You must have heard the best news that we’ve had in eight years: the Court of Appeals (CA) granting Rappler’s appeal to nullify an “illegal” shutdown order that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued against us on January 11, 2018, at the height of the Duterte administration’s attacks against Rappler and its critics.
You’d be forgiven, though, for perhaps getting a bit confused about it. To this day, I still get to meet people who think we’ve already closed shop. Others assume we’d actually already won this case, which is why, they think, they see us online.
We did appeal the SEC’s kill order before the CA; this gave us breathing space and stopped the commission from fully implementing it. Not that it didn’t try. In fact, the SEC “ignored” the court’s first remand order to review the case in a reasonable manner, a show of “willful defiance that exceeds even the threshold of grave abuse of discretion.” The CA’s words, not mine.
We did wake up every morning fearing we could lose everything. We juggled alternative plans from A to Z — even as we knew that none of them could ever mirror what we have built with our sweat and tears. We held shutdown drills that did not spare the new hires and wide-eyed fresh grads.
But as we told you then in a letter: “When you stand and fight for what is right, there is no dead end, only obstacles that can only make us stronger.”
The injury that the SEC order caused our business, our newsroom, our dreams, and our everydays is immeasurable. This recent court verdict helps heal these deep wounds, but the scars are still too raw. They’re painful reminders of what — and who — we lost during those traumatic years.
What can we do as a next step in this arduous road to justice? Appreciate your thoughts on this.
Allow me, please, to walk you through what happened one more time. (Here’s a timeline.)
Two weeks after the January 2018 SEC order, we went to the CA for relief, pointing out that the commission singled us out over a financial instrument that other media companies had been allowed to use, and cut short its processes simply to pin us down. (A must-read: Why Rappler won its case vs Duterte-time SEC shutdown order)
- Headed then by chairperson Teresita Herbosa, the SEC conducted a lightning probe into Rappler, creating a special investigative panel in July 2017 and then, four weeks after, already issuing a show cause order that compelled us to explain why we should not be held liable for violating the Constitution.
- More than four months later, in January 2018, the commission, concluding that we violated the law on the ban on foreign ownership of media, revoked our license.
- The shutdown order came as fast as the curses that emanated from the foul mouth of then-president Rodrigo Duterte who, in his July 2017 State of the Nation Address (note how his and SEC’s timing synced), falsely claimed that Rappler was “fully owned by Americans.”
- Like clockwork, the Bureau of Internal Revenue filed tax evasion complaints against Rappler (which the courts have all dismissed); the National Bureau of Investigation initiated a cyber libel complaint against Maria Ressa, Rappler’s directors, and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. (the case has been elevated to the Supreme Court en banc); Duterte banned Rappler’s Pia Ranada and all Rappler staff from entering Malacañang and covering him; and other forms of harassment.
A month after the revocation order, Omidyar, to “eliminate” the basis for the SEC order and prove that its investment was made in good faith, donated its shares to Rappler’s managers.
Omidyar’s donation may have cured the problem, said the CA in a decision penned by its 12th Division in July 2018. Besides, the court added, the SEC has given other companies ample time to correct objectionable portions of their incorporation papers and Rappler should be no exemption.
The court thus remanded the case to the SEC to “reevaluate” the situation, given Omidyar’s donation and what it implied was the right of Rappler to a corrective period.
- In February 2021, the SEC reaffirmed its earlier closure order — without asking Rappler to give its side. It simply tossed back to the CA its stand that Omidyar’s donation did not cure the problem.
- We appealed the decision with the SEC. The commissioners dragged their feet until the last two days of the Duterte administration, when they reiterated their closure order against Rappler, posting it on the SEC website.
- This act meant that any individual or company transacting with Rappler simply had to check the SEC to see that… we have supposedly ceased to exist.
- The commission then asked Pasig city hall to execute the closure order and padlock the newsroom — but Pasig pushed back.
Simply put, the SEC — despite the case still pending with the CA — wanted to show the world that its decision, after “reevaluating” the case itself as ordered by the court, was final.
The gall of this commission, wrote Associate Justice Emily San Gaspar-Gito of the CA’s Special 7th Division in her scathing ponencia on July 23, 2024, which was concurred with by Associate Justices Ramon Cruz and Raymond Joseph Javier.
The CA castigated the SEC for not conducting an honest-to-goodness reinvestigation of the case, for insisting it carried the final word on it, and for adopting a “draconian” interpretation of what it deemed was Rappler’s violation.
- The SEC en banc did not just fail to “understand the CA 12th Division ruling [in 2018]” that ordered a reevaluation of the Rappler case, it also “display(ed) willful defiance that exceeds even the threshold of grave abuse of discretion.”
- The SEC en banc “evaluated the legal effect of Omidyar’s donation without even bothering to look at the donation itself” and “actively avoided giving petitioners the opportunity to present [evidence].”
- “Relying on its interpretation of the word ‘evaluate,’ the SEC en banc then proceeded to resolve the issue in isolation, without allowing petitioners to submit evidence or participate in the so-called ‘evaluation.’”
“Like a bull seeing red, the SEC en banc plowed through law and jurisprudence to reach its mark — the death of Rappler. The SEC en banc violated the hierarchy of courts and ignored procedure. These actions have no place in a democratic state.”
How sweet, this win.
Allow us to relish it as we await the verdict on two remaining cases: the cyber libel conviction of Maria Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr., which is now with the Supreme Court en banc, and the anti-dummy case filed against Maria, myself, and other 2016 Rappler Board directors at a Pasig court — the supposed merits of which are rooted in the SEC order that has been junked by the CA.
For holding the line with us, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
– Rappler.com