THERE are many ways to fight fake news.
One can go the German way. In early April, the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel backed a bill that would threaten social media platforms with fines if they did not give their users the option to complain about fake news or hate speech, or if they did not remove illegal content. The objective is to provide better options for its voters ahead of the elections in September. Apparently, German officials do not want to experience what happened in the United States leading to last November’s polls.
Critics, however, say this is dangerous territory because it might trample on freedom of speech, especially now that other European leaders have said they wanted to make social media companies like Facebook and Twitter accountable for hate speeches or statements inciting to terrorism.
Another option is to target individuals fabricating or spreading fake news. This was what Senator Joel Villanueva, through a bill filed this week, said he wanted to do.
Senate Bill No. 1492, An Act Penalizing the Malicious Distribution of False News and Other Related Violations, penalizes “any person or entity creating and circulating false news in print, broadcast or social media.” Public officials doing the same would be meted stiffer penalties.
Fake news is described as “an information causing or tending to cause panic, division, chaos, violence, hate” and “those exhibiting, or tending to exhibit propaganda to blacken or discredit one’s reputation.”
Those found guilty will be fined anywhere between P100,000 and P5 million and will be locked up between one year and five years. Mass media enterprises or social media platforms that do not remove such news will also be penalized by fine and imprisonment. Public officials found guilty have to pay twice the fine and spend twice the time in jail. They will also be disqualified from public service.
But it is not difficult to imagine how Villanueva conceived of this bill in reaction to recent blunders by members of the Duterte administration. An assistant secretary of the Presidential Communication Coordination Office, a woman who said it was her mandate to fight fake news, was exposed to have used photos of Honduran soldiers while talking about our own soldiers in her social media account. No less than the Philippine News Agency published a story that said many countries did not believe there were extrajudicial killings here—patently false. Most recently, the Secretary of Justice alleged some members of the opposition were in Marawi City days before the still-ongoing siege began.
A University of the Philippines professor said such a bill would be too dangerous because even ordinary, well-meaning people could fall under the conditions stated in the proposed law.
A third way, obvious and commonsensical but all-too-often ignored, is for people to educate themselves and refuse to fall prey to false information.
Fake news should die a natural death when it fails to have takers. The key is to resist being a taker. The problem is, it is often difficult to be circumspect in this age when information flows so freely.
All political groups should be wary of creating and spreading false information. They just make people ignorant and undiscerning. More importantly, people should be more critical of the information that is fed them. There are steps to ensure that what we read about is true. There are ways to be angry—indignant—about how some people believe they can get away with misleading us, or lying to us outright.
Circumspection need not be legislated at all. We just need to be armed with a healthy dose of skepticism, and this starts at home, in school, in the workplace, and the people with whom we constantly interact.
