The Duterte era is really here and it’s difficult not to notice the changes. Obviously, many of these changes have been highly contentious, particularly when it comes to the the drug war, which has already claimed more than 6,000 lives. The way the president treats the media is also notably different—unfavorably different for the media in particular.

Still, it is incumbent on the media to contribute to the success of this seemingly unstoppable war. The human rights violations and extrajudicial means used in the so-called war against drugs are already there. They have already tainted the country’s reputation and are even cited as the reasons for the decision of the Millennium Development Corporation to withhold its more than $400 million grant to the Philippines. However, these shouldn’t mean that the media has nothing left to do but to criticize the government. There are still a few things the media can do to help achieve some gains in the fight against drugs.

1. Stop reporting drugs in their peso/dollar values.

It’s really puzzling why the media in the Philippines and in other parts of the world are reporting the amounts of confiscated drugs in their pecuniary equivalent. Why should news on TV, radio, and even online mention the peso, dollar, or whatever currency value of drugs? Why is there a need to say “P30 million worth of shabu” or “$11.6 million worth cocaine” when the amounts can be more accurately indicated by stating their weight?

Think about it. Which is easier: determining the so-called “market value” of the confiscated illegal substances or simply stating the weight? The latter, without a doubt, leads to more accurate reports and takes away the subliminal message that there are lots of cash to earn in the drug trade.

When media organizations report these millions of pesos of illegal drugs, they are only unnecessarily orienting everyone about the high value of illegal drugs. In turn, they become one of the factors that encourage desperate financially-deprived people to get involved in the narcotics trade. When media outfits do this “price reporting” of drugs, they end up educating younger people about drug prices first instead of foremostly informing them about the harms of narcotic substances. Drugs should be reported in newspapers, on TV and radio, and online based on their weight, not their price.

2. Don’t make drug-related killings sound normal.

It’s important to highlight the killings and human rights violations without making them sound like an acceptable and inevitable daily happening. This may sound difficult to do but the media should do something to avoid treating murders committed in the name of the drug war appear just like regular news. They should always alarm everyone. Killings can’t be mere news advisories or bits of new information reported like a daily part of life in the Philippines. If possible, they should be treated like breaking news and if they are reported in the midst of commentary programs, especially on radio, commentators or program anchors should say something to highlight the fact that they are not ordinary and should continue to be a cause for concern for every Filipino. Also, TV and radio personalities should be banned from reporting drug-related killings with a dismissive smirk, derisive “tsk-ing,” and other unnecessary remarks and body language that tend to downplay the seriousness of extrajudicial killings.

It’s also necessary to instill in everyone’s mind that killings are not normal to amplify the fear killings are supposed to sow. The last thing the media can do is to make people “immune” to the fear of getting a death sentence without due process.

It helps highlighting the (hopefully) temporary nature of drug-related killings. They can be reported as part of something like an election coverage. TV stations, for instance, can flash some introductory sub-program graphics to highlight that what’s about to be reported is something related to the bloody drug war. Like an election coverage, hopefully the drug war will end soon with the drug menace finally overwhelmed or the government finally realizing that it has to use legal approaches that respect the human rights of all individuals.

3. Avoid humanizing EJK victims who are clearly linked to drugs.

Unless what’s being reported is a clear case of collateral damage like the recent case of a six-year old shot dead in his sleep, it is the humble opinion of this writer that it would be better to avoid humanizing the victims of extrajudicial killings. Many are probably noticing that the President tends to gain more support the more those who have been killed are depicted as the poor and helpless who were deprived of due process. Observe an ordinary folk who watches news where a reporter mentions the pitiable situation of children who are now fatherless or left as orphans. You will likely notice that they are unaffected or they will argue that the alleged pusher (killed) only deserved to perish as he may have also brought suffering to more people who lost their loved ones as they became victims of drug-crazed criminals.

The media should not give the supporters and trolls of the Duterte drug war the opportunity to offer a somewhat sensible criticism. They offer an effective argument when they refuse to pity EJK victims who may have brought about suffering to others through their drug peddling or the crime they committed under the influence of narcotics. Likewise, it’s important to take away from druggies and pushers the solace that they will get sympathy when they fall to extrajudicial killings.

