GMA 7 journalist Atom Araullo has won a first knockout victory against the red-tagging duo Lorraine Badoy Partosa and Jeffrey Celiz of the Sonshine Media Network, Inc. (SMNI), the broadcast outfit used by detained Pastor Apollo Quiboloy to spew evidence-free attacks against journalists, progressive organizations and critics of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio and her father, the unlamented ex-president Rodrigo Duterte.
Quiboloy heads the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC), the cult that has established itself in an area long inhabited by Manobo tribesmen, nearly all of whom had been driven out of their domain or perpetually silenced from protesting. Quiboloy is detained at the Pasig City Jail for abuse of minors, sexual trafficking, and other charges. He has been indicted for sexual trafficking, money laundering, wire fraud, violations of immigration laws, and other federal crimes in the US.
After becoming a liability to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the highly-funded Duterte agency let them go. Still, SMNI recruited them to pursue their red-tagging, propagating bloody intrigue against journalists like Atom Araullo and his mother, Dr. Carol Pagaduan Araullo, and fabricating rumors consistent with the NTF-ELCAC talking points crafted by Hermogenes Esperon Jr. before and the latest scenarios being churned out by Ernesto Torres today, with much help from Jonathan Malaya of the National Security Council (NSC).
The Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 306 (RTC Branch 306) ordered Badoy and Celiz to pay Araullo P2.080 million in damages and lawyers’ fees to compensate for “the red-tagging and its effects on his personal life and his career as a journalist.” Judge Dolly-Rose Bolante Prado made short shrift of the truncated logic of the Badoy-Celiz duo, which has been polluting the airwaves with personal and baseless attacks against Atom Araullo and Dr. Carol Pagadauan Araullo, ranging from their being top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and cadres of the New People’s Army (NPA.)
Judge Prado’s decision, promulgated on Dec. 12, 2024 and released the following day, found no cogent reason to accept the rumors woven by the Badoy-Celiz duo. Under this duo’s flawed logic, Atom and Carol should prove they are not what Badoy and Celiz claim they are, meaning those accused have to prove their innocence. This is a classical McCarthyist line propagated by the late Donald Trump counsel Roy Cohn, who manufactured evidence that led to the conviction and execution of Dr. Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, for delivering intelligence information to the Russians on the Manhattan Project. The entire episode was a fluke as a Jewish family that worked on the top-secret program admitted the crime and the Kremlin confirmed the same family were its spies.
The Prado decision could be a precedent for all those who have sued the government and its intelligence operatives for running berserk and using the so-called “whole of nation approach” to attack individuals and organizations as “communists” and “terrorists” who should be stripped of their bank accounts, designated as the nation’s scourge and clapped in prison for eternity. For acting as jukeboxes playing a tune as coins are inserted, Badoy and Celiz failed to defend themselves by disproving the declaration of the Supreme Court (SC) in May 2024 that red-tagging is a threat to one’s constitutional right to life, liberty, and security.
“I am elated by the court’s ruling. Above all, this case opens up a legal option for anyone who has been a victim of red-tagging and harmful disinformation, particularly journalists. It is not ok to be attacked or harassed simply for doing our jobs,” Araullo said in a statement. In her 27-page decision, Judge Prado invoked the SC’s definition and said that Badoy and Celiz “deliberately sought to discredit and inflict harm on Araullo.” Her decision will now impact on similar cases inasmuch as punitive damages were imposed on Badoy and Celiz, who have become even more notorious as the key propaganda operators of the Duterte faction, which is now bedeviled by the impeachment complaints against Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio and the crimes against humanity slapped against her father Rodrigo by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
“This case also shows how one can seek redress for defamation without resorting to criminal libel, an archaic and anachronistic law that has been often used to silence critical reporting, criticism, and dissent,” said the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP.) The QC court also explicitly said that red-tagging is “inherently malicious.” Malice is an element of criminal libel, but Article 33 of the Civil Code allows a separate and distinct civil action for defamation. In determining whether red-tagging was malicious, the judge said that “an act that threatens fundamental rights inherently carries malice.”
