Label happy

Truth in labeling! That’s what we need, right? Well, so does the Food and Drug Administration of the US. In fact, it takes its job so seriously, it routinely polices the ingredients of products all across America. And guess what? It found a violation in a small Massachusetts bakery, and so called out the bakeshop for trying to fool people about the ingredients in its granola. One listed ingredient, in particular, wasn’t found in the actual product. The missing ingredient? Love.

Love!? Yes, apparently so. Nashoba Granola, by Nashoba Brook Bakery, lists “love” among its ingredients. But upon routine inspection, no such love could be found by the FDA, so it sent a warning letter to the bakery, demanding a correction in its labeling practices.

Awww. Spoilsports. That amusing touch was only meant to bring a smile to customers’ lips. But that leads us to other matters, like the labeling game being played in the Senate hearing this week on the proliferation of fake news. Mocha Uson, an assistant secretary of the Department of Communications, labeled herself a “blogger”.

What was so important about this baptismal exercise? Well, from her viewpoint, unlike a member of the journalism profession, a blogger need not try to verify information or get two sides of the story. The blogger supposedly expresses only personal opinions, and thus has no need to countercheck those opinions.

That, I guess, constitutes her defense for spreading unverified stories, including those about the alleged bank accounts of Senator Antonio Trillanes, which has led Trillanes to file both criminal and administrative charges against Uson before the Ombudsman. We will see soon enough whether that “blogger” defense will hold true before the courts.

Senator Grace Poe, on the other hand, had other labels she could think of, including “incompetence”, when Mocha was invoking her right against self-incrimination. (That label seemed to be particularly problematic for Mocha the government official, her memory banks first recalling a hitherto undiscovered right against “self-discrimination” before managing to correct herself.)

Mocha also applied the label “biktima” (victim) to herself, saying she has been the subject of fake news herself. This calls to mind a label she earlier dished out to mainstream press: “presstitutes”.

Bloggers themselves were labeled by Joyce Ramirez, a “publicist”, as “famewhores”, who are only out to get fame and notoriety. “Fake news” was one of the highlighted methods of choice by bloggers for achieving likes and followers. In dismissing these bloggers, Ramirez ended by calling them “clowns”.

Journalist Ellen Tordesillas, on the other hand, rejects the label “fake news” and says we should call them for what they really are: “lies, plain and simple”.

See the importance of getting labels right? If the FDA doesn’t watch out for us poor consumers, we would be getting all these foods with supposed love ingredients, when for all we know, no such love was ever poured into the making of the granola! We would be duped into thinking there was love, when in fact, there was actually none!

In censoring the literary ambitions of a bakery, the FDA had no worries about violating the rights of free speech. Shouldn’t that absence of constitutional constraint also be enjoyed by the Lies and Rumors Commission?

(I just made that up. It doesn’t exist. But given the success of the FDA in rooting out fake facts, an LRC sounds wonderful).

Labels. I never liked them.

‘From her viewpoint, unlike a member of the journalism profession, a blogger need not try to verify information or get

two sides of the story.’