This is not to say that the stories of those who died don’t matter and that the presumption of innocence should be abandoned. For now, though, what’s more important is to convince the largely pro-Duterte-drug-war public that killing without due process is never a good implied policy. Instead of humanizing those who died in encounters with the police and those murdered by vigilantes or mercenaries, what needs to be done is to highlight the fact that abuses and mistakes can happen and everyone can become a victim. The emphasis should always be on following legal procedures and the dangers of tolerating vigilante killings conducted in the name of the war against drugs.

Instead of reporting on the misery and plight of the orphans of EJK victims, perhaps it would be better to focus on the fear the bloody drug war is sowing. This fear can be put to good use by convincing neighborhoods to cooperate in the apprehension of drug personalities in their respective areas. This fear can help discourage or repel those who have intentions of getting involved in the drug trade. Of course, this does not mean that the media has to play by Duterte’s playbook in using fear to address the drug problem. This is just to let whatever good fear can bring while working to convince the president that extrajudicial killings cannot solve the drug problem. Fear, somehow, can do something good so hopefully the media does not try to defeat the possible positive outcomes that fear delivers.

4. Convince the president to pursue the drug war using the right information.

Lastly, it’s important to continue fighting for the truth. The media has to convince the president that the drug war is a serious endeavor. He should not infuse hyperboles, exaggerations, flip-flopping and jokes into it. Moreover, he needs to be working on the right data. Just recently, he once more claimed that there are 4 million drug addicts in the country and that these 4 million will “contaminate” another 10 million.

The President seriously needs to reexamine his facts. Better yet, he should reevaluate his ability to accept facts supplied by sources other than himself. How can the President proceed in doing things the right way when he appears to be starting with the wrong data?

What if the President is really sincere in his desire to fight drugs and is not really obsessed with killing people as critics would say (even though he once claimed to have purposely sought confrontations so he can have the opportunity to kill someone) and he’s just truly being desperate to deliver on his campaign promise? What if he’s genuinely seeking to completely end the drug menace but he’s just too consumed by the unbelievably overwhelming drug-related statistics? The media should do everything to convince him to rely on real and accurate data. The best way to do this is to convince the public to reject the president’s implied policy or support for extrajudicial killings by making people realize the evil realities behind all of it.

Just notice how the President in his speech to the Filipino community in Singapore acted proud and mighty when he claimed to have killed people after the crowd cheered him. It’s apparently his nature – he gets emboldened more and more as people express support for him. This is one of the few consistent things in him. He is empowered by popularity. During the earlier days of the presidential campaign, he acknowledged the surveys and submitted that he was not that winnable. He really believes in popularity so it’s important to let popularity surveys reflect the need to change the approach in the war on drugs.

Everybody has the misconception that media organizations should just remain neutral or be unaffected by any side in doing their duties. However, even those who have not pursued advanced studies in journalism should realize that being in the media industry does not automatically mean you have to refrain from contributing something to achieve a common good. The points discussed above are worth considering.

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) .

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 “The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.” Justice Louis Brandeis  

 
I remember the former President Aquino  once called his critics, the noisy minority. I stressed the importance of listening to the critics especially those that do not carry a political agenda. If the president only listens to the “Yes Men” or the whispers of the “silent majority”, he will not hear the voice of the people. I felt back then that President Aquino was too sensitive towards criticism.  Did his popularity get into his head, just because a great majority of the people trusted him and thus, he can do no wrong?

Today, President Duterte is beginning to act like Aquino. He asks his critics , “Instead of asking what’s happening to your country, ask what step are you taking to [solve its problems] ? Criticisms don’t necessarily come from those with political motivation.  Most of those who didn’t vote for Duterte have learned to accept him as our president for the next six years. There are criticisms coming from those that voted for Duterte and from those that didn’t vote for him. I  didn’t vote for Duterte but I love my country very much that I would really want our president to succeed.

Three types of critics

I have written in the past that a president has three groups of critics.

