By Farah G. Decano

 

OUR country is again suffering a deluge of online fake news after the arrest of former President Rodrigo R. Duterte. Let me enumerate a few:

Videos, purporting to be protest rallies against the ex-chief executive’s detention at The Hague,  have been shared by thousands of unsuspecting netizens. These are actually videos of rallies that happened elsewhere in the country or in the world for a different issue or purpose. Even the video of a Sinulog event called, “Walk with Mary”  was not spared from edits. Fake news creators made it appear that the event was a prayer rally for the release of the former president.

Posts of alleged foreign lawyers questioning the arrest Duterte also have been spread in various socmed apps.   The problem is, that these so-called lawyers are unreal. They are characters from movies that have nothing to do with Philippine politics. Imagine Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods in the movie Legally Blonde supporting  Duterte?

A picture circulated online with the International Criminal Court Judge, Iulia Motoc, and First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos  in one frame as if conveying the possible partiality of the judge.

These fake news purveyors are emboldened because they find their perversion of truth effective among some Filipino audiences.  This theory is supported by a 2024 study on the Southeast Asian IQ.  The results  yielded that the Filipinos rank only number 7 among 10 countries in the region.

I hope those who help proliferate falsities for money will realize soon that they are deceiving the nation,  prostituting themselves, and betraying the truth. Instead of assisting fellow Filipinos sift through the thousands of information, they choose to victimize the gullibles, the uneducated, and those with low IQ.   Paid trolls that spread fake news are nothing but keyboard estafadores.    They have no integrity.  They are heartless monsters who take advantage of the intellectual vulnerability of some.

Contributing to the collective decline of the Filipino IQ, is the fact that most of  us do not read as much anymore. We seek information from one-minute reads and consider as facts whatever are viewed and heard from  30-second videos. This behavior of not fact-checking is dangerous.  Some citizens will perceive the situation differently and will act accordingly.   They will be confined in a bubble of inaccuracies.

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There has been fake news even before their proliferation on social media. I remember being a victim of one.  On my second run for councilor sometime in 2004, some radio personalities were allegedly paid to repeatedly attack me everyday. The script? That I was the initiator of the Department of Education teachers’ bonus cut from P1,000 to P500.00.    I did not, of course, do that. Despite my presentation of a certification from the Sanggunian Secretary that there is no such resolution from me, I still encountered difficulty in changing the minds of some.  They ignored me while some smirked whenever I passed by.  One educator even confronted  me and said, “if it is not true, then why do these radio commentators continue say that you initiated the cut?”   Perhaps, that teacher forgot the saying that, “a lie that is often repeated will sound true”.  How much were these radio commentators paid then to attack me?  Another media person who happens to be my friend told me that it was P200 per attack per show then. 

 The fake news attacks on radio or television are not as high impact as those in social media.  Unlike in the former, netizens do not receive balanced views online. They tend to get limited within their bubble or echo chamber.  These online estafadores very well know that algorithm is their ally.

 We must combat the spread of falsities.  When we allow fake news purveyors to dominate the various media,  we are also allowing the dumbing of the  Filipino nation.

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