Punishment for fake news
APUNISHMENT already exists for people who make or share “fake news.” They have to live with the kind of witlessness that encourages them to make or share “fake news” in the first place.
Apparently, Sen. Joel Villanueva believes that kind of punishment wouldn’t do. Last Thursday, Villanueva filed a bill that states anyone found guilty of “the malicious creation and distribution of false news” should be fined P100,000 to P5 million or spend one to five years in jail. Senate Bill 1492 also seeks to double the penalties if those found guilty are public officials.
This latter part may tempt one to support Villanueva’s bill. Certain reckless public officials—say, those who’ve made false claims to blame some lawmakers for the security and humanitarian crisis in Marawi City— might benefit from serving time. For, as Senator Villanueva explained in a press statement, “Addressing national and global concerns should not be made more complicated by false news calculated to cause disunity, panic, chaos or violence.” It’s particularly worrisome when some culprits spread these falsehoods using our taxes.
“Fake news” has become such a common problem that several other lawmakers before Villanueva have also explored the idea of using tough fines and jail time as a deterrent. Last March, the Financial Times reported that German lawmakers had proposed a fine of up to 50 million euros (about P2.8 billion) on “social networks that fail to delete hate speech or fake news” after a specified deadline. They were worried about how Internet hoaxes “such as the fictitious news story claiming that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump” could influence results in the German elections.
In May last year, at the height of the US presidential election campaign, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, and Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat, proposed to create a Center for Information Analysis and Response. Its tasks, among others, would be to develop and spread “fact-based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation” aimed at the United States and its allies. Kinzinger and Lieu asked for an initial funding of $20 million, coursed through the State Department, for activities that would counter disinformation by foreign governments, particularly China and Russia, which would weaken American security.
Unfortunately for these lawmakers and the rest of us, you can’t legislate common sense. And if Villanueva’s bill did manage to make it past Congress, it would be very tricky to enforce. First, the term “fake news” itself has become broad, no thanks to characters like US President Trump and a number of trolls in the Philippine public sphere. Even mainstream media organizations with armies of fact-checkers make the occasional
blunder. How does Villanueva propose to differentiate between “fake news” and honest mistakes?
Second, the bill may be anchored on good intentions, but wouldn’t it also censor parody or satire, which are forms that political speech often takes? True, fake news is a problem of glut: it has grown in a climate of easy access to information platforms. But wouldn’t it be wiser to educate people to use these platforms responsibly, instead of cutting off their access and silencing them?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, commenting on an antifake news bill in the California legislature this year, cautioned: “At a time when political leaders are promoting ‘alternative facts’ and branding unflattering reporting as ‘fake news,’ we don’t think it’s a good idea to give the government more power to punish speech.”
We are not helpless against fake news, but more of us need to get involved in fixing it. For a start, we can all look carefully at the sources of our information; we can make sure that what we pass along came from sources we trust because they can tell us how they obtained their information and because they take responsibility for their mistakes, and not only because they offer the comforting echo of our own beliefs. SUN.STAR CEBU