“What were our senators thinking?”
BACK at work after the May 12 midterm elections, our outgoing batch of senators passed several pieces of legislation this week. At first glance, it would appear that members of the Upper Chamber were all eager to get back to work, driven by the zeal to get as much done during the remaining days of the 19th Congress, which is scheduled to end next week.
“Zeal” is an interesting word.
“Zeal” could very well explain, for instance, why the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board Act, strengthening the agency’s reach to include online streaming platforms, was passed on third and final reading.
Section 2 of the law, the declaration of policy, says the State, as parens patriae, “recognizes the need to strengthen the mandate of its regulatory authority for the protection of the general public, particularly minors, from exposure to harmful and inappropriate content, in view of the evolving media landscape and proliferation of digital content. Towards this end, it is hereby declared the policy of the State to ensure public safety and moral integrity, and to promote general welfare by effectively regulating and classifying movies, television programs, publicity materials, and publicly accessible content from on-demand streaming services.”
Several groups have come out against the passage of SB 2805. The Directors’ Guild of the Philippines, for instance, says it stands for the broader interest of those who prefer to do parental duties by themselves, and rely on the MTRCB only for guidance through a genuine classification system (without censorship power) to facilitate these duties, possible only in a climate of free expression and free access to expression.
“While the bill attempts to frame the MTRCB as protector of children, its provisions unmask its real mission: the unbridled control of Filipino hearts and minds through censorship of material not only for minors but more harmfully for adults, whose freedoms are protected by our Constitution (Article III, Section 4) and by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 19),” the DGPI said in a statement.
The UP Film Institute says: “[RA 2805] does not acknowledge that streaming is not television and falls outside the agency’s jurisdiction. It is a dynamic space where viewers actively engage with diverse content. The cunning and undemocratic way the bill allows MTRCB to encroach on virtual space foretells how other spaces whose freedoms are guaranteed by our rights can be infringed and violated so easily.”
Filmmaker and Surian ng Sining Chair JL Burgos, whose own film was given an X rating for supposedly “undermining the faith and confidence of the people in their government,”
The law, thus, could outright ban any content that challenges the status quo, critiques government policy, or depicts social issues deemed “immoral” by conservative standards.
Then again, even before online streaming platforms emerged, the issue of censorship has long been controversial. Often, those who champion censorship believe themselves to be the guardians of the people, fully fit to decide what may or may not be consumed by the public – watched, read, listened to — on the grounds of moral integrity.
The implication is that there is a special group of all-knowing people who do know what is good and bad. The peril is that this supposedly enlightened lot could be overstepping their bounds and creeping into the sanctity of our personal spaces, and encroaching into the roles that are not their own.
What is bad for the youth – for anyone, really — is the exercise of limits on what they could read, see, or hear. It assumes they cannot think for themselves and would just absorb everything like a sponge. It presupposes they have nobody to help them process what they see and guide them to think critically.
And far too often, because something is prohibited, people find ways to get at them, eventually, curious on what the fuss was all about. If there should be any law on the MTRCB at all, it should be on its abolition.
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Meanwhile, a different kind of zeal is apparent in the Senate – to prevent the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, despite the fact that the House of Representatives had transmitted the articles of impeachment, and that nine out of 10 Filipinos in a survey said they wanted the trial to push through.
We are advocating neither a conviction or acquittal. That is the job of the senators acting like impeachment judges. What the people want is for the actual trial to push through so that accusations may be made and responded to, and evidence for both sides may be presented. We’ve gone for so long under the cloak of “confidentiality” – it is time to have everything out in the open.
Everything, including what our senators are truly made of.
