Eradicating corruption? Start at the top, says MVP

MANILA, Philippines — Eradicating corruption in any organization starts with the person at the top, according to tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan.

“Start with big-ticket items. Forget the petty crimes first because that’s hard to deal with – it’s endemic within the system. When you start with the big amounts first, slowly work down to the middle and bottom layers,” he said at yesterday’s Philippine Media and Information Literacy Conference.

Reacting to the Second Congressional Commission on Education’s recent finding that the number of functionally illiterate Filipinos doubled in the past 30 years, Pangilinan said, “It’s a serious problem and it won’t help that you reduce the budget for education and move it to somebody as you take money from the many and insert it into the pockets of the few.”

Pangilinan lamented the “very high” temptation to accumulate wealth through shortcuts, but he reminded the corrupt that they would better sleep at night if they earned their riches honestly.

All are gatekeepers

With the democratization of media, the gatekeeping role previously accorded to traditional news outlets has become everybody’s responsibility, according to media personalities.

At the conference, News5 anchor Ed Lingao said, “Everybody now is a publisher, a broadcaster, but, at the same time, responsibility is also democratized.”

Calling out fake news on social media is not the sole job of mainstream media, he noted.

“I think people should also jump in and call it out,” he said.

The proliferation of false information on social media has been a source of headaches for the news media, as viewers and readers turn to Facebook and TikTok for their daily dose of information.

The Philippines plays host to a wide array of fake news purveyors.

In 2018, a Facebook executive labeled the country as “patient zero” in the global war against disinformation.

Tsek.ph, a fact-checking project by a coalition of media, academic and civil society partners, found that during the midterm elections, a third of 35 unique altered claims “likely involved deepfake technology to impersonate figures or distort reality.”

Content creator Mighty Magulang said this new battle should serve as a wake-up call for citizens to become more media literate.

Pangilinan has been a victim of fake news in previous years – from a fake 2021 notice to Meralco employees that Metro Manila was under strict lockdown, to an altered advertisement in 2024 supposedly promoting up-and-coming vape businesses.

“That fake media reminded me how easily we can weaponize technology to take advantage of people, or to use technology to compensate for all the frailties that make us human,” Pangilinan said.

MediaQuest launched its media and information literacy advocacy campaign, THINKaMuna, to teach people how to be more thoughtful in digesting the information they receive, especially on social media.

Units under MediaQuest, such as the Philstar Media Group, are invigorating media literacy among students by introducing them to the newspaper – a product seen by Gen Zs as a relic of the past, but has proven its lasting power.

Philstar Media Group’s executive vice president Lucien Dy Tioco said the company’s READiscover program has touched base with over 25,000 students nationwide.

“We give the teachers a media literacy module to help teach students to be more discerning and develop critical thinking at a young age by verifying the facts,” Dy Tioco explained.

Philstar Media Group’s print campaign was also conceptualized to remind audiences that newspapers remain trusted sources of information.

“What is in the printed form is permanent,” Dy Tioco said. “What is permanent, it has to be verified and it has to be credible. And we take accountability for what we do.”

Sen. Bam Aquino, for his part, said protecting the youth from the dangers of disinformation starts with fixing the country’s crumbling education system.

Aquino stressed that fundamental issues should be addressed while adopting new technologies.

“The classroom and textbook problem is there… We still have to make classrooms even if we’re pushing a lot of young students to learn through artificial intelligence or modern technologies,” he pointed out.