What is true and what is not

Editorial Article about Fake news

By: Kristhina Marie B. Catapia

Fake news has become a real commodity, now that almost half of the world’s population
has access to the internet. Thanks to social media, fake news has become an
unwelcomed part of our daily lives.
Social media aims to make the dissemination of information and data as smooth and as
fast as possible. The need to verify the statistics and the instructions given is not exactly
what social media is all about.
It is kind of alarming to witness the progress of mock-up reports since the people in the
modern times are easily influenced of what they see online. As long as it is posted in
Facebook and other social networking sites, they will accept it at any cause. For
instance, you may have seen students dancing in glee every time there is suspension of
classes, but notice that some announcements came from unverified news sources or
worse, from fake accounts of government officials.
Human beings who perform this kind of felony do not think first about the sake of other
people. Was it just a “trip” to know how many Filipinos are easy to fool? Was it for the
sake of popularity? If yes, then they should wake themselves up to consider other
people’s situation and how can the fake information that they were sharing affect a
person’s life.
It is the sole duty of an individual to validate the news he received, but in any case, he is
not entirely at fault for trusting the dupe story he had read because in the first place,
there would be no victims if there are no culprits. One of the most glaring examples of
this is Presidential Communications Operation Office (PCOO) Assistant Secretary for
social media, Margaux “Mocha” Uson’s posts on Facebook via her page MOCHA USON
BLOG; one of which became viral because of its absurdity. She wrote a Facebook post
that called for prayers for Filipino soldiers, but which netizens pointed out accompanied
a photo of praying Honduran forces. In a new Facebook post, Uson contented that she
never claimed the photo was that of members of the Philippine Army and that the photo
was just a “symbolism.” Journalists, she said, should use “common sense.” The
question here is not about the post itself, but rather about the act of sharing a picture
and a text that seems to be not related to each other. Furthermore, she also mentioned
that she would fight fake news and that we should stop relying on the wrong reports
from some mainstream media. This was put into question because she, herself, uses
social media as an aid to disperse and to scatter false information, which leads to the
issue of having difficulties in terminating mock-up stories since there are instances
where the ASEC herself is the one publicizing sham reports. Posting unverified news
items on her Facebook page made a lot of Filipinos question her authority; that instead
of being a role model to the citizens of the country and promoting the use of reliable
news sources, she is more determined on voicing out her thoughts about the current
issues in the Philippines, even noting that her Facebook page has nothing to do with her
job as an ASEC.
In the end, we cannot really do something about the delinquents who continuously
share and post fake news reports, but we can be responsible and verify the information
first before we believe it to be true. Since we cannot stop this crime from faltering, then
let us be the unvictimized victims of these wrongdoings.