No press freedom without easier access to data

By Joseph Bernard A. Marzan

The Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration cannot claim that press freedom in the Philippines has been better, if it continues to require regional offices to seek clearance from central offices in Metro Manila before they can grant interviews and provide numerical data.

This rant stems from the fact that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Western Visayas will hold a press conference today, December 3, for the holiday season… except that the media can’t ask questions about Noche Buena.

Media here are being required to coordinate with a person from the DTI central office, who will coordinate interview requests with the office of their secretary, Cristina Roque.

With Roque’s recent Noche Buena blunder, it’s no surprise the department is still doing damage control. I mean, it is the Christmas season, and people are only starting to think about what to have on the 24th at midnight.

But this process creates a bottleneck for the media.

Imagine local media like the Daily Guardian, based in the regions, having to compete for access with those based in Manila. It would probably take days before a request from a provincial journalist gets granted.

And by the time we report on the DTI’s Noche Buena issues, everyone would’ve moved on to other things to talk about.

Seems like controlling the narrative, doesn’t it?

THE BIGGER PROBLEM

This, however, is just one example of the larger problem between the Marcos Jr. administration and regional media, which has been ongoing since 2022.

Based on my experience alone, from requests on African Swine Fever with the Department of Agriculture (DA), to health-related data with the Department of Health (DOH), to tourist arrival data with the Department of Tourism (DOT), regional offices have been in a bind whenever we ask for these things, because they also have to ask their central offices before we can even get it.

This would entail writing a letter to the regional director, which would be then endorsed to the central office, and only God knows how long it would take before we can get a response.

And if we’re basing this only from the examples I gave, letters would still be forwarded to the central offices of the DA in Quezon City, DOH in Manila, and the DOT in Makati City.

We wouldn’t even know if there would be a favorable response from the powers that be in those agencies.

Contrast this with the previous administration, where we can simply ask regional offices via communication channels (Messenger, SMS, Viber, etc.) and just give a letter afterwards for compliance, and voila, we have our data all on the same day.

Heck, we would even have virtual or physical press conferences for the more complex topics that need to be answered.

Under Republic Act No. 11032 (Ease of Doing Business Act), it would take three days for requests that require ministerial actions, seven days for requests needing evaluation, and 20 days for highly technical applications.

So, if our letters requesting interviews and data need to be forwarded to their higher offices, it might need a fresh period.

And as I write this opinion piece, Daily Guardian still has letters requesting interviews and data pending with two regional offices, both of which we sent almost a month ago.

One was forwarded to their central office, and yes, both of those offices haven’t gotten back to me yet.

THE PRESS FREEDOM CONNECTION

So, what does this have to do with press freedom?

Press freedom, as defined in the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, “is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely.”

Controlling the flow of information that we ought to report, and that the public deserves to know, limits our role as a watchdog of the government.

It might not be a legal restriction or anything that might rise to the level that we have to challenge it in court, but such limitations placed by the Marcos Jr. administration narrow our capabilities as local media, serving the people of our communities, to be able to report detailed, accurate, and timely information.

It’s like an episode of that cartoon, My Life as a Teenage Robot, where the military couldn’t fight back because they needed to wait for the “battle forms” to arrive, then cuts to a scene where the paperwork is being carried by a bird.

And as I said, with the bottleneck created by the DTI’s pronouncement on Noche Buena, it creates bottlenecks, because we also have to compete with other requests from other entities like fellow government agencies, the academe, the private sector, and so on.

Again, by the time we report what needs to be reported, it gets buried among other hot topics that our colleagues and we also need to discuss.

Simply put, how do we report freely and responsibly when we have to go through the slow process that is the Philippine bureaucracy?