The Fakes Question the Truth
By Charles Benedict A. Sayson
The webinar entitled “Truth in Journalism in the Age of Fake News” made us realize that fake news is everywhere and we know them yet we are still being convinced by them. Fakes, lies, masked lies, misleading information, and rumors are all over the world and they affect everyone. The resource speaker Congresswoman Sol Aragones said that the truth is the most powerful weapon we can wield against lies. I totally agree with Ms. Aragones and I am happy that I was able to attend the seminar because I was able to fully understand fake news. I also realized that opinions are very powerful and they can mislead a belief by a lie or help someone to accept using the truth.
The world we live in today is the age of technology where people say that the truth matters but don’t accept it. This is the age where people get blinded by different powerful opinions that have not been processed through research. Even the people in social media inputs a lot of comments about their take on an issue. Some of these commenters haven’t even read the whole article instead they just gave their opinions right away. This is dangerous because it can mislead someone’s beliefs or even change his personality and attitude.
The Philippines right now is experiencing a surge in coronavirus, it has been reported that hospitals are fully occupied and can’t accommodate more patients. When the surge has been reported a doctor named Ron has addressed the people on Facebook and said that he believes that there hasn’t been a surge and that the government is just making money out of it. The statement that Dr. Ron left in his videos triggered a lot of Filipinos and made them believe that there hasn’t been a COVID anymore. The videos and posts of Dr. Ron gained a lot of reactions, comments, and shares. The comments prove how powerful lies can be because if we are going to read the comments, we can see that a lot of people changed their perspective about covid. One commenter says that he doesn’t wear a mask or a face shield anymore because he believes Dr. Ron while other comments persuade other people to not be afraid to go out. These activities can cause their lives and the lives of the people who live with them.
The Philippines is a poor country. We are not a developed country and some of our government officials don’t care about us, that is why some proclaim that they haven’t received their monetary assistance from the government. We have the right to be angry at these kinds of officials but spreading lies at this time is not a good time, this is not the time to create chaos between Filipinos. We can see a lot of proof, reports from the DOH, WHO, from other countries and even documentaries when the covid surge happened, most infected people died waiting to get into a hospital. Isn’t that proof enough to let you realize that covid is there and it’s taking a lot of people’s lives and dreams?
The medical community is getting tired and beat up because they are the ones who continuously fight this virus and yet they are the ones who are being avoided. They are our modern heroes but because of accusations, rumors and false information like what Doc Ron says, they are being criticized and hated despite sacrificing everyday. A part of the medical community namely Michael Maniwa said, “First of all, the presentation of Doc Ron’s credentials are not truthful; he is not in fact a medical doctor. Secondly, his statements are all speculations and assertions. Thirdly, he presents no scientific proof or evidence of his speculations. Fourthly, he doesn’t even have personal experiences from which to base his assertions.” This statement is only one of the statements that medical doctors are saying today just to fight the accusations that are circling to them.
The people who believe in Doc Ron’s words are people who are cowards to accept the truth and live with it. Those people want to escape reality and dive into lies just so that they can be relieved from their pain and blame it on others. It’s like fake is questioning the truth right now that people are starting to believe the masked lie.
Fakes and lies are everywhere, we should be a responsible Filipino citizen and report whenever we see a misleading post. Filipinos should be educated about fake news because it is an enemy we usually ignore without realizing that it is attacking us from our minds. Once our minds get destroyed by fakes, it will be hard to fix by the truth.
Are you going to be a virus and infect people with fakes or are you going to cure them with truth?
