Eight media groups and some of the county's most prominent print and broadcast journalists have filed a petition to restrain executive officials from muffling the media, the Philippine Center for Investigative Reporting reported on its website yesterday.

Named respondents are Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Justice secretary Raul Gonzalez, Philippine National Police Director General Arturo Lomibao, and National Telecommunications Commission Chairman Ronald Solis. The petitioners asked the Court of Appeals to prohibit the respondents from "imposing any form of content-based prior restraint on the press, be it formal or informal, direct or in the form of disguised or thinly veiled threats of administrative sanction or criminal prosecution."

The petition stressed that only a court, with its accompanying due process safeguards, may impose content-based prior restraints, when the grounds therefore are duly proved.

The petitioners asked the court to immediately issue a certiorari and prohibition with application of a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction against the respondents. They also asked the court to nullify NTC circulars that, they said, were vague and left virtually unlimited discretion to those administering the regulation.

Following the President's February 24 declaration of a state of national emergency, the Philippine National Police raided the office and printing press of the newspaper, Daily Tribune. On the same day, PNP chief Lomibao told the media that the Tribune" was deeply engaged in continuing propagation of disinformation and publication of seditious and scurrilous remarks or articles." In the same press conference, Lomibao warned media practitioners who, he said, will "contribute to an atmosphere of instability." Even after the lifting of the state of emergency on March 3, the petition said, the respondents have continued their efforts to muzzle and gag the press.

"Respondents Secretary Gonzalez, Director General Lomibao and NTC Chair Solis continue to monitor and review the content of publications, broadcasts, and/or telecasts; Respondents continue to threaten the press, directly or indirectly, that if they do not toe the line they will be administratively sanctioned or criminally prosecuted; and Respondents continue to impose content-based prior restraint in violation of the Constitution and existing laws," they said.

The petitioners also said such threats and warnings are just as damaging to a free press as the fact of it.*

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