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Speech delivered by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P. A. Sereno during the KBP Top Level Management Conference on November 14, 2014 in Taal Vista, Tagaytay City

[T]hose associates of the Kapisanan ng Broadcasters ng Pilipinas [KBP],

this is indeed an honor to be here with you this morning. As I understand even

more keenly now the pivotal role that your organization is going to play and

has been playing in our country’s history, I believe that you need to make

certain important decisions, not only philosophical and metaphysical

decisions, but also decisions that will require you to review how you are going

to reorganize, restructure your differences in the way that you need to

confront the technological innovations that are coming along our way and the

changes that have seen people communicating with each other in ways that

we have never seen before.

So I value the fact that I am here with you not only perhaps to deliver a

few lines before you but also because I sense the future that is going to unfold

for the Philippines, simply because you have gotten together, and you are

going to make and have made some important decisions. And for this alone, I

am grateful that you have thought of welcoming me in your midst and I thank

you for that very warm welcome. In order that perhaps you can listen to how

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a Chief Justice in the 21st century thinks also of the future and the role of

media.

My topic is really about the role of the courts and the media. And you

were asking me basically how broadcast media can be made more relevant to

the aspirations of our people for justice. However, let me then recast the

theme into the frame of relationships, something that I am very keenly

involved in, which is the relationship between the courts, which I lead as the

institutional head, and the broadcast media. How can the courts and the

media, which at first glance appear to be polar opposites, co-exist with each

other, let alone work productively?

The late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the United States Supreme

Court, described the relationships between the courts and the press as one of

fundamental and necessary interdependence. He said that the press needs the

courts. If only for the simple reason that the courts are the ultimate guardian

of the constitutional rights that support the press. And the court has the

concomitant need for the press because through the press, the court receives

the tacit and accumulated experience of the nation. And because the

judgments of the court ought also to instruct and inspire, the court needs the

medium of the press to fulfill this task. In the Philippine context, I would take

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this characterization of necessary interdependence, and may I add

unnecessarily conflicted. Our experience with each other would inform us that

there is a necessary though not always uncomfortable relationship between

the courts and the press.

In a candid assessment of the inadequacies of court reporting in the U.S.,

a veteran American court reporter described himself and his colleagues this

way: for the most part, we are untrained and deadline-crazed with short

attention spans and an inbred preference for heat over light, and simplicity

over nuance. I think he was only partly joking, but I leave it to you to

determine which part. Judges on the other hand will never admit to being

untrained, though some of us may confess to not being too concerned with

deadlines even if we all should be. We will brag of having long attention spans

and the ability to write decisions that are often long on nuance and short on

clarity. In every instance, we are confident that each word we write will bring

light to the issues presented in each case, if not to the larger world beyond

that case. It is therefore in this sense that we may see that the courts and

media are on opposite ends, which explains why we are often perceived to be

at odds with each other.

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Let me then go back to the question I posted at the start: How can the

courts and the media, which at first blush appear to be at polar opposites, co-

exist with each other, let alone work productively? My short answer to that

question is: They can because they must.

A free press and an independent judiciary co-existing and relating

productively with each other is the only way to ensure that we will continue

to be a society built on the Rule of Law.

The Rule of Law needs a system of justice that is predictable, open, and

transparent, but it also needs deep public confidence in the judiciary and the

administration of justice. The courts are essential in ensuring the former but

the media must do their share to assure the latter. Let me share with you

today my thoughts on these two strands: what the broadcast media can do to

maintain public confidence in the work of the courts and what the courts in

turn must do to meet the challenges that flow from new ways of reporting the

news and communicating information to the public.

So let me go to the first strand, which is what the media can do to build

and maintain public confidence in the works of the courts. This is not to say

that I am looking at the media as the propaganda arm of the court, but let me

rather say that the media is to ensure that the Rule of Law is indeed sustained.

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Now a key feature of societies that profess a commitment to the Rule of Law,

and my presumption is Philippine society by its constitutional architecture

and the expressed aspirations of the people is committed to the Rule of Law.

