuser will play fair and hire private lawyers instead of using government lawyers (from the GSIS), whose salaries are incidentally paid for by, among others, the teachers shortchanged by the questionable policy of the GSIS and private citizens like me who pay taxes.”
“In the last 22 years, Probe has carved a niche in the industry and won recognition here and abroad for consistently adhering to time-honored journalistic values of accuracy, fairness and objectivity. My team and I have no plans of changing the way we work just to accommodate the personal agenda of people in power,” she said.