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[G.R. No. 164785 : March 15, 2010] ELISEO F. SORIANO, PETITIONER, VS. MA. CONSOLIZA P. LAGUARDIA, IN HER CAPACITY AS CHAIRPERSON OF THE MOVIE AND TELEVISION REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION BOARD, MOVIE AND TELEVISION REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION BOARD, JESSIE L. GALAPON, ANABEL M. DELA CRUZ, MANUEL M. HERNANDEZ, JOSE L. LOPEZ, CRISANTO SORIANO, BERNABE S. YARIA, JR., MICHAEL M. SANDOVAL, AND ROLDAN A. GAVINO, RESPONDENTS. [G.R. No. 165636] ELISEO F. SORIANO, PETITIONER, VS. MOVIE AND TELEVISION REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION BOARD, ZOSIMO G. ALEGRE, JACKIE AQUINO-GAVINO, NOEL R. DEL PRADO, EMMANUEL BORLAZA, JOSE E. ROMERO IV, AND FLORIMONDO C. ROUS, IN THEIR CAPACITY AS MEMBERS OF THE HEARING AND ADJUDICATION COMMITTEE OF THE MTRCB, JESSIE L. GALAPON, ANABEL M. DELA CRUZ, MANUEL M. HERNANDEZ, JOSE L. LOPEZ, CRISANTO SORIANO, BERNABE S. YARIA, JR., MICHAEL M. SANDOVAL, AND ROLDAN A. GAVINO, IN THEIR CAPACITY AS COMPLAINANTS BEFORE THE MTRCB, RESPONDENTS.
Among the cherished liberties in a democracy such as ours is freedom of expression. A democracy needs a healthy public sphere where the people can exchange ideas, acquire knowledge and information, confront public issues, or discuss matters of public interest, without fear of reprisals.2 Free speech must be protected so that the people can engage in the discussion and deliberation necessary for the successful operation of democratic institutions.3 Thus, no less than our Constitution mandates full protection to freedom of speech, of expression, and of the press.4 All of the protections expressed in the Bill of Rights are important, but the courts have accorded to free speech the status of a preferred freedom. This qualitative significance of freedom of expression arises from the fact that it is the indispensable condition of nearly every other freedom.5 The freedom of expression clause is precisely a guarantee against both prior restraint and subsequent punishment. It protects from any undue interference by the government the people's right to freely speak their minds. The guarantee rests on the principle that freedom of expression is essential to a functioning democracy and suppression of expression leads to authoritarianism. Prior restraint has been defined as official governmental restrictions on any form of expression in advance of actual dissemination. But the mere prohibition of government interference before words are spoken is not an adequate protection of the freedom of expression if the government could arbitrarily punish after the words have been spoken. The threat of subsequent punishment itself would operate as a very effective prior restraint.6 Any form of prior restraint bears a presumption against its constitutional validity. The burden is on the censor to justify any imposition of prior restraint, not on the censored to put up a defense against it. In the case of print media, it has been held that just because press freedom may sometimes be abused does not mean that the press does not deserve immunity from prior restraint. The settled rule is that any such abuse may be remedied by subsequent punishment.7 This Court, in Eastern Broasting Corporation v. Dans, Jr.,8 laid down the following guideline: All forms of media, whether print or broast, are entitled to the broad protection of the freedom of speech and expression clause. The test for limitations on freedom of expression continues to be the clear and present danger rule - that words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that the lawmaker has a right to prevent. Chief Justice Fernando expounded on the meaning of the "clear and present danger" test in Gonzalez v. Chairman Katigbak,9 to wit: The test, to repeat, to determine whether freedom of expression may be limited is the clear and present danger of an evil of a substantive character that the State has a right to prevent. Such danger must not only be clear but must also be present. There should be no doubt that what is feared may be traced to the expression complained of. The causal connection must be evident. Also, there must be reasonable apprehension about its imminence. The time element cannot be ignored. Nor does it suffice if such danger be only probable. There is the requirement of its being well-nigh inevitable. Where the medium of a television broast is concerned, as in the case at hand, well-entrenched is the rule that censorship is allowable only under the clearest proof of a clear and present danger of a substantive evil to public safety, public morals, public health, or any other legitimate public interest.10 One of the established exceptions in freedom of expression is speech characterized as obscene. I will briefly discuss obscenity as the majority opinion characterized the subject speech in this case as obscene, thereby taking the speech out of the scope of constitutional protection. The leading test for determining what material could be considered obscene was the famous Regina v. Hicklin11 case wherein Lord Cockburn enunciated thus: I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall. Judge Learned Hand, in United States v. Kennerly,12 opposed the strictness of the Hicklin test even as he was obliged to follow the rule. He wrote: I hope it is not improper for me to say that the rule as laid down, however consonant it may be with mid-Victorian morals, does not seem to me to answer to the understanding and morality of the present time. Roth v. United States13 laid down the more reasonable and thus, more acceptable test for obscenity: "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest." Such material is defined as that which has "a tendency to excite lustful thoughts," and "prurient interest" as "a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion." Miller v. California14 merely expanded the Roth test to include two additional criteria: "the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and the work, taken as whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." The basic test, as applied in our jurisprudence,15 extracts the essence of both Roth and Miller - that is, whether the material appeals to prurient interest. The