Why fake news thrives: Gimme more

Fake news has long been around, in various forms. In the 1960s-1980s was very popular in the English-speaking world the American weekly tabloid National Enquirer. A million subscribers regularly lapped up stories like mermaids and mermen living under the lake and a slumbering couple kidnapped by Martians. Headlines like “I Cut Out Her Heart and Stomped on It” and “Mom Boiled Her Baby and Ate Her” boosted copy sales.

Media have since changed. Not just the well capitalized but anybody can publish. No more need for giant presses, paper, ink, and specialized staff of writers, editors, photographers, printers, and circulation salesmen. With just laptop and Internet an individual can share his composition worldwide in the blink of an eye.

Still fake news abounds. The new media only spread them faster, wider. Some, unknown to millennials, are but rehashes of old hoaxes. Like, the best cure for sore eyes is to wash the face with one’s urine. Or, that the Duterte regime is a puppet of US imperialists. Others are for the gullible. A listener of an AM-radio news program texted that the news must be true that there was no work the whole of last Holy Week because it was already on Facebook.

That news fakery thrives in politics has got governments worried. The US is investigating Russia’s manipulation through millions of social media posts of Donald Trump’s presidential win. Lies repeated often enough become true, Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels mastered 85 years ago. France is considering court censorship of fake news during election campaigns. China and Malaysia imprison news fakers. The Philippine election commission requires equal media time for candidates. A bill pends in the Senate to penalize government men who peddle disinformation.

Government regulating can curtail free expression. Better to let supply-side info-tech platforms take action. YouTube takes down videos that blatantly preach hatred, discrimination, and terror. Facebook is hiring independent fact checkers in each country. Two of those in the Philippines are Vera Files and Rappler.

Yet so long as there’s demand, fake news will flourish. It’s untrue that audiences are blank slates to be filled up, a study was reported in The Economist. Publishers both shape and respond to audience taste. The political slant of newspapers cater more to readers than to the leanings of the owners. Strikingly, audiences also resist the attempts of news outlets to correct their misperceptions, another study showed. Those who find the correction ideologically unpalatable will reason their way around it. In a survey Americans were made to read news on the failure to find any of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Still the conservatives among the respondents persisted in the wrong belief that the WMDs do exist.

There’s a parallel in the Philippines, among Diehard Duterte Supporters (DDS). When it was announced that their hated Rappler was one of Facebook’s new fact checkers, they migrated to the Russian equivalent, VK. But there they’re preaching to the choir. To spread their message, they’re petitioning FB to dump Rappler.

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“I’m sure this isn’t over, I don’t know what’ll happen next,” Sister Patricia Fox sighed upon release from jail last week. Immigration agents had arrested the 71-year-old Australian nun on info of marching with protesting farmers in Tagum, Davao. Denying it, she said she went there only to hear their plaints. For the past 27 years of Philippine mission she has been involved in poverty alleviation.

Sister Patricia had spent the night lying on the floor of a cramped detention cell. Given only a blanket to lie on, her back pain acted up. She slept only two hours and was deprived of her medicines.

At first Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque justified the arrest, as foreigners are barred from mixing in local partisan politics. Later, as no evidence was found to hold the septuagenarian further, he apologized in behalf of the government. Roque knew whereof he spoke. Years ago in more inspired times he had helped defend Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in the Kuala Lumpur trial staged by Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Still, as Sister Patricia wonders, what next? Perhaps the answer lies in German Protestant preacher Martin Niemöller’s poem about public apathy as Hitler’s Nazis rose to power:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out

—?Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out

—?Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out

—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me

—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Niemöller (1892-1984) spent the last seven years of Hitler’s reign in concentration camps. Surviving the ordeal he embarked on speaking engagements on self-criticism and social involvement.

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Congratulations to the Foreign Service Officer 2017 Exam passers:

Jackielou Gan, U.P., BS Psychology, cum laude; Christy Conta, U.P., European Languages, magna cum laude; Liezel Caasi, UP Political Science; and Ysobel Pareja, Ateneo, European Studies.

Sir Albertti Flores, U.P., European Languages, summa cum laude, also made it. But he met a serious accident and passed away a day after the exam results came out. Condolences to his family.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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