1. The Friendlies

The friendlies or over-eager fans think they are helping the President, by crafting “news” to protect and promote him. Some “resort to cheap propaganda tricks, misrepresent the 16 million who voted for Duterte, worship Marcos and refuse to think for themselves”. The President can do no wrong.

2. The Unfriendlies

These are the ones who want Duterte to resign. They are hoping the President will fail or commit an impeachable offense. This group will always find fault in each and every action of President Duterte and his administration.

3. The Neutrals

The neutrals are those that say it as how they see it and may look like they are “unfriendly” critics.  I prefer to call them the patriotic citizenry, for lack of better word  and as a point for discussion. It does not mean the friendlies or unfriendlies are unpatriotic.   I am in this group because I love my country and want to help President Duterte in my own little way. Most of  us are just being vigilant of his campaign promises and eager that our children’s future will look promising.

These critics also supported President Duterte and voted for him and support his war on drug but are now worried about their safety.  In a recent  survey, 85% of the respondents were satisfied with the government’s war on drugs but a  total of 78 percent expressed worry that they or someone they know would be killed. Another survey showed that Filipinos gave Duterte a net satisfaction at a “very good”  or  +63 for December 2016 but 51% believe cursing will harm the Philippines.

Tonyo Cruz describes the majority as citizens , “eager for change, vigilant about rights, egalitarian, gracious, fair, willing to listen, democrats, nationalists, refuses to discriminate, anti-oligopoly, anti-crime, conscious of or interested in history, color-blind but not stupid, could smell bullshit from 5 kms. away, seeks fairness, demands accountability, with a preferential option for the poor, united by patriotism and eager to plant the Philippine flag on the world stage.”

Is the President listening?

My question to the President is does he know how to listen to criticisms from well-meaning citizens?

The former archbishop of Davao, Archbishop Emeritus Fernando Capalla, thinks that Mr. Duterte’s seeming inability to take advice or criticism is precisely the problem. “We have to listen twice as much as we speak”  But with the President, “it’s the reverse … That’s why we are in trouble.” Capalla adds, “I am worried about him as a friend. I think he has a problem and we need to help him. He is in the course of self-destruction, without even knowing that he is ruining himself. If he can only listen … listen to other people”.

If President Duterte only believes in what his close in associates report to him,  he will slowly lose an objective assessment of reality and will, like his predecessors, be totally isolated, thinking that he is doing a nice job when the opposite is being experienced by the people. The President needs to allow citizens, and well-meaning members of the civil society, citizen watch dogs, the academe, and people’s organizations to remain engaged in policy-making.

Carmel V. Abao stressed this a few months ago, “as citizens, we should “support the beneficial” and “reject the harmful”. Simultaneous cooperation and resistance is possible, maybe even advisable….It is not enough to be simply “pro” or “anti” Duterte. We have to be able to identify which priorities and strategies of the Duterte administration need to be supported, altered or rejected, and, publicly converse around these concerns. The mob-inspired, troll-like, self-righteous type of positioning and conversing will not cut it.”

How citizens help solve the country’s problems.

I tweeted the question”Duterte to critics: What steps are you taking to solve country’s problems?”. Perhaps, the president can listen in.  Here are a few:

Encourage people to think, verify facts, remember what led to Marcos hell aka golden years. https://t.co/o98At8RoWG

— Rafael Santos (@RaffyPHL) December 18, 2016

Ngbabayad ako ng tamang buwis at sumusunod sa batas https://t.co/OUKpqhjZP7

— daisyprecio (@daisyprecio1) December 18, 2016

Well, we’re not murdering people for one. Neither are we selling out our country to China. https://t.co/1kpJ2RayMg

— Tania Arpa (@TaniaArpa) December 18, 2016

Over at Faebook, Adam David has been helping in his own little way even before Rodrigo Duterte was the president. He is not alone. So far, these are his contribution:

1) Joining rallies and
2) encouraging art practitioners (producers and consumers) to be more invested in political happenings in their own production and consumption and also (and more importantly) as warm bodies in rallies and
3) encouraging them to do the same to other people, etc etc. Kasi edukasyon at antipathy ang malaking problema natin dati pa, at hanggang ngayon. Kaya ka nga nanalo, e.

