Misael Gonzales Jr., a reporter for DZRH, was arrested after a Manila councilor filed a case against him for allegedly violating the Data Privacy Act for reporting on an arrest warrant earlier issued against the councilor for allegedly sexually abusing a child.
A VETERAN radio reporter was arrested Wednesday in Manila after covering a news story about an elected official who himself faces an arrest warrant for alleged lascivious conduct involving a 17-year-old girl — raising urgent questions about whether the Data Privacy Act is being weaponised against journalism.
Misael Gonzales Jr., a reporter for DZRH, was arrested at around 10:50 in the morning on March 11 in front of the Department of Justice building on Padre Faura Street in Ermita, Manila, on a complaint for a violating the Data Privacy Act filed by Manila Councillor Rosalino Ibay Jr.
Gonzales’s arrest is not an isolated incident but part of a pattern that press freedom advocates have long documented: the use of criminal statutes — libel, cyber libel, data privacy — as instruments of harassment against journalists who cover the news. This is “clearly retaliatory and an abuse of the law,” Jonathan de Santos, chairman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, told Rights Report Philippines.
“The arrest of a journalist over a report anchored on official documents raises serious concerns about the potential chilling effect on press freedom and the ability of media practitioners to report on matters involving public officials and allegations of wrongdoing,” the National Press Club said in a statement.
This will also certainly revive calls to decriminalise libel and cyberlibel in the Philippines. John Sherwin Felix, who runs Lokalpedia, was accused recently of cyberlibel after he posted a criticism of errors in a government-funded book. Reacting to Felix’s case, Ted Te of the Free Legal Assistance Group posted on Facebook: “Decriminalize libel and cyberlibel.”
Ibay, the complainant in the Gonzales case, had been issued an arrest warrant in September 2025 by a Manila court for alleged violation of Republic Act No. 7610, which covers lascivious conduct against minors.
According to former NBI Director Jaime Santiago, Ibay allegedly brought the girl to a motel in Pasay City and subsequently attempted to settle with the minor’s family, who refused.
The use of a privacy complaint to silence the reporter covering that story inverts the purpose of the Data Privacy Law.
Gonzales’s case is strikingly similar to a 2023 case. Radio reporter Jose Rizal Pajares of Radyo Natin was arrested after accessing a police blotter — a public document — and charged with violation of Section 29 of the Data Privacy Act. The NUJP questioned the basis for his arrest, stating: “While we understand the need for confidentiality in ongoing investigations and to ensure data privacy, police blotters are generally public documents that journalists have access to.”
The International Federation of Journalists condemned that arrest as “a clear overreach of police powers” and called on Filipino authorities to drop all charges and uphold the right to freedom of information.
As the NUJP said in the Pajares case, the arrest was “very irregular since media has, in general practice, had access to police blotter reports and similar documents.” The same logic applies here — with even greater force, since what Gonzales reported on was not a police blotter but a court-issued warrant and a pending criminal case against a public official.
Misuse of the Data Privacy Act
Legal experts and press freedom advocates believe that using the Data Privacy Act against a journalist covering a court-issued warrant is a serious misapplication of the law.
The law declares as state policy the protection of the fundamental human right of privacy while ensuring the free flow of information to promote innovation and growth. Critically, the law explicitly carves out an exemption for journalism: Section 4(d), which states that it does not apply to the processing of personal information by journalists to the extent that such processing is for a bona fide journalistic purpose.
Under the law, information about an individual’s alleged commission of a crime or offence qualifies as sensitive personal information, which is subject to strict regulation. However, the NUJP has argued that the Data Privacy Act’s responsibility for keeping data safe rests on those who hold the data — such as the police — and that journalistic work is an exemption under the law.
Gonzales’s arrest also appears to misread what privacy law is designed to protect. The National Privacy Commission has consistently held that the public disclosure of an arrested person’s identity via social media constitutes unlawful processing, but the NPC’s rulings are aimed at law enforcement agencies doing the disclosing, not at journalists reporting on publicly filed court cases. An arrest warrant is a judicial record, not private personal data.
The Broader Pattern
Journalists and media advocacy groups like the NUJP have called for the decriminalisation of libel for decades, pressing Congress to amend Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, which makes libel punishable by imprisonment.
The most significant international rebuke came in 2011. The United Nations Human Rights Committee declared that the criminal sanction for libel in the Philippines is “excessive” and in violation of the ICCPR — finding so in the case of Davao broadcaster Alexander Adonis, who was imprisoned for reporting on a politician’s alleged affair.
The UN committee, in its general comment on Article 19 of the ICCPR, stated that defamation laws should not stifle freedom of expression, should include defences of truth and public interest, and that “imprisonment is never an appropriate penalty” for libel.
The International Commission of Jurists has said that “the criminalization of libel or defamation is an affront to freedom of expression,” and has called on the Philippine Congress to amend the Cybercrime Prevention Act and decriminalize libel and defamation to ensure respect for freedom of expression consistent with the country’s international obligations.
Legal scholars have argued that Philippine criminal libel violates due process as well. Philippine libel law requires defendants to overcome “presumed malice” rather than requiring the prosecution to prove “actual malice,” which critics argue infringes on constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression and creates a chilling effect, particularly for journalists and activists.
Human Rights Laws Violated
Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the Philippines has been a state party since 1986, guarantees the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information of all kinds. Any restriction on that right must meet strict tests of necessity and proportionality — tests that this arrest plainly fails.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights similarly protects the right to seek and receive information regardless of frontiers.
The Philippine Constitution’s own Article III, Section 4 provides that no law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press. Using a data privacy complaint to criminalise reporting on an official arrest warrant — a public court record — is precisely the kind of indirect abridgement that constitutional jurisprudence warns against.
The arrest also violates Article 14(2) of the ICCPR — the right to a presumption of innocence — but perversely, it is the journalist, not the official facing a child abuse warrant, who is being made to suffer that deprivation. (Rights Report Philippines)