GOOD grief, the provincial prosecutors office finally dismissed the libel case filed against us by Alden S. Bonot, former member (he was roundly rejected by coop consumers of his Calabanga district in his re-election bid last year) of the beleaguered Board of Directors of Camarines Sur II Electric Cooperative, Inc.

        Our abogado de campanilla Henry V. Briguera, this paper’s legal counsel, should be given much of the credit for salvaging us from the drift, so to speak, by penning the counter-affidavit in our behalf (staff writer Juan Escandor, publisher Nilo Aureus, and this columnist as BM editor) which more or less prompted the prosecutors office to declare: “(F)inding that the assailed publication to be privileged communication, the private complainant (Bonot) being a public figure, and the failure … to establish actual malice on the part of the respondents (Escandor, et al), the dismissal of this instant case is hereby recommended.” Satisfied, Provincial State Prosecutor Agapito Rosales approved such recommendation throwing Bonot’s complaint into, well, the trash can -- where it belongs.

        One down, another one coming up. The City Prosecutors Office, on the other hand, is expected to resolve soon a similar libel rap, based on the same news story, separately filed by Casureco II OIC General Manager Rodel L. Pasumbal who also claimed our story to be false and “malicious”.

        Atty. Briguera, the former broadcaster and journalist with a killer smile on his lips, is Bicol’s legal eagle par excellence, particularly when it comes to libel cases where the defendants are his fellow mediamen.

        For the record, Atty. Briguera has been my legal counsel for the seven (yes, 7!), libel cases filed against me and my former publishers in various courts and prosecutors’ offices in Naga, Iriga, Ligao and Legazpi City when I was still a younger editor. The judges assigned to these cases, mesmerized and overwhelmed, I guess, by Briguera’s brilliance and rhetoric, dismissed all the cases. I wouldn’t tell you that I wondered, too, why there must always be a pretty lady passenger hitching a ride towards the town where we had the court hearing.

        I recall that at one time, one of the judges congratulated me in open court for being a “brilliant witness” after hurdling a gruelling cross-examination by the prosecuting lawyer whose English did not match his impressive outfit. I wondered how the poor guy passed the bar, to the detriment of his similarly stupid client.

        Though we have already appointed another counsel, Henry was there offering his help when I was held for contempt by another judge, which was a different case. As I realized too late, picking a fight with a judge in his own courtroom was a different case, if not an absurd one. Hence, this column’s name where I was incarcerated for 7 days after that lopsided face-off!

        But what is libel?

        Simply put, libel is maligning a man by telling falsehood with a malicious mind.

        As far as we journalists are concerned, professional ethics dictate that before publishing a truthful but damaging statement, the press should weigh carefully whether the public interest is served by publishing it. In any case, absence of malice must be a foregone conclusion in the publication of a news report.

        And what is privileged communication?

        My journalist guidebook says that privileged means protection from legal action even when a defamatory material has been published. Privilege is based on two traditional assumptions: 1) It would be in the public interest for every citizen to attend certain events or read certain reports (as in Casureco II supplemental budget resolution). Failing that, all citizens (i.e. power consumers) should have access to fair and accurate reports of such events. 2) In some cases, the public good is better served through unrestrained debate and the free communication of information than it is through a normal concern about accuracy or defamation. Thus, the Camarines Sur provincial prosecutor in its decision on the libel case against us correctly stated, thus: “errors or misstatements are inevitable in any scheme of truly free expressions and debate so that consistent with good faith and reasonable care, the press should not be held to account to a point of suppression for honest mistakes or imperfections in the choice of language.” Bonot had alleged in his complaint that the story reported by Escandor was “false and malicious”.

        Lack of malice, by the way, means there is no dishonest or hidden motive nor reckless disregard for the truth.

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        Letters to the editor amuse us and pamper us as well. But we pause sometimes when the letter goes like this: “My client, Mr. Calandria, feels that your news story maligned him, caused damage to his reputation, and loss of revenue in his business. He is therefore initiating action…”

        Once that fateful letter arrived, there is nothing much to be done but to pass the letter to your publisher and lawyer and recall the facts why that story came out in the first place. Did we observe the proper safeguards on fairness and accuracy? Was there malice when we caused the story to be published?

        Whatever is the answer, a journalist’s guidebook tells us to dress nicely for our day in court. That may do something for the judge to think that we are not bums, after all; more respectable even than the onion-skinned complainant whom we caught picking his dirty nose after robbing other people’s money.