Bill on expanded Sotto Law hurdles Senate

FILE – Senator Grace Poe’s bill on expanded Sotto Law passes Senate. PHOTO FROM SEN. GRACE POE’S OFFICE

A bill that would exempt media practitioners – not only in print, but also in broadcast and online media — from revealing their sources has been unanimously approved in the Senate on third and final reading

Eighteen senators voted on Monday to approve Senate Bill No. 1255 that would amend the 70-year-old Republic Act No. 53 also known as the Shield Law or the Sotto Law.

Senator Grace Poe, who sponsored the measure as chairperson of the Senate committee on public Information and mass media, explained that under the existing law, only print media are not compelled to reveal their sources except in cases involving national security, as determined by the courts or any committee of the Senate or the House of Representatives.

But if the bill is enacted into law, Poe said, broadcast and online journalists and even foreign and local wire news services would be protected from revealing their sources.

“Under our proposed measure, we shall expand the coverage of RA 53, as amended, to any publisher, owner or duly recognized or accredited journalist, writer, reporter, contributor, opinion writer, editor, manager, producer, news director, web master, cartoonist or media practitioner involved in the writing, editing, production and dissemination of news for mass circulation, of any print, broadcasts, wire service organization, or electronic mass media, including but not limited to the internet and cable TV and its variants,” she said.

“We now receive news not just through print media but also through broadcast media such as television, radio and the internet,” the senator added.

READ: Poe’s bill on expanding Sotto Law reaches plenary 

The senator cited a 2012 survey conducted by the TNS Global Market Research, which showed that 45 percent of the 1,000 respondents from classes A,B,C,D and E connected through the internet, 36 listened to the radio, 12 percent read the newspapers, and four percent said they read magazines.

“Given these figures, it appears that the preferred mode of accessing information is no longer through print media, obviously,” Poe said when she sponsored the measure on the floor last November.

Poe, however, clarified that the law could not be used to protect a person from libel. She said the law would protect media practitioners from being compelled or forced to reveal their sources but “not from spewing out malicious imputations under the guise of journalism.

“Through this law, we want to embolden whistleblowers to speak out. If they cannot approach government institutions, then they should at least be able to approach the media,” she said./ac