After 16 years, the Philippines' first news magazine TV show is going off the air. If you've been following the happenings in media, The Probe Team has been cancelled by GMA 7 and will be airing Part 2 of it's final special tonight at 11:30 after Saksi.
We had a thanksgiving party last Friday (Footage from the party will be in tonight's episode.) and it must've been the happiest and the saddest party I've ever been to, filled with sorrow for the cancellation, and yet hope for the idealism that has infected every member of Probe Productions, old and new.
Mrs. Cheche Lazaro said that her one wish was that we "keep the legacy of Probe alive," that wherever we go, we bring the idealism and the honesty of Probe with us. But a former producer said that "even if we can make little Probes, there'll always be one Probe,' and nothing can replace it, nor change the effect that the show has had on the Philippine viewer. It was something of quality that welcomed experimention, and more often than not, it hit right you in the heart.
Many have said that only good things can come out of this, that God must have a better plan for the show. Lord, I hope that's true.
The end of The Probe Team is like the end of an era, but hopefully it's not the end of such a pure and innocent idea: "The Probe Team supports the fight against envelopmental and sensational journalism."
It was my hope that the furor created by this one incident in 15 years of partnership would be allowed to die down and that the scheduled parting of ways would be cordial.
Unfortunately, the November 3 press statement of GMA Channel 7 makes its case at the expense of the reputation of “The Probe Team.” GMA Channel 7 has therefore left me with no choice but to put on record the events that transpired so that our advertisers and the public may know.
October 23, I sent a letter to Atty. Gozon.
In that letter, which follows below, my intention was to let Atty. Gozon know about a series of developments, visible from our side of the fence, which formed the basis for our conclusion that it was censorship.
Among those developments were three calls made by Atty. Junjun Tupas, a member of the law firm of Atty. Gozon, to the Probe staff lobbying on behalf of PAGCOR Chairman Genuino.
Still, I wanted to let Atty. Gozon know that those developments did not make me lose my respect for him as a person and as the head of GMA 7. None of our actions was meant to be a personal affront to him at any time.
I therefore ended my October 23 letter in a conciliatory tone. But Atty. Gozon’s response since then, including his November 3 letter, have given me cause to regret my silence.
Atty. Gozon has been harping- in his statements to the press, in the GMA-7 newsletter- on “The Probe Team’s” unprofessionalism.
We maintain that we had the documents he wanted from the very start, and that the final version aired on September 23 did not need to turn to additional documents.
The journalistic standards of “The Probe Team” have never been compromised nor have they ever been second, then or now, to GMA-7’s own.
Atty. Gozon says he is terminating the airing of “The Probe Team” on November 25 even though our contract runs to the end of January 2004. Again unilaterally, he has also decided that GMA 7 will continue to air “The Probe Team” in its international channel.
We say that we are ending the long run of “The Probe Team” on GMA-7 with the knowledge that we served the public good without sacrificing our integrity for 16 years.
October 23, 2003
Atty. Felipe L. Gozon Chairman, President & CEO GMA Network Inc., GMA Network Center EDSA Corner Timog Avenue Diliman, Quezon City 1103
Dear Atty. Gozon:
This is further to my letter dated October 9th, 2003 addressing your suggestion that we mutually end the partnership with TPT on November 25, 2003.
I had hoped that upon my return from a two week visit with my daughter I would be able to avoid having to delve once more on the issues surrounding the non-airing, or in our view censorship, of the TPT episode on PAGCOR Chairman Genuino. Unfortunately, PAGCOR and even GMA Network Inc. have continued to portray The Probe Team as unprofessional. Never in my many years of being involved in television have I ever been accused of acting “unprofessional”. Never in the history of The Probe Team have we been accused of airing a story for the purpose of undermining the character of a personality. It would have been a very simple matter for Chairman Genuino or one of his many assistants to have agreed to an interview where he could have aired his side. Yet even up to today, there has been no categorical denial from Chairman Genuino himself as to the ownership of those companies our story identified as his, per SEC records.
While the story on Chairman Genuino was being prepared, there were numerous incidents where his office and his person were trying to stop the story from being aired. Chairman Genuino’s office even tried to reach my husband. They were using all available connections. At the same time, officers of GMA Network Inc. showed extraordinary interest in the story, something we have not experienced as related to a government personality in all our history of working with GMA Network Inc. It was not difficult to imagine that in the efforts of Chairman Genuino to kill the story, he and his assistants would also be calling on the executives of the station to air his objection to the story. GMA marketing through Mr. Afin Bautista lobbied on behalf of Mr. Genuino. Mr. Bautista also told me that a Mr. Dodie King wanted to talk to me about the PAGCOR story. There was even a call from a lawyer who identified himself as Junjun Tupas. He said he was from your Law office and was calling as a friend of PAGCOR. The combination of the multi-pronged pressure led us to believe that the action of GMA Network Inc. not to air the episode was its way of giving in to the pressure of Mr. Genuino.
