MANILA — The Supreme Court First Division has junked a civil suit for libel against the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a reporter and some of its editors filed by former senator Juan Ponce Enrile over a 2001 article on a coco levy agreement.

The article, written by reporter Donna Cueto, attributed to then-Presidential Commission on Good Government chair Haydee Yorac a statement explaining why the commission opposed the coco levy agreement — it will supposedly allow Marcos cronies like Enrile to keep their “plundered loot.”

The coco levy fund scandal in the 1970s and 1980s involved the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. and his cronies who allegedly conspired to tax coconut farmers supposedly for the development of the coconut industry. But the funds were found to have been used for personal gains because they were invested in banks and corporations.

It was part of the ill-gotten wealth litigated by the PCGG.

Yorac subsequently denied issuing the statement nor authorizing anyone to make the statement on behalf of the PCGG.

It turned out that Cueto obtained the statement from then-PCGG commissioner Ruben Carranza, and his editors subsequently asked if the statement could be attributed to Yorac.

Aggrieved over the allegations against him of being a Marcos crony, of benefiting from the coco levy fund and of accumulating ill-gotten wealth, Enrile lodged a civil suit to claim damages.

Aside from the PDI and Cueto, named as co-defendants were editors Artemio Engracia, Jr., Abelardo Ulanday and then-editor-in-chief, the late Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc.

The regional trial court awarded Enrile P2.5 million in damages and P250,000 in attorney’s fees, finding that PDI “acted with reckless disregard as to the truth or falsity of the articles they published” when they falsely attributed the statement to Yorac and failed to show it was the PCGG’s official statement.

The Court of Appeals upheld the ruling but reduced the damages to P1.2 million and the attorney’s fees to 100,000, even as it faulted PDI for publishing the story knowing that the reporter did not confirm with PCGG or Yorac if they had indeed issued a statement.

In reversing the rulings of the RTC and CA, the SC said both courts should have looked at the article “in its entirety” and from the readers’ perspective.

The decision, penned by SC Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, said that the supposedly defamatory imputation that Enrile was a plunderer and a Marcos crony came from the PCGG statement, not from the PDI reporter.

“[T]he fact that Inquirer failed to verify if the statements were indeed made by Yorac did not make the imputations in the article as its own,” it said.

“More importantly, both courts failed to view the article from the perspective of the reader, doing which would have led them to the conclusion that the article merely impresses on the reader that ‘Yorac said the following’ instead of ‘Enrile is a plunderer and a Marcos crony’,” it added.

The high court also said there was no presumption of malice because the issue on the coco levy fund is of public interest, Enrile is a public figure and a fair report on matters of public interest is considered qualifiedly privileged communication.

A qualifiedly privileged communication is an exception to the rule that every defamatory imputation is malicious, which simply means Enrile must prove there was actual malice in publishing the story.

Enrile failed to prove actual malice, according to the court.

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Citing an earlier Supreme Court ruling also involving the PDI, the SC said that “the failure of news outlets to counter-check or verify their reports, which may later on turn out to be false, does not per se make the public of such reports done with malice.”

“[A] reporter may rely on information given by a lone source although it reflects only one side of the story provided the reporter does not entertain a ‘high degree of awareness of [its] probable falsity;,” it said, citing the 2009 case of Villanueva vs. Philippine Daily Inquirer.

What constitutes malice, the court said, is not that the article is false but that it was published with the knowledge that it was false.

“To the mind of the Court, the reporter, Cueto, could not have had a ‘high degree of awareness’ that the statement contained falsities when the same was handed to her by no less than a PCGG Commissioner. In simple terms, why would anyone doubt a PCGG Commissioner who attests that a certain statement was PCGG’s or made by the PCGG Chairperson,” it explained.

The court also noted there was no proof presented that the publication of the article was meant to “harass, vex or humiliate Enrile”, and it was a straightforward narration that “a person said this” although it was wrongly attributed to Yorac.

Four other magistrates in the SC’s First Division concurred in the ruling — Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo and justices Rosmari Carandang, Rodil Zalameda and Samuel Gaerlan.

But even though the ruling recognized the critical role of press freedom in a democratic society, it reminded journalists of the importance of adhering to high ethical standards.

“[T]he freedom of expression is man’s birthright — constitutionally protected and guaranteed, and that it has become the singular role of the press to act as its ‘defensor fidei’ in a democratic society such as ours,” it said, citing the 1999 case of Borjal vs. CA.

“But it is also worth keeping in mind that the press is the servant, not the master, of the citizenry, and its freedom does not carry with it an unrestricted hunting license to prey on the ordinary citizen,” it added.

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