present controversy emanated from the alleged splicing of a video recording wherein petitioner was supposedly made to appear as if he was asking for contributions to raise 37 trillion pesos instead of the allegedly true amount of 3.6 million pesos. The video was played by ministers of Iglesia ni Cristo in their television program "Ang Tamang Daan." In response, petitioner Eliseo Soriano, as host of the television program "Ang Dating Daan," made the following utterances:16 Bro. Josel Mallari: The majority opinion ruled that the highlighted portion of the aforequoted speech was obscene and was, therefore, not entitled to constitutional protection. Well-settled is the rule that speech, to be considered obscene, must appeal to prurient interest as defined in Roth and firmly adopted in our jurisdiction.17 The subject speech cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to appeal to any prurient interest. The highlighted portion of the verbal exchange between the two feuding religious groups is utterly bereft of any tendency to excite lustful thoughts as to be deemed obscene. The majority's finding of obscenity is clearly untenable. In contrast, a radio broast of a monologue replete with indecent words such as shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits, has been held protected speech depending on the context relating to the time of broast.18 However, in this case before us, the words "putang babae" (female prostitute), and the descriptive action phrases "ang gumagana lang doon yung ibaba" and "kay Michael ang gumagana ang itaas" were enough to constitute outright obscenity for the majority. The majority opinion simply forced these words and phrases into a strained standard formula for censorship. But such overbroad standard must be struck down for it indiscriminately infringes upon free speech. The subject speech in this case may, at most, be considered indecent speech. Indecent speech conveyed through the medium of broast is a case of first impression in our jurisdiction. However, this issue has been settled in American case law, which has persuasive influence in our jurisprudence. There, the rule is that indecent speech is protected depending on the context in which it is spoken. The concept of what is "indecent" is intimately connected with the exposure of children to language that describes, in terms patently offensive, as measured by contemporary community standards for the broast medium, sexual or excretory activities and organs, at times of the day when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience.19 FCC v. Pacifica Foundation20 is the landmark U.S. case on the regulation of indecent speech in broast. The case involved a radio broast of "Filthy Words," a 12-minute monologue by American stand-up comedian and social critic, George Carlin. Appended to the decision is the following verbatim transcript prepared by the Federal Communications Commission: The original seven words were, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those are the ones that will curve your spine, grow hair on your hands and maybe, even bring us, God help us, peace without honor and a bourbon. And now the first thing that we noticed was that word fuck was really repeated in there because the word motherfucker is a compound word and it's another form of the word fuck. You want to be a purist, it can't be on the list of basic words. Also, cocksucker is a compound word and neither half of that is really dirty. The word-the half sucker that's merely suggestive and the word cock is a half-way dirty word, 50% dirty-dirty half the time, depending on what you mean by it. Uh, remember when you first heard it, like in 6th grade, you used to giggle. And the cock crowed three times, the cock-three times. It's in the Bible, cock in the Bible. And the first time you heard about a cock-fight, remember-What? Huh? It ain't that, are you stupid? It's chickens, you know, Then you have the four letter words from the old Angle-Saxon fame. Uh, shit and fuck. The word shit, uh, is an interesting kind of word in that the middle class has never really accepted it and approved it. They use it like, crazy but it's not really okay. It's still a rude, dirty, old kind of gushy word. They don't like that, but they say it, like, they say it like, a lady now in a middle-class home, you'll hear most of the time she says it as an expletive, you know, it's out of her mouth before she knows. She says, Oh shit oh shit, oh shit. If she drops something, Oh, the shit hurt the broccoli. Shit. Thank you. Worthy of note, in Pacifica, the FCC did not resort to any subsequent punishment, much less any prior restraint.21 The station was not suspended for the broast of the monologue, which the U.S. Supreme Court merely considered indecent speech based on the context in which it was delivered. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the monologue would have been protected were it delivered in another context. The monologue was broast at 2:00 p.m., when children were presumptively in the audience. A later case, Action forChildren's Television v. FCC,22 establishes the safe harbor period to be from 10:00 in the evening to 6:00 in the morning, when the number of children in the audience is at a minimum. In effect, between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., the broasting of material considered indecent is permitted. Between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., the broast of any indecent material may be sanctioned. In this case, the subject speech by petitioner was broast starting 10:00 p.m. onwards, clearly within the safe harbor period as established in Action for Children's Television. Correctly applying Pacifica's context-based ruling, petitioner's speech, if indeed indecent, enjoys constitutional protection and may not be sanctioned. The rule on this matter, as laid down by Pacifica in relation to Action for Children's Television, is crystal-clear. But should the majority still have any doubt in their minds, such doubt should be resolved in favor of free speech and against any interference by government. The suspension of "Ang Dating Daan" by the MTRCB was a content-based, not a content-neutral regulation. Thus, the suspension should have been subjected to strict