Whether that is observed by all the public sectors is something of course that

needs further analysis. This actually therefore presumes that there is public

confidence in the justice system and the judiciary. I’m not saying it is a forced

confidence but there must be that confidence. This is actually elementary and

logical because unless the members of the public respect the courts, they will

not choose to settle their disputes through the courts. They will go

somewhere else and resort to other means. Unless institutional respect for the

courts is restored and maintained, court orders will not be obeyed and

judgments will be empty documents that are full of sound and theory

signifying nothing. If I may therefore, although this is already a decision that

has already attained finality , it is for the reason that you still have confidence

in the judiciary that you still came to us for redress. And I think that it means

something, the fact that you went through that process. So there is this

assumption that there is this degree of confidence in the role of the courts.

But the question then is how does one build public confidence in the

courts? First, of course, we must appoint and keep good judges; the converse

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of that is we must remove from our midst those judges who do not live up to

the standards required for the judiciary. So that it is necessary that the public

understand what the courts are doing. Again, with this you will appreciate the

interdependence between the courts and the media because while the courts

can ensure to the extent that it can that its ranks and remain competent and

clean, it is the media that must take care of the second, and one without the

other will not result in building public confidence in the courts.

Appointing good judges will help ensure that we will have good

decisions, those that are based on law, logic, and reason. Appointing good

judges will also help ensure that we will have a distinct subset of public

officers who cannot be bought. That is why I kept on saying that it all starts

from the character of the judge. And that we must be able to deliver to the

people a kind of justice that is beyond the influence of money and politics.

As Chair of the Judicial and Bar Council [JBC], let me assure you that we

are doing our best to ensure that the judges we shortlist and screen for the

President are those that we believe are not only competent, but also

committed; those who are not only good legal technicians, but also good

people. I am of the firm belief that you cannot be a good judge unless you are

first a good person. As Chief Justice, let me also assure you that my colleagues

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and I have led a way in ensuring that we keep only judges and justices who are

competent, independent, and ethical by removing or sanctioning members of

the judiciary who fall short of the high standard that the Constitution imposes.

But allow me to interject at this point that until now, my call that I first

issued in October of 2012 for lawyers to come forward with the evidence so

that we can remove from our midst erring judges have remained unheeded,

and may I say that it is quite also a bit of a disappointment for me. Of course

when news of high-profile disciplinary cases occasionally make the headlines,

what is also not reported is what lies beneath the fold, that we are actually,

routinely, and regularly removing from our ranks those judges and court

employees whom we have found to have been in infraction of the rules but

whose cases are far less controversial. This regular cleaning up is necessary

but it is quietly being done.

But appointing good judges is only part of the equation, even if we have

good judges who come out with good decisions, public confidence would not

be sustained if the public is unaware and is not told about what we are doing.

They must know who the judges are and why they are good judges. Even if we

have a stable and predictable system of administering justice through

processes that actually work to reduce trial time and minimize corruption, the

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public must know about it. They must know how the system works and why

the system works. And they must know the measurements that we are using

to find out if there is in fact improvement or efficiencies being made. The

courts must ensure that the public has access to justice, but key and

fundamental to maintaining and ensuring confidence in the judiciary is also

publicizing what judges do — this is where media plays a significant role. Our

people do not have the luxury of time or inclination to sit through court

hearings or read through court records. This is where your role as

intermediary between the courts and the people comes in.

As intermediary, reporters chronicle what happens in the courts, they

break down in language that is understandable to the public what the court

has said and what the court has done. More than information dissemination,

your reporters also educate the public on the decisions of the court. Here is

where we observe unnecessary conflict arises. A journalist’s training and

instinct is always to go after the big story and to be the first to get the story. A

good nose for the news always involves the nose for the scoop or the

exclusive. You reporters have been very creative in seeking out scoops and

exclusives, and I have to commend them for that, yet many times in doing so,

broadcast journalists sacrifice the necessary nuance for the inevitable sound

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bite. This is something that many judges who thrive on a nuanced and narrow

exceptions find hard to understand. We do not speak or write in the same way

that you do. If the devil is in the details then the strength of the court lies in its

carefully calibrated, precisely perfect, and often deliberately nuanced

reasoning as written in its decisions. This does not lend itself easily perforce

to the sound bite or to the catchy headline or to the tickle teaser. This is where

many problems usually arise because no matter how good your reporters are,

many decisions of the Court cannot easily be reduced into a 10-second sound

bite. On the other hand, your airtime is too expensive that it would be too

costly to require you to allow the Chief of the Public Information Office to read

the decisions in its entirety every week. I learned about how expensive when

we were going over the case that you brought before us.

