Media law final exams today. 1pm exam, finished, examinees have left the room and spread the word, so the 1pm questions are now public. Here’s one of the bonus questions:
For 5 points! (Drumroll…)
66-71) Blogger JLo complained during a press con on the Cybercrime Law that her daughter would not be able to “rant” anymore in Facebook and Twitter whenever she is served “undercooked” or “overcooked” hamburger in Jollibee or McDonald’s because “it would be punishable as libel” under the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. What would you advise JLo, based on your background in media law? Explain.
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i’ll be incommunicado until I’ve submitted the grades. Well, actually, I could still be reached but I won’t reply unless… close po ba tayo? ka-text ko po ba kayo, hindi po, salamat.
For that interregnum, will just be blogposting the amusing answers to the bonus questions starting tomorrow; maybe one a day.
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For this particular question, since there is no particular jurisprudence with exactly the same facts, there are no right and wrong answers; but the examiner is looking for the following: 1)What are the subjects of fair comment? [We took up at least nine (many!) subjects of fair comment, with one of them being so broad as to cover any matter of public interest; and 2)what the criteria for fair comment? Those comments are not libelous. Just state the relevant category and you’ll get the full points.] 3) If the examinee includes the following discussion, he/she will get wild applause from me: When is a so-called “rant”, “joke” etc. (a “like” in FB or a “he-he-he” after a re-tweet) covered by the fair-comment-rule and therefore not libelous? (broad category too; you’ll be happy if you know your media law) Abanganthe sagot! (Watch out for the answers!)
Libel is always content-based, it is not medium-based.
(Palakpakan! applause! big smile! confetti! balloons!)
Related article published in inquirer.net today (see previous blog post below: “Follow Phivolcs on Twitter– IF it opens a Twitter account — eywver” )
“Sorry, but Phivolcs is not on Twitter By: DJ Yap Philippine Daily Inquirer 1:32 am | Monday, September 3rd, 2012
“For netizens who wanted quick information about Friday’s earthquake, it was a night of frustration of seismic proportions.
“After a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck off the country’s eastern coast on Friday night, netizens hit the keys to access the website of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) for confirmation of the frenzy on the network news.
“But if the Pacific-wide tsunami warning that the temblor had spurred had been right, they would have been swept away without seeing even a flicker from the Phivolcs website.
“The Phivolcs page wouldn’t load.
“People tried to look for Phivolcs on Twitter, and failed to find it.
“CNN World Weather anchor Mari Ramos was one of those who had been looking and ended up tweeting in frustration: “Is PHIVOLCS on twitter? I can’t get into their webpage… #PHTrenchQuake #Philippines.”
“Sorry, but Phivolcs has no Twitter account.
“Asked for an explanation, Phivolcs Director Renato Solidum said a lot of Internet users tried to access the agency’s website after the powerful quake struck, but its bandwidth could not accommodate the huge traffic.
“ “The truth is we have a large bandwidth, much larger than the regular bandwidth, but that bandwidth is shared with our own people,” Solidum told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
“Worse, Solidum said Phivolcs IT officers detected a “flooding attack” from unknown sources that blocked people from reaching the site and caused error messages to pop up instead.
“ “We still don’t know where the flooding attack came from but right now, we will try to increase our capacity and put up mirror sites, so people can be diverted to the mirror sites without affecting our operations,” Solidum said.
“ “As for a Phivolcs Twitter account, he said the agency did not have enough staff members to provide updates on social media.
“ “What we do is we give the updates to the concerned agencies, which then post the updates on Twitter,” he said.
“Solidum said the Phivolcs was more focused on the real-time flow of information to the concerned agencies, including the Office of Civil Defense, which would issue advisories and warnings to residents of areas an earthquake had struck.” (PDI, today’s issue)
Newspeg: “… (F)ollowing criticism of the agency’s lack of a presence on Twitter and other social sites, (Phivolcs spokesperson Mylene) Villegas said that Phivolcs is already looking at the possibility of opening social media accounts, but added that this step needs to be studied and handled by the appropriate people.
(PHIVOLCS is the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, the government agency in charge of studying and monitoring volcanic and seismic events and alerting the public on whether they should start evacuating, etc. — they don’t have a presence in the internet except for a website that crashed during last Friday’s earthquake)
“ Unlike other local government agencies like the MMDA and PAGASA —both of which are also focused on real-time monitoring and information dissemination— Phivolcs does not have an active presence on social media and lacks a dedicated team of social media personnel.
“ “Yung social media pinag-uusapan na yan (“As for social media, we are still deliberating on it…”), but we need to have a dedicated person to do that,” Villegas explained.” (gmanetwork.com and gmanews.tv)
“Needs to be studied”; “handled by appropriate people”; “we are still deliberating on it”; “we need a dedicated person”.
Seriously. Really.
During calamities, people rely on information for survival. In areas where the power is out, being able to access the social media thru mobile devices could be a matter of life and death.
Any staffmember authorized to speak for PHIVOLCS, and who can type 146 characters, can tweet, or can type tweets based on content given by PHIVOLCS officials. Even the spokesperson herself can be on Twitter in her capacity as PHIVOLCS official spokesperson, if PHIVOLCS itself as an agency does not want to be on Twitter. It takes ten minutes to set up a Twitter account.
Here’s your first tweet: “PHIVOLCS is now on Twitter.”
Here’s your second tweet: “More than 200 aftershocks have been recorded”
(i got that from gmanews.tv because i’m not a staffmember of Phivolcs ).
Here’s your third tweet: “Temblor was strong enough, magnitude 7 has energy like 32 Hiroshima atomic bombs – Phivolcs director”
(i got that from the inquirer.net because I didn’t interview the Phivolcs director).
Ang suggestion ko po ay (the suggestion is): Don’t wait for the next earthquake.
