LAST March 21, a ‘Tri-Committee’ of Congress staged another performance-cum-public-hearing-in-aid-of-legislation, this time to tackle the unsolvable problem of “disinformation” and “fake news.”
We say “unsolvable” because Article 3 Section 4 of our Constitution is very clear: “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”
How Congress intends to break this constitutional restriction by crafting a law or amending one already existing using the “general good” as an excuse, we don’t know.
And as we have seen during the trial, err, hearing, protecting free speech and free expression is not the aim but rather, intimidating social media practitioners to abandon their independent thought.
The “problem,” as we see it, is not the presence of independent thinkers in our midst whose comments in their social media sites an increasing number of the public is now beginning to appreciate.
The problem is that, admit it or not, the decreasing credibility of the mainstream media, a development that is true not only here, but the rest of the world as well.
In short, mainstream has “credibility deficit” problem. It has long abandoned independence in their reporting and critical thinking in their commentaries. Here and elsewhere, it has become a key pillar of support for the existing social order.
And why not? The history of the media the world over always ended with the fact that big corporations and the business elite ended up as “media moguls.” How can then this add to the credibility of the press?
Also, when a foreign government, the United States for example, is spreading money, err, “grants” to a select group of local media outfits thru USAID and NED, was this not corrupting or influencing the way they treat any issue of interest to US foreign policy?
Take the South China Sea issue for example where pro-US views and narratives are drowning out the views of those advocating for our return to an independent foreign policy.
The mainstream media has become one huge commercial and political enterprise in favor of the privileged few that it has allowed itself to become the channel for the spread of the “official line” and in some instances, of government-sanctioned fake news.
For example, the weekend the House hearing ended, GMA7, the country’s largest mainstream media, came out with a report, quoting an unnamed “source” from inside the government that former president Rodrigo Duterte, applied for an asylum in China to avoid being arrested by our government for his turnover to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prior to his return from Hongkong last March 11.
Well, the Duterte camp has denied it, China officially denied it and even those familiar with the law on asylum casts serious doubt about it and yet, GMA7 did not even issue a ‘mea culpa.’ And Congress, by its inaction, stands accused of practicing “double standard.”
To restate: The only thing going for the mainstream media, or for any member of the press to be believable, at all times, is Credibility.
And seeing the way most mainstream media practitioners are performing these days, how can the government force the public to stop looking for their alternative source of news?