Holding tabloids accountable

The Cebu Provincial Board is deliberating whether to pass the “Anti-Tabloid Ordinance of 2011” that according to its author, Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale, seeks to ban tabloids with obscene and sexually provocative content.

We salute the noble intention of the proposed legislation.

What we have reservations about is who will determine what should be censored, and who will define what crosses the line from sexy to pornographic.

For lawyer Earl Bonachita of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Cebu City chapter, the Provincial Board would violate the Constitution if it enacts a law to stop the printing and distribution of any publication.

The court has the sole prerogative of stopping the publication of a tabloid, after a judge determines that lewd content has been printed, he said.

The 1987 Constitution is clear: “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press.”

Nonetheless, we won’t be surprised if Magpale’s proposed ordinance draws the support of many citizens fed up with the exploitation of sex as a commodity. She speaks not only as Cebu province’s second in command but also as co-chairperson of the Provincial Women’s Commission that has been in the frontline in the war against cybersex and human trafficking.

These grave forms of commodifying human beings and sex are damaging to society. They can be easily linked to the commodification of the human body in salacious photos and erotic literature.

Tabloid owners may argue that immodesty, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. But the harm done by pornography is not a question of individual taste, but social impact.

In an exercise of self-regulation, Freeman Banat News announced it was pulling out the column “Wildflower,” which the Cebu City Anti-Indecency Board complained was “obscene, indecent and sexually suggestive”. (Sun.Star SuperBalita faces a similar complaint for its column “From Junquera With Love.”)

“We will be pulling out this particular column just to satisfy the demands of the board, which is representing the Cebuanos,” lawyer Jesus Atoc told reporters.

The bigger problem, Magpale says, are tabloids printed in Manila and circulated in Cebu that have no staffboxes.

These papers with colorum writers, editors and publishers should be the target of the vice governor, PB and CCAIB in their crackdown on indecency. Local officials should rely on the capacity of local dailies to regulate themselves for decency’s sake, as Banat News has shown.

Complaints against local tabloids can be raised to the Cebu Citizens-Press Council, whose members include top editors and publishers in Cebu. The council, which is headed by a physician and supported by academics, media practitioners, and civic leaders, has a mechanism to address reader grievances.

Has the Capitol and City Hall’s morals police tried this option of an industry-level dialogue and self-correction?