Court dismisses libel case filed by car theft suspect vs TV reporter

The Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office has junked a libel complaint against an ABS-CBN reporter who reported about the alleged involvement of a former head of a Mindanao-based antismuggling group in car theft activities.

Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Cabanban-Ong dismissed the case against TV Patrol reporter Doland Castro for lack of probable cause.

The libel case stemmed from the complaint of Mohamad Aquia, former special operations head of the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group in Mindanao, who said Castro’s story which came out last year was malicious as it linked him to a car theft syndicate.

In a resolution, Ong, however, said the news report “constitutes a privileged communication protected by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and of the press.”

The prosecutor explained that the entire news report “may be considered privileged and therefore presumption of malice does not arise.”

“Burden of proof of actual malice or malice-in-fact is shifted onto the complainant. Unfortunately, complainant failed to discharge the burden of proof,” she said.

Castro’s report which aired on the Feb. 23, 2012, episode of TV Patrol was about the search conducted on the complainant’s residence in General Santos City.

The report included an interview with then Highway Patrol Group head Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina and discussed the complainant’s alleged links to a car theft group in Davao City. A lawyer claiming to represent Aquia was also interviewed and he denied the allegations against his client.

Aquia, however, claimed that Castro made defamatory, injurious, libelous and slanderous accusations against him and that the reporter failed to verify whether the HPG’s accusations against him were true.