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PRESS STATEMENT OF MAKATI REP. TEODORO L. LOCSIN, JR.No multiple personality disorder,Chance to Reply and Right to Retract bill.
I demand the right to reply to the insinuation that I suffer from multiple personalities. Afelicitously written report by the charming Christine Herrera quoted a panel of thecommittee on public information as referring to amendments introduced by “Locsin’steam.”What team? I never met with anyone nor has anyone met with me on the right of reply bill. Nor did “we” ever discuss let alone adopt any amendments to the same.If there was a committee meeting where all this took place, I was not invited. To be sure, the reported amendments are welcome developments. But they were concoctedwithout any participation by me. What am I, plural? If anything, I am singular. Mycontribution is smarter.What I did, all by my lonesome, but with generous encouragement from MajorityFloor Leader Art Defensor, was prepare a pithy yet profoundly wise substitute billamending the Revised Penal Code on Libel with a single precise paragraph like a silver  bullet.My proposed amendment makes the voluntary publication of a reply to anallegedly libelous article or broadcast, an indefeasible ground for extinguishing any andall liability for libel. So too would a spontaneous and unsolicited retraction by the publication. It is all contained in one short paragraph, about three lines long. Think of allthe trees we would save.I would call this not a Right of Reply but
The Chance to Answer and the Right to Retract Bill.
Even if a libel suit is eventually won, the expense of defending against it can be so prohibitive. Libel suits are a powerful deterrent to press freedom and a potentiallyfatal financial threat to media. Respected jurists noted this after the highly defective
 NewYork Times v. Sullivan
decision unleashed a firestorm of libel judgments from outragedstate judges protective of the reputation of their constituents. That was when the “dancingin the streets [only of journalists over the
 NYT 
decision] stopped.”In my bill, if the reply of a victim of an alleged libel is published, he loses anyright to sue the writer and the publication, civilly or criminally.This is the Chance [not Right] to Answer aspect of my short substitute. JosephConrad’s
 Lord Jim,
who asked for a second chance [to redeem an act of cowardice or—inthe present case—recklessness] inspired the second aspect. To wit, a journalist shouldhave the right to retract and thus be spared the liability or expense of a libel suit byvoluntarily “eating his own words”—if they aren’t worth his trouble to keep the wordsout there for someone to sue on.My substitute bill, aside from possessing the rare quality of brevity and beingenvironment friendly, removes the smallest element of compulsion. It is this element, theUS Supreme Court said in the
Miami Herald 
case, that was the only objectionable aspectof a right of reply bill, saying that
the right to compel publication is a step away from theright to repress it.
Talk about hyperbole.The other notable quality of my substitute bill is that it will give me a chance toexplain in my sponsorship speech why US Chief Justice Rehnquist said that freedom of 
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