Bicol University

College of Education
Daraga, Albay

Student: NATHANIEL O. REMENDADO

Subject: World History 1 (Ancient and Medieval Era)
Professor: Maribel M. Naz
Term: 2nd Semester, S.Y. 2019 - 2020

The Reality of the Freedom of Speech

Then-Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued that when the public journal is threatened,
public rights are also in peril. This reality is true in democratic nations when the public press is
that which keeps the public informed in times of war and crisis. It was only fifty years after the
time of Wendell Holmes when the freedom of the press was put into jeopardy after the explosive
revelations of the Pentagon Papers [U.S. v. New York Times]. Hugo Black, even argued with
one of what would become his greatest contribution to American legal maxim, fiction, theory and
practice: “The Public Press serves the governed; never the governors.” The fight for the
freedom of the presses has been wrought by scandal, controversy and malignancies that
became the trying testaments of our pursuit of justice, liberty and freedom.

The trauma of Martial Law has left us trying to reform ourselves with that essential
human freedom without necessarily sacrificing essential liberties. No democracy can truly be
free, progressive and just if there were no presses that will keep the light of liberty aflame over
the darkness of the shadows of lies. In the twenty-first century such reality of fake news has
muddied the waters, and has cased harm in our trust over media communications institutions
that has stood the test of time and history—yet, however they have struggled and persevered
towards the reality of new and emerging worlds.

The current franchise woes of ABS-CBN is a mirror to the reality we face in the
Philippines. An ever docile Congress—our vanguards of liberty—seeks to depose a sacred
plume of Filipino Liberty. A point surpasses still the reality of two controversies—that of the
franchise and the identity of the network as corporations. The first point is easy to address and
explain. A network entrusted by a franchise that has to be granted by an ever docile Congress is
apparently using the expiration of the franchise to dole out revenge against the network—the
petty response by an ever apparent petty administration.

Under Article XII of the current Constitution, the Congress can grant a franchise to any
person it deems towards a corporate enterprise—this case a network. This is in accordance with
the Regalian Doctrine of the Constitution with its congruence with the ideals of Stewardship—an
ideal that has radically included also the protection of natural resources and shall be entrusted
rather than acquired by private institutions. Public franchise granted by government is often a
socialist idea and is now inculcated in our constitution. However, like the current problem
suggest, it may fall—and has even fell—prey to political skull-doggery, and fraud. The new
reality we face today is that of extreme political use of this extraordinary power against property.
The assertion that the franchise can be given under extreme specifications makes a corporation
docile, and in relation to public networks and presses, makes it highly vulnerable to public
politicizing.

ABS-CBN is, first, a public corporation, a product of two, or more people, collectively
acting for a corporate end: a commercial end. The ABS-CBN Network is even a publicly traded
corporation, recognized as such by the Securities and Exchange Commission, regulated under
the ideals of the Corporation Code and mandated and secured by National Telecommunications
Commission. Such regulation over public corporations is needed in a twenty-first century
corporation and in the new reality of public administration. The assertion of the Solicitor-General
that it is not is highly questionable and is substantially inaccurate. The network has abided in all
criteria of public law in relation to being called a corporation. A quo warranto motion against the
network is highly contentious and, by the light of logic, is lacking to an actual sense of legality
amounting to a quite questionable use of the law. A quo warranto motion can only be activated if
and only if a group of people are acting like a corporation but has failed to actively resort in such
criteria as to have satisfied the legal benchmark of being a corporation—a public owned and
operated institution. The quo warranto motion against the network is a weaponization of the law
wherein the public body of government is actively saying to segregate between those they can
say to be part of the corporate realm—a tenuous and dangerous proposition. Lastly, the quo
warranto motion is a highly questionable motion enacted by the administration against an
apparent ally—the optics of their administering the motion is quite purposeful bordering on
political.

The question of franchise and whether or not the network is actually a public corporation
sheds a light to how dangerous this administration is to public freedoms and political liberties.
There are two major controversies in this question dogged by the idea that this administration
must use its own way to force acquiesced docility in the heart of every Filipino. This
administration has become quite nestled in the fact that because they are in power they are the
referees of corporations, and, ergo, can dictate whether or not corporations can be part of the
Filipino nation.