There is no ready solution for fake news.
ate committee on public information and mass media, we were startled to witness how the process turned into a smorgasbord of freewheeling and self-serving statements by its many resource persons”( The Manila Times, February 1).”
“Things would have been different had the Senate committee requested its resource persons to present coherent and concise statements on their thinking and recommendations on how to best address the fake news problem, instead of just letting everyone orate to promote their own selfinterests (Ibid.).” Yet in the next breath, The Manila Times editorial said: “Maria Ressa, chairman and CEO of the beleaguered Rappler organization, had the effrontery to make this insinuation (that the paper is controlled by Duterte) on the flimsy ground that President Duterte appointed last year our chairman emeritus, Dr. Dante Ang, as special envoy for international public relations of our government (Ibid.).” Up close and personal!
And Senator Manny Pacquiao, at the Senate hearing, seemed livid at now Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy who posted in her blog in 2016 that Pacquiao, (then a Senatorial candidate) a Christian, was maintaining his mistress in a subdivision (the house later turned out to be Pacquiao’s staff’s). Pacquaio did not stop until he elicited a public apology from Badoy who admitted her sources were subdivision guards and a vendor of taho (ABS-CBN, Jan. 30).
Badoy recovered her “dignity” by publicly declaring at the Senate hearing, “The Vice-President ( Leni Robredo) is one of the primary purveyors of fake news and the President may be an even bigger victim than she is (GMA News, Jan. 30).” After Badoy, veteran journalist Ellen Tordesillas said “fake news” in the country is primarily spread by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte. She lamented how misinformation is spread using taxpayers’ money ( ABS- CBN, Jan. 31). At the Senate hearing, Tordesillas said Vera Files is keeping a tally of how many lies the President told in each speech. Rappler corroborates this: “The President knows who produces fake news in the Philippines, and it certainly is not Rappler. He doesn’t have to look far from where he sits in Malacañang ( CNN Philippines, Jan. 17).”
Vergel Santos, director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, said in a 2006 talk show already dissecting this Fake News monster: “there is no such thing as good news or bad news. There is only news. It’s good or bad depending on who views it (Ellen Tordesillas blog: “Curtailing freedom of expression redux,” Jan 22 2018, citing Santos). All the personal hatred, and all that scheming, manipulating grasping for power, besmirching reputations, changing perceptions! In the Christian Ten Commandments, there is the eighth commandment that says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Ex 20:16).”
Tordesillas pointed out that “there are moves in the House of Representatives to insert the words ‘ responsible exercise’ in the freedom of speech part in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, a revival of the same attempt made by the government of Gloria Arroyo in 2006 ( Ibid.).” “But the proposed change in the freedom of expression provision strikes at the core of our basic rights as a citizen of a democratic country. The key change here is in the word ‘responsible’. Who will determine what responsible exercise of freedom of speech is? Who will determine what a responsible press is? Who will determine responsible petition for redress of grievances?” (Ibid.)
In other words, there is no ready solution to the proliferation of fake news in our country, or even in the world, where other countries are getting alarmed about this malady. The point to remember is that the surge of freedom from the convenient facility that is social media gives must be balanced with the exacting demand for verifiable sources and statistics — we just do not fight others’ battles by believing and joining in on “viral” opinions and perceptions. If it’s up close and personal for the ones attacking others, and up close and personal for the “victims,” it must be up close and personal for the individual third party-reader/ listener to Fake News to determine and discern what is objectively true, and what is subjective and colored by personal motivations.
In the end, each and every one must have to live and survive in the Real World, not in the Fake World of Fake News.