Binalonan’s Anti-Gossip Ordinance Requires Offenders to Pick Up Litter; Compliance Rate: Zero

Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

BINALONAN, Pangasinan — The small town of Binalonan, approximately 200 kilometers north of Manila, made gossip illegal this month under a local ordinance aimed at preventing the spread of rumors through the community. Within 48 hours of the ordinance’s passage, Binalonan had been discussed by every major Philippine news outlet, three regional radio stations, and approximately 2.4 million people on Facebook, making it the most talked-about municipality in the Philippines for reasons directly caused by the law designed to reduce talking about things.

The ordinance, passed by the Sangguniang Bayan (municipal council) after a period of deliberation that participants described as “spirited” and critics described as “ironic,” defines gossip as the spreading of unverified information about individuals in a manner that could damage their reputation. Offenders face a community service penalty requiring them to pick up litter in public areas — a sanction designed, officials said, to “make people who create messes clean up messes,” a metaphor they were very pleased with.

Enforcement: The First Week

Municipal Ordinance Enforcement Officer Ricardo Dela Cruz, whose job title did not previously include “gossip adjudication” and who is not entirely sure it should now, said the first week of enforcement produced “significant challenges,” which is the official way of saying that a town of 80,000 people who have been gossiping for generations did not immediately stop upon being told it was an ordinance.

“We received 14 complaints in the first three days,” said Dela Cruz. “Of the 14, seven were neighbors complaining about neighbors who had reported them for gossiping. Three were people complaining about the council members who voted for the ordinance. Two were about me specifically.” He declined to share the content of the two complaints about himself. He noted this was, technically, compliance with the ordinance.

The compliance rate for the community service penalty — the litter pickup — is currently zero, Dela Cruz confirmed, because the penalty requires first establishing that gossip occurred, then establishing that the gossip was unverified, then identifying the gossiper, then issuing a formal notice, then scheduling the service hours, then supervising the litter pickup, a process that takes approximately three weeks for each complaint and which the office is not currently staffed to run at the volume of gossip the town generates.

The Definitional Problem

“The challenge,” said Municipal Legal Officer Patricia Santos, who helped draft the ordinance and who is already having second thoughts visible on her face, “is that the line between gossip and conversation is a matter of intent and verification. If I tell my neighbor that I heard Councilor Reyes is building a third house, is that gossip? It depends on whether it is true. But if I knew it was true I would have said ‘I know’ not ‘I heard.’ The ordinance covers ‘I heard.’ Most of what people say is ‘I heard.’ This is the problem.”

The ordinance, she noted, does not cover “legitimate information sharing,” “community safety alerts,” or “commentary on public officials,” all of which are carved out explicitly. What it covers, in net terms, is unverified negative information about private individuals. Which is gossip. Which is, definitionally, most of what makes a small town a community rather than a collection of houses.

National Reaction

The national reaction to Binalonan’s ordinance has been, fittingly, a flood of commentary, analysis, and hot takes across Philippine social media. The Philippine Daily Inquirer ran an editorial questioning whether the ordinance violates freedom of expression. The Manila Bulletin ran an opposing piece arguing that speech codes targeting harmful rumors are defensible. Both were extensively discussed, analyzed, and gossiped about.

Several Binalonan residents interviewed by Bohiney Magazine said they supported the ordinance “in principle” while declining to specify what principle, exactly, given that they spent the first 10 minutes of each interview telling us things about their neighbors that the ordinance was designed to prevent them from sharing. This was not hypocrisy, they clarified. It was “information sharing with context.”

Social psychologists at the University of the Philippines note that gossip serves important social functions including community bonding, norm enforcement, and reputation management, and that ordinances restricting it tend to suppress the symptom (talking about people) rather than the cause (things worth talking about). The Binalonan council has not responded to this framing. Word is, they are having a meeting about it. Do not quote us on that.

What Happens Next

The ordinance remains in effect. The litter, theoretically, remains the penalty. The gossip remains ongoing, now with the added content of being about the gossip law, which has given the town something genuinely new to talk about for the first time in recent memory. Mayor Ernesto Cruz, when reached for comment, said the ordinance was “working as intended.” He did not specify what intention produces a 2.4 million-person Facebook discussion of your municipal code. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps not. People are talking about it.

For laws that make you feel better by making things worse, see The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/