It appears that Chairman Genuino had better access to GMA Network Inc. decisions on this matter than we had. In the early evening of the day when the episode was originally supposed to air, we were told by people inside PAGCOR that Dodie King had already announced to his staff not to tape record the airing of The Probe Team that night as the episode on his boss would not be aired. That was many hours before the staff of The Probe Team was informed of the decision of the station to air a rerun. In fact, our staff was working double time during those last few hours hoping we could provide the answers to the questions being raised by GMA 7. We even had our own producers shooting footage as late as ten p.m.
Similarly, Chairman Genuino had announced to his staff that TPT would be cancelled and Bernadette Sembrano removed from the news many hours before GMA 7, through Ms. Marissa Flores and Ms. Rikki Escudero, had told me of that decision at my residence.
What further supports our view that it was not the documentation of the story that caused the station to replace it with a rerun is the subsequent airing of the episode the next week. The original episode was aired in UP through the invitation and initiative of the UP faculty and students of the College of Mass Communications. We had nothing to do with this invitation. In fact it was a matter we had to debate internally because we knew that GMA 7 would find the airing of that episode as an act of defiance. We eventually agreed to air it because we felt we had to have on record what the original episode contained. If you have your staff compare the documentation of that original episode with the version allowed to air the following week, the documentation remains the same. There was no new document added, a point we made repeatedly during our back and forth discussions with our counterparts in News and PA. The episode aired is substantively the same.
We have also been scored for accusing GMA “immediately” in public. For the record, the first public statement on the issue after the September 16 “non-airing” was made on the September 17 “Frontpage” newscast. We did not solicit coverage from the press. They called us as well as GMA for comment when the “non-airing” of the episode had become too obvious to the public. That story first appeared on September 18 in the PDI.
When Probe Productions Inc. and GMA 7 were discussing the transfer of the marketing from PPI to GMA 7 in exchange for a fixed monthly fee, one of our main concerns which we mentioned to Mr. Meckoy Quiogue was journalistic independence. We asked Meckoy whether the start of GMA 7 having a financial commitment to PPI will mean that GMA 7 will exercise control over the stories going to be aired by The Probe Team. Meckoy assured us that GMA 7 will only “SUGGEST” and he added that the station respects our editorial prerogative, a point which I appreciated.
Following that commitment, we worked well with the News and Public Affairs staff on all our stories. One particular instance I recall is a story we did on the F4 craze. When informed that the station was concerned about the effect our story would have on the fierce competition with a rival station, we willingly acceded to their suggestions understanding their concern. We appreciated GMA’s giving us heads up on the matter.
In our contract with GMA 7, we agreed to keep GMA 7 free and harmless, including attorney’s fees of the station, in case any of our stories should provoke a lawsuit. My advisers told me at that time that this was a very serious undertaking especially for a small company such as ours. They told me that we would have to reckon not only with legitimate suits but also with nuisance suits. I was told that the phraseology of the hold harmless clause did not even require that we lose the suit, our company would be immediately liable for legal expenses of GMA 7 just to prepare and pursue its defense. Nevertheless, I swallowed hard and accepted this provision because I wanted to remove as many reasons as possible for GMA 7 to have to intrude in our journalistic independence.
I thought I would raise these two historical points to highlight that our reaction to the decision of GMA 7 not to air the episode is consistent with who we are and what we have stood for all these years.
With reference to your proposal to preterminate the contract to November 25, 2003, allow me to make a counter proposal. I propose that GMA 7 waive all its international airing rights to any TPT episodes. If GMA does not want to be associated with The Probe Team anymore, for consistency, it would follow that GMA also no longer wants to use its international airing rights.
If we have an agreement consistent with the paragraph above, the end of the show will be a month away. I have not decided whether to end the show after sixteen years or to continue at another station. Although there have been feelers received, I have not met with anyone to negotiate any agreement. For now, I only wish to put on record the events as seen from our side, on the issue.
In retrospect, there are many things I could have done to prevent this entire incident from ballooning to this proportion. I realize how our cries of “censorship” hurt GMA 7 and yourself. I also feel that by our having accepted the UP invitation and giving interviews to print media, we brought the issue outside the confines of the station. Christian teaching identifies the greatest sin as that of PRIDE. And of this I and my staff in TPT are guilty. Knowing full well that we are parting ways, I do not want to leave without apologizing to you if I have caused you personal hurt on this issue. I truly regret that it has come to this point but trust that you will understand how the circumstances surrounding this incident led us to react the way we did.
