EDITORIAL Fake news no threat to mainstream media

There seems to be so much noise about fake news, and how it supposedly threatens mainstream media, that the impression it gives is that of an enemy already knocking down the door, if it has not done so already. But it has not. And it will not. The media is just the messenger. The message is ultimately what matters. And it is the public that will eventually see through the news and judge it for what it is.

The media, or in this case mainstream media, has far greater challenges than the veracity and reliability of the information that it sells. The advent of new technologies has made mainstream media not only better; it has made it more accountable. There is little room, if at all, for some hanky-panky to go undetected. Fake news, to whatever extent it may threaten, threatens not mainstream media but the other means by which passing it on seems to thrive.

Besides, fake news, again to the extent that it actually poses a threat, and in the context by which it has made many people all agog over it, is largely all here in the Philippines. From what may be readily observed of discussions on the matter, there is hardly a ripple on the subject elsewhere, other than probably in the academic sectors.

But in the larger public, it is only the Philippines that seems to have provided the ripe environment for fake news to flourish. And it is no big mystery why that is so. It is because the Philippines is a highly politicized country whose extremely charged partisan atmosphere almost beckons for the introduction of fake news as a sordid but potent weapon to sow intrigue and carry out character assassination.

Fake news is generated for a specific and deliberate purpose. It is vastly different from the random errors that may threaten and challenge mainstream media. To say, therefore, that fake news is a threat to mainstream media is, at the very least allowing a false argument to gain traction and have a life of its own. At its very worst, it mistakenly and unfairly assumes, on a large scale, the inability of the public to determine by itself what is true and what is fake.

And that is the most unfortunate cut of all. Because the very reason why mainstream media has thrived all these years is its discovery and long-held belief in the capacity of its public to make wise decisions when demanded. Mainstream media has not been proven wrong in that regard even up to this day. And that is true even in such a tenuous environment as the Philippines. Even in the Philippines, the lines are very clear.