by Andrew Fornier

Well. I think we all saw that coming, much as we hoped against hope that the verdict would be different somehow. I guess it was like walking into a McDonald’s and expecting to find Chickenjoy on sale. I mean, there are some very specific elements that would have to converge for it to happen, and it isn’t exactly impossible, but you wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to come up empty-handed.

I should preface this by saying that I’m not a Ressa fan. (This is important.) I have little patience for the kind of journalism she has represented, in which the reporter is a celebrity of greater importance than the stories she has to tell. There’s a constant undercurrent of arrogance that oozes from the paragraphs of Rappler, particularly from its opinion pieces, which seems content to berate the common citizen for their “ignorance” and proclaim, in all self-righteousness, that there is only one way to look at the news.

I also do not think Ressa is necessarily representative of the kind of journalist whose freedom of speech and expression the Constitution was intended to protect. That she has become the standard-bearer for silenced reporters everywhere, a martyr for truth and the right to know it, only reflects the boneheaded stupidity of whoever masterminded this farce of a trial. Nice going, dummies. Like it or not, you’ve built yourself a hero. Sometimes we really are our own worst enemies. Even I will, somewhat grudgingly, sit with the critics here and say that Ressa should not have gone down this way.

See, here’s the thing. Even if Rappler’s executive editor was—and I’m not saying she is, this is just a hypothetical—the scum of the earth undeserving of the journalist heading, this case was so pathetically flimsy, and the decision so Chinese-acrobat-contortionistic in its absurd legal argumentation, that it is clear as day it was rigged from the beginning. Who cares if she actually, in some ways, may have gotten her just desserts? Maybe with some more digging, patience, a lot more research, someone with an axe to grind against Ressa would have eventually found a real case, a true crime worth taking her to task for.

But, really? An article that was written well before the penal law that would indict it, resurrected because of a one-letter typo? A ridiculous stretching of the prescription period against libel from one year to 12 freaking years because it was done online? Against one of the richest men in the Philippines, who after all the shame and horror and blackening of his reputation supposedly brought about by this article, is… still one of the richest men in the Philippines? And probably wiping his tears with stacks of thousand peso bills while crying to the cameras about how today, justice was finally served. I don’t know. I mean, I thought this kind of stuff didn’t really phase tycoons. I guess everybody hurts sometimes?

I’m not keen on delving into the merits of the decision, or to explain why, from a legally objective perspective, it is so very fundamentally wrong. Far more learned and eloquent scholars and academic types than I have done so already elsewhere on social media. And there’s still the whole appeals process and two collegiate courts to pass through. That’s a lot of BMWs and suitcases of cash to dole out, guys, so it’s not over yet. Hahaha just kidding. The fear of your family members getting shot in the head usually does the trick. Hahahaha kidding again! I really am. And I kind of have to emphasize that now, that those last few lines were scathing satire, because I am hopeful for basic reason to prevail. I want to believe that courts and the magistrates who preside over them look at the facts and then apply the law to reach a fair conclusion, instead of having that conclusion gift-wrapped at the outset and finding the law and the interpretation of facts that fits. That’s what the lawyers do. We train for this our whole lives. You just hope against hope that the judges know differently.

Yeah, I get that freedom of speech is not absolute and must be exercised responsibly and all that. But what a lot of folks may not get is that those boundaries are deliberately stretched very far and wide, and are very thin, because being irresponsible with speech is kind of the point. Truth isn’t absolute, either. And the right to declare what is or isn’t the truth does not belong to anyone, or any government. Like science, it’s something that we all have to collectively come in an agreement to, and even then it changes. Just as science has its crazy, worthless experiments, and its happy accidents, there’s a whole spectrum of reporting from which we gain our knowledge and appreciation of the facts. Sure, a lot of it is garbage and will continue to be so. But that’s no excuse for anyone to tell you that littering is forbidden. One man’s garbage is another man’s fertilizer, after all.

Lastly, let’s not forget how quickly tables turn. Power, even inter-generational, doesn’t last forever. Today’s Mocha Uson may very well be tomorrow’s Maria Ressa.

Andrew Fornier is a food fanatic, aspiring micro-philanthropist and concerned citizen. This was a Facebook status dated June 15, re-posted here with permission