"Experience should teach us to be most on guard when government's purposes are beneficent," Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once waned. Thus, grizzled editors hit the warning button when officials loft proposals that they soothingly claim: these will "instill responsibility" in a free press.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel and Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara swore their "purposes were beneficent." when they filed bills that'd compel "right of reply." In House Bill 162, Angara prescribes a 30-day term in the slammer, plus fines up to P30,000, for "stubborn" editors or station managers, i.e. those who'd refuse to air an "offended person's side."

Pimentel similar proposal withered with the last Congress. He recycled that in Senate Bill 1178. Like HB 162, government would muscle into newsrooms. The bills strip editor or station manager of constitutionally-protected functions.

Consider their proposals: A reply must be published or aired, a day after receipt. That's not all. It must appear on the same page or be aired on same program. Wait. There's more. It has to be of the same length or time. And charges shouldn't be dunned.

Do a test run. Suppose a column of 20 column-inches on page one, attacked the Angara family dynasty. Under his brainstorm, Rep Angara could insist on his same-length, same-place reply - even if the editor, decided that the NPA attempt to ambush Senator Edgardo Angara, his father, was more news-worthy.

Malacanang spokesman Ignacio Bunye could over-rule ABS-CBN's Maria Ressa, if she allocated broadcast time to, say Nielsen ratings than point-by-point responses to Pimentel's tirades.

Who'd exercise these editorial functions? Malacanang? The Public Information Agency? Imagine local politicians calling the shots in this newspaper.

"Government may not force a newspaper to print copy, which in its journalistic discretion, it chooses to leave on the newsroom's floor," Justice Byron White wrote in 1974. That still holds in 2008.

As in Sweden, Canada, Japan and other democratic countries, our Constitution (Sec. 4, Art III) provides: "No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, expression, and of the press." There are no ifs and buts. This is a stricture against prior restraint.

"Media can not be told what to publish," the Cebu Citizens Press Council points out, in a position paper. "(Likewise, it) can not be told what not to publish." But a legislated right to reply operates as a command. "Thus, this is prior restraint."

Pimentel and Angara are not idiots. They know it's settled jurisprudence that there's no right of reply for person who claim being wronged. "There is no right of access to privately owned media." Yet, they whoop along bills that'd intrude into newsrooms.

In so doing, they play deaf to what Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote: "There are absolutes in our Bill of Rights. They were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions were absolute."

Indeed, "the Charter's provision against the clipping of press freedom covers all papers (or stations): good, lousy or indifferent," Philippine Daily Inquirer said in "A Press Tutorial" commentary. "But in a democratic society, the only permissible form of (restraint) is the citizen's refusal to read or listen."

A free press is not necessarily an angelic press. "All too often, the press is morally smug or factually careless or, on our worst days, both," Columnist Meg Greenfield admits. But most journalists are decent folk. They'd play fair and also pass a life-style check. TV host Wille "Wow-wow-wee" Revillame, who tools around in a P30-million Ferrari sports car, with dubious registration papers, is an exception.

Therefore, the press adopts self-regulatory mechanisms. That is what those "Codes of Ethics" are.

Internationally, New York Times has probably one of the most detailed statement of "dos and don'ts," notably against conflict of interest. A Times reporter, who developed a romantic crush on a political party's spokesman, was reassigned. "We don't care if you sleep with the elephants. But you may not cover the circus," the Times editor said in his transfer memo.

Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters have their standards. The Philippine Press Institute's 11-point code ranges from right of reply to protection of minors. In the community press, Sun Star Cebu has probably the most detailed "Code of Ethics and Standards" This 62-page document even spells out "Policy and Protocol" to protect journalists from threats and harassments.

"Editorial lapses are being corrected by the press' own mechanisms," a statement by Cebu journalists stressed. In fact, the Cebu Citizens-Press Council by-laws provide: the right to reply is ground for a council complaint.

That task of the press to become more accountable to its audiences is made difficult by democratic space. "Democracy sometimes seems the art of running a circus from the monkey cage," the editor H.L. Mencken said. Frail men and women try to work by ethical standards under deadlines pressures: "the invisible environment - the complexity of forces and agencies that we can not monitor for ourselves but affect our lives," as Time editor Harold Evans put it.

They don't always succeed. But the way forward is for press groups, in 79 other provinces, to institutionalize, self-regulating mechanisms. Shoving a gun at our temples, as Pimentel, Angara and Co. propose, is "walking backward into the future."

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)