- Oct 2022
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www.bworldonline.com www.bworldonline.com
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Government and its instrumentalities have used RA 10175 in their attempt to silence not only critical reporting but even truthful coverage of government affairs. Adding the prerogative of prosecuting groups and individuals for supposedly generating and spreading false information to the vast powers of government will make the already difficult and even dangerous journalistic enterprise more uncertain, and will have a devastating impact on the people’s right to know what is going on in the government to whose officials they have delegated their sovereign powers. Any law penalizing the making and spreading of false information will, for the above reasons, more likely be part of the misinformation and disinformation problem rather than part of the solution.
Senator Jinggoy Estrada has filed Senate Bill No. 1296 that would amend the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (RA 10175) to include "fake news" among the offenses the Act penalizes. The senator defines “fake news” as “misinformation and disinformation of stories (sic) which is (sic) presented as a (sic) fact, the veracity of which cannot be confirmed, with the purpose of distorting the truth and misleading its (sic) audience.” Not only do we have a problem with misinformation, we also have a problem what "fake news" really means in the first place. According to Teodoro, L. (2022), any legislation that criminalizes the creation and dissemination of incorrect information is more likely to contribute to the problem of misinformation and disinformation than to help solve it. While the roots of a certain piece of false information can be traced back to the source and be verified, the roots of the whole "fake news" problem is what the people really need to address in the first place.
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