Court decisions are by nature intimidating to one not trained or inclined

to read them. On the other hand, broadcast by nature requires sustaining the

interest of your viewers on consistent basis. The dichotomy between sterile

reporting of important nuances in a court decision and the need to keep a

story exciting is not lost on me. We must be candid and admit that there have

been times that the line between truthful but sterile reporting has been

breached in favor of the more colorful but perhaps also less accurate

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narrative. These kinds of reports do not help, they hurt. They hurt not only the

people involved but also the institution. They erode faith and confidence in

the courts and instill and skepticism that bodes ill for maintaining a

commitment to the Rule of Law.

I think, and this is my preposition, that there is a way around this

unnecessary conflict. And it is simply for the courts to be true to its calling of

rendering reason, fair, just, and predictable decisions; and also for media to be

true to its calling of reporting accurately and firmly on court proceedings and

judgments. Perhaps, it is time to stop looking for angles to a story involving

court decisions just to make one story stand out and simply report them as

they are written. Perhaps it is time to prefer light over heat, and exercise

nuance over simplicity. The point is, we must give our best to finding out if

this in fact can be done. I believe that it is only in doing so that we, the courts,

and the media, may discharge fully our respective roles and maintain

confidence in the Rule of Law. It is the only way that we, the courts, and the

media, may remain truly relevant to the aspirations of our people for a just

society founded on the Rule of Law.

Before I end, let me say a few things about the second strand that I

proposed — what the courts in turn must do to meet the challenges of new

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ways in reporting the news and communicating information to the public. You

must understand — and I hope you reflect on this — that there is a reason

why the greatest strength of the courts is its institutional aloofness. Our

constitutional duty to decide and resolve disputes involving actual

controversies of legally demandable rights and the duty to determine if any

branch of government has acted in grave abuse of discretion cannot be

discharged if we are perceived to be partisans in any dispute. Our institutional

aloofness, however, does not mean that we are exempt from transparency —

far from it.

The Constitution mandates that our decisions must be public for trial

proceedings, with the exception of those that by nature must be confidential,

such as those involving minors. Publicity is already the norm. Our courts are

already open, and the public may go and observe. For proceedings before the

Supreme Court, our oral arguments are public and open, and subject to space

limitations, anyone can come to Padre Faura and listen. In our desire to make

oral arguments before the court reach an even wider audience, we have also

made our oral arguments even more accessible by recording and uploading

them to our website. The P.I.O. [Public Information Office] does this within

hours after the end of an oral argument. Recently, we have in some specific

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cases even allowed the live streaming of the audio of the oral arguments, and

this will happen again next Tuesday in the oral arguments on EDCA, on the

Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. [United States of

America] and the Philippine government.

Our promulgated decisions and specific resolutions that dispose of

controversies are uploaded to the Court’s website on a regular basis. More

than this, records and documents that pertain even to the Court’s finances are

available again on a regular basis over the website without restrictions.

You must understand, however, that until our decisions are

promulgated, nothing may be said about them in public. That is why our

deliberations and even our agenda are strictly confidential. I am aware of the

propensity of some of our reporters to capitalize on leaks and insider access

to write about deliberations before cases are decided and promulgated. These

do not help because instead of clarifying, they confuse. These are ways by

which we in the judiciary have seen fit to discharge our role in informing the

public of matters that are important to them because part of the inherent

limitations imposed on us by our role as judges, we are not as inclined to be

interviewed as the members of the political branches are. I sincerely believe,

however, that what the media would need in order to inform the public of

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what the judiciary does is available: our decisions are published and

accessible, our institutional financial documents are on the internet. All that

reporters would need to do is to take the time to read, study, analyze and

write about this.

This, notwithstanding, I have been asked repeatedly about the issue of

accessibility of our SALN [Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth]. I fail

to see the problem here because these are already accessible upon request.

