Source
A relic of colonial rule
Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, 2014-02-24
- Kind
- reference
- Last checked
- 2026-09-26
- Archived copy
- none yet
Cited by
- Philippines: United States colonial government's libel law is used to close the newspaper El Renacimiento
- Claim 970: The Philippine Commission enacted Act No. 277, a law criminalizing libel, which was later used against the nationalist press.
- Claim 971: Governor-General William Howard Taft justified the libel law's passage by saying Filipinos were a strange people unused to the freedom of the press.
- Claim 972: El Renacimiento's 1908 editorial described colonial officials as birds of prey, comparing them to eagles, vultures, owls and vampires.
- Claim 973: Secretary of the Interior Dean C. Worcester filed the libel suit that led to the conviction of El Renacimiento's editor Fidel Reyes, co-editor Teodoro M. Kalaw and publisher Martin Ocampo.
- Claim 974: Kalaw and Ocampo's appeals to the Philippine Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court failed, and their conviction was affirmed in both courts.
- Claim 975: Ocampo's 100,000 peso fine crippled El Renacimiento and its sister paper Muling Pagsilang, and both stopped publishing.
- Claim 976: Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison pardoned Ocampo in 1914, after the fine had already closed the paper.
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