We have the right to sue onion-skinned politicians

“I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it.”

— John Grisham

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

A TIT for a tat.

I am very much inspired by Supreme Court 1st Judicial District in New York Judge Robert R. Reed’s ruling for former U.S. President Donald Trump to pay $392,000 to The New York Times to cover the legal costs from his failed lawsuit against the newspaper and its journalists over a 2018 investigation into his finances that included confidential tax records.

If the Philippine courts could make the same ruling, those who attempted to misuse the judicial system to try to silence journalists would have been punished like Mr. Trump.

Onion-skinned Filipino politicians, including appointed public officials, police, military officers, and the corrupt and incompetent prosecutors in cahoots with these politicians, should be ordered to pay journalists for the legal costs and damages if they can’t prove their claim they have been libeled or maligned by the press people they hauled in court.

This is one way of giving our tormentors and harassers a dose of their own medicine and teach them a lesson to stop acting like demigods and holy cows while in public offices and receiving salaries and pelfs from the taxpayers.

No professional journalist will criticize erring public officials with intention to malign or destroy the public officials’ reputation unless he or she is a pseudo-journalist, an extortionist or one who practices ACDC (attack and collect and defend and collect) style.

Journalists—or members of the Fourth Estate, the media practitioners—exist because the government exists. Our No. 1 job prescriptions are to inform, educate and criticize, not to destroy or propagate mayhem.

  

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I included the “corrupt prosecutors” because of personal experiences and overwhelming evidence and circumstances. 

When an ignorant city politician filed libel cases against the editorial staff of the Sun.Star Iloilo Daily led by the late publisher Marcos Villalon and yours truly as editor-in-chief in 1999 that romped off over a factual story written by columnist Wenceslao Mateo followed by a series of blind items written by contributors whose identities I have vowed to protect until this day (unless I was compelled by the court to name them in a fair and honest trial), some of the “corrupt and incompetent prosecutors” tossed everything—including the kitchen sink—to the trial court.

None of the whimsical and waggish cases prospered; they were all simultaneously dismissed by the competent trial courts in different branches. 

Mr. Trump was ordered to pay the money in January, more than eight months after Judge Reed granted the Times’ motion to dismiss the case against it and its journalists, concluding the journalists’ conduct was protected by the New York Constitution.

Among the claims that Mr. Trump brought against the publication was the accusation that the journalists were liable for “tortious interference” in how they allegedly sought out his niece and caused her to allegedly breach a 2001 settlement contract with the Trump family.

 

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Authored by David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, the reporting series went on to win the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.

In 2023, the judge said he was dismissing the claim against the Times “because The Times’ purpose in reporting on a story of a high public interest constitutes justification as a matter of law.”

The judge pointed to recent amendments made to New York’s so-called anti-SLAPP law—which provides a mechanism for defendants to seek quick dismissal of lawsuits that target conduct protected by the First Amendment—in explaining why he was ordering the dismissal of the defendants and the payment of their attorneys’ fees.

A CNN report quoted the publication’s spokesman on February 26, 2024 calling the anti-SLAPP statute as a “powerful force for protecting press freedom.”

“This decision shows that the state’s newly amended anti-SLAPP statute can be a powerful force for protecting press freedom,” Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement, as quoted by CNN. “The court has sent a message to those who want to misuse the judicial system to try to silence journalists.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo. — Ed)