And since 2012, you have seen a noticeable rise in access to the SALNs of the

members of the Court, and your reporters are diligent in getting a copy of our

SALNs the moment that we file them. May I in fact inform you already that we

are sincerely discussing ways of already summarizing our SALNs and

uploading them on the web so that there will be less reason for anyone to

complain about lack of accessibility of already accessible documents. And we

already taking steps to try to find out how these can be operationalized

because I really wonder why despite the fact that many of your reporters

already have a copy of our SALNs and some of you have even put them on

video feed to the public, there is a recurring complaint about these.

The Court has done all these not because it needs the publicity but

because it has a duty to perform and that duty is to ensure that the public is

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informed, understand the work of the courts, and in the process assure that

there is a system of justice that is in place that is working well and will

continue to work well. This the Court is doing with your help. This is of course

not to deny that there are many problem areas that we are still addressing.

And many of your reporters have been with me when I had made major public

announcements of the reforms that we have been doing. They were with me

when the pilot Electronic Court System was launched in Quezon City, now it’s

being launched in eight other cities, and by the end of 2016 we hope that the

Electronic Court System will have already captured around 25% of all courts

that are responsible for — I mean of all courts that are responsible for 25% of

the nation’s dockets.

Your reporters were with me when we launched the Electronic

Subpoena System and I can assure you that it is going to be rolled out in other

locations and there are already talks about Electronic Warrants of Arrest and

other variant forms of these kinds of improvements. Your reporters were also

with me when we discussed the impact of the Hustisyeah! Decongestion

Program and the Continuous Trial Program that will hopefully make access to

justice a reality for people and speedy justice in fact be something that is

visible to the public. These are just some of the improvements that we have

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been trying to introduce and when we have sought to introduce them, your

people have always been with us.

So now I have spoken about how the courts and the media can work

constructively to bring about prompt, accurate, relevant, and reasonably

complete coverage of the courts’ work in both form and substance. Having

acknowledged this necessary interdependence, and having encouraged all of

us working together, I want to end with a challenge, one that is posed by the

information revolution that is happening even as we speak. There is an

explosive growth of new media and this has signaled a shift in court

reportage. The growth of citizen journalism has created an entirely new

paradigm and model of reporting, it also will impact significantly your

revenue model. Where pen and paper and airtime used to be the line which

separated the journalist from the interested observer, the internet and social

media and the rise of smart phones have now rendered that line practically

irrelevant. Now, anyone with a Twitter account can be a legal luminary in his

or her own mind. Many reporters get their tips on breaking news from social

media. Much of the stories that focus on heat rather than light come from the

comments on Facebook status pages from account holders who may have

proper names or simply avatars. What this revolution has done is to challenge

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us in the judiciary to understand how we can best communicate in this milieu

and using this medium. Perhaps this may call for us to reinvent the way we

write or communicate with the public through our decisions. There are many

ways to look at this. This is certainly a conversation that we in the judiciary

must have.

I have had the privilege of having had a few minutes with the key

leaders of the KBP in the holding room. And while I was free from what I

thought were important questions brought about by technological innovation,

in a sense those questions would reflect back on me and on my need to find

answers to those same questions in my work in the judiciary.

In the same way, I believe that this therefore challenges you to have and

continue to have that conversation among yourselves. How can you still be

best accountable and responsible in ensuring that a nuance in our decision

may be reported accurately, completely, reasonably, and promptly and not be

sucked into the temptation or undue sensationalism considering that out of

the blue, anything can just come out from social media. How best may you

maintain your ethical and professional standards of court coverage, mindful of

your role in sustaining public confidence in the Rule of Law.

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Justice Brennan was right, we, the media and the courts, are locked in a

mutual and sometimes uncomfortable embrace. We need each other, though

we may not often acknowledge it. So, as we in the judiciary keep pace in

information revolution, I believe that you are doing too. There is no other

choice because what is at stake is no less than the highest public interest, the

confidence of our people in a stable system of justice — one that proves itself

relevant, timely and beyond the commerce of men. Thank you for listening!

May our good Lord continue to bless all of us in our endeavors.