scrutiny following the rule in Chavez v. Gonzales.23 The test should be strict because the regulation went into the very heart of the rationale for the right to free speech - that speech may not be prohibited just because government officials disapprove of the speaker's views.24 Further, the majority opinion held that even if petitioner's utterances were not obscene but merely indecent speech, they would still be outside of the constitutional protection because they were conveyed through a medium easily accessible to children. The majority misapplied the doctrine of FCC v. Pacifica, the leading jurisprudence on this matter. Pacifica did not hold that indecent speech, when conveyed through a medium easily accessible to children, would automatically be outside the constitutional protection. On the contrary, the U.S. Supreme Court emphasized the narrowness of its ruling in Pacifica. The guideline that Pacifica laid down is that the broast of a monologue containing indecent speech could be considered protected or unprotected depending on the context, that is, the time of the day or the nightwhen the indecent utterances were delivered. The majority's ruling in this case sets a dangerous precedent. This decision makes it possible for any television or radio program, on the slightest suspicion of being a danger to national security or on other pretexts, to likewise face suspension. The exacting "clear and present danger" test is dispensed with to give way to the "balancing of interests" test in favor of the government's exercise of its regulatory power. Granting without conceding that "balancing of interests" is the appropriate test in setting a limitation to free speech, suspension of a television program is a measure way too harsh that it would be inappropriate as the most reasonable means for averting a perceived harm to society. The restriction on freedom need not be greater than is necessary to further the governmental interest.25 The "balancing of interests" test requires that a determination must first be made whether the necessary safeguarding of the public interest involved may be achieved by some other measure less restrictive of the protected freedom.26 The majority immediately resorted to outright suspension without first exploring other measures less restrictive of freedom of speech. It cites MTRCB v. ABS-CBN Broasting Corporation27 in justifying the government's exercise of regulatory power. But the ABS-CBN case involved a mere fine as punishment, not a prior restraint in the form of suspension as in this case. In the cited case, one of the episodes of "The Inside Story," a television program of ABS-CBN, was aired without prior review and approval by the MTRCB. For this omission, the MTRCB subsequently fined ABS-CBN in the amount of P20,000. However, even as the television station was fined, the program continued to be aired and was never suspended. Indeed, prior restraint by suspension is an extreme measure that may only be imposed after satisfying the "clear and present danger" test, which requires the perceived danger to be both grave and imminent. Prior restraint is simply uncalled for in this case where what is involved is not even obscene speech, but mere indecent speech. Note too, that the subject utterances in this case were broast starting 10:00 p.m. onwards, well within the safe harbor period for permissible television broast of speech which may be characterized as indecent. Suspension of the program stops not only petitioner, but also the other leaders of his congregation from exercising their constitutional right to free speech through their medium of choice, which is television. The majority opinion attempts to assuage petitioner's misery by saying that petitioner can still exercise his right to speak his mind using other venues. But this proposition assumes that petitioner has access to other venues where he may continue his interrupted exercise of free speech using his chosen mode, television broast. While we may not agree with petitioner's choice of language in expressing his disgust in this word war between two feuding religious groups, let us not forget that freedom of speech includes the expression of thoughts that we do not approve of, not just thoughts that are agreeable.28 To paraphrase Voltaire: We may disapprove of what petitioner has said, but we must defend to the death his right to say it. The three-month suspension cannot be passed off merely as a preventive suspension that does not partake of a penalty. The actual and real effect of the three-month suspension is a prior restraint on expression in violation of a fundamental constitutional right. Even Congress cannot validly pass a law imposing a three-month preventive suspension on freedom of expression for offensive or vulgar language uttered in the past. Congress may punish such offensive or vulgar language after their utterance, with damages, fine, or imprisonment; but Congress has no power to suspend or suppress the people's right to speak freely because of such utterances. In short, Congress may pass a law punishing defamation or tortious speech but the punishment cannot be the suspension or suppression of the constitutional right to freedom of expression. Otherwise, such law would be abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press. If Congress cannot pass such a law, neither can respondent MTRCB promulgate a rule or a decision suspending for three months petitioner's constitutional right to freedom of speech. And of course, neither can this Court give its stamp of imprimatur to such an unconstitutional MTRCB rule or decision. I end this dissenting opinion with a reminder from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - that the market place of ideas is still the best alternative to censorship.29 The market place of ideas makes freedom of speech robust and allows people to be more tolerant of opposing views. It has been said that freedom of speech is not only to freely express oneself within the context of the law but also to hear what others say, that all may be enlightened, regardless of how obnoxious or erroneous the opposing views may be.30 Accordingly, I vote to GRANT the motion for reconsideration. Endnotes:
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