Fake news: up close and personal
It was only a few days after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) en banc found “Rappler, Inc., and Rappler Holdings Corporation, a mass media entity, and its alter ego violating the constitutional and statutory Foreign equity Restrictions in Mass Media enforceable through laws and rules within the mandate of the Constitution” (SP case No. 08-17 001 Decision dated January 11, 2018). “President Rodrigo Duterte hit Rappler anew (not the first time) just as it reeled from the SEC revocation of its registration over supposed foreign ownership (absolutely not allowed under the Constitution)” (CNN Philippines, January 17, 2018).
“Duterte was particularly irked by Rappler’s report citing documents that Special Assistant to the President Bong Go intervened in a multibillion-peso project for the Philippine Navy. The President slammed the news item, calling the site a peddler of fake news ( Ibid.).” Bong Go denied endorsing to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Hanhwa Thales, a South Korean company, to provide the combat management system ( CMS) of two brand new Navy frigates to be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries (Ibid.). Sec. Lorenzana denied firing former Philippine Navy chief Ronald Joseph Mercado, who preferred the Thales Tacticos CMS.
“Your articles are rife with innuendos and pregnant with falsity. We don’t intervene with the affairs of the Armed Forces. You can stop your suspicious mind from roaming somewhere else. But since you are a fake news outlet and I am not surprised your articles are also fake,” Duterte was quoted to have said (Ibid.).
And so the SEC-Rappler issue on foreign ownership morphed into a Fake News accusation and a counter-claim of press freedom curtailment. Opinion columnist Randy David said: “There’s no question about it: Rappler’s legal troubles were triggered by its commentaries and criticisms of President Duterte and his policies. Mr. Duterte has said many times that he finds these criticisms unfair, and that he will not take them sitting down. Rappler’s persecution follows a clear pattern under this administration ( Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jan. 21).
While Rappler was busy trying to appeal their foreign ownership issue — clearly and objectively a separate matter in the eyes of the regulator SEC — the Senate put together their second hearing on Fake News ( the first was in October, 2017), purportedly to evolve legislation to control or define this, as it ingrains into the “New Normal” ( live on CNN Philippines, Jan. 30).
Perhaps the Manila Times editorial subsequent to the Senate “investigation in aid of legislation” describes well how the whole televised exercise came across to many: “At the second hearing on fake news by the Sen-