Miguel Syjuco, a writer, a teacher, and a Filipino has his share in helping solve the country’s problems:

1) Committing my own work to calling out the abuses of our leaders, the way I did before you, and will continue to do so after you’ve served your term;
2) Teaching my students well, so that the next generation of leaders will not stand for the old, entrenched ways that have led us to this era of rationalised killings and power hungry trapos posing as saintly victim-saviours;
3) Working with the disenfranchised to help them find their voices through writing, so that they are further empowered to speak for themselves and demand the equality they deserve;
4) Participating in rallies as a citizen exercising democratic rights to access a system that has long ceased to be democratic and representative;
5) Working quietly to donate all the time and money that I can afford to grassroots initiatives that can have real impact on real lives;
6) Engaging in the maddening time-suck of social media, because this is one major front in the disinformation war now waged by those who want to diminish our constitutional checks and balances, or return their dynasties to power.

These are just a few of the critics that the President refers to and each want to be part of the solution. The President must recognize citizens , and not just those that voted for him , as partners in participatory governance .  Most citizens do not necessarily have a political agenda when we engage government.   I hope the President can discern between the three groups of critics.

“We are complicit when we are not critical. We are part of the conspiracy of the powerful if we remain silent.” Leonen J., Commencement Address, Ateneo School of Government, August 2016

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) .

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The world was stunned when Brexit campaigners pulled a stunning victory, forcing the UK out of the EU. The right wingers painted immigrants as the main reason behind UK’s woes and eliminating them in the picture via Brexit could lead to a positive change. This victory was replicated in an even more stunning upset by another tough leader, Donald Trump, whom no one thought would come an inch closer to the White House. He also made immigration a focal point of his campaign. He has also painted a chaotic picture of the country and made himself the only one who could salvage the situation.

Since these victories, we have seen the rise of more right wing ideologies in many other countries. Italy’s Matteo Renzi was also forced out of office after Italians failed to support him in the economic reform referendum he has proposed. Marine Le Pen is also quickly rising in France as a replacement to President Francois Hollande.

Whether it’s Trump of the US, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson of the UK or Le Pen of France, they all push for almost the same policies – anti-immigration and crackdown on criminals. They also share the same sharp tongues who speak without holding anything back.

The man who won before

Before we saw the rise of these leaders in the West, one man has already taken that spot earlier in 2016 – a our very own President Rodrigo Duterte. Unlike those Western leaders though, his victory was pretty much sealed right from the start. Even if he has detractors especially from the major institutions of the country, he has the backing of the majority of the Filipino people.

Despite the fact that he has cursed popular figures like the Pope and former US President Barrack Obama, he remains popular. He even tried cozying up to China and Russia, which is a 360 degree turn on the policies proposed by the previous administration. The anti-China sentiment in the Philippines remains strong, but if this is what Duterte wants, his followers will give a willing nod.

Creating an enemy and being the savior

Aside from their policies and strength as leaders, these right wing ideologists also have the same strategies. They start by painting someone else as the enemy. In the case of Duterte, he has made drug offenders as public enemy number one. Anyone who is sympathetic to these people (whether they have been proven guilty or not) are painted with the same brush and are deemed as the enemy.

Another strategy is to be more dramatic about the current situation of the country. He has drawn the line that anyone involved in drugs, regardless of the reason or gravity of the crime, deserves punishment. Whether it is beyond what is permitted by the law, it doesn’t matter. In the case of Western leaders like Trump, they paint all Muslim immigrants as terrorists. This is how he justifies his executive order to ban citizens from 7 Muslim-majority countries to travel to the US.

By succeeding in their crusade, they have won the hearts of their followers even more. Since Duterte took office, he has cracked down hundreds upon thousands of drug addicts. Although most of them are not major drug offenders and others have already left the trade, their death or capture was claimed as a victory for the government.

Taking decency out of public discourse

Before the world has seen female leaders, it was pretty much a patriarchal society. Almost anywhere in the world, only men were given major political powers. Women were left home to take care of the kids. Men were deemed tough enough to lead a society or fight battles while women are too weak.

Until now, a lot of people think the same way. Men who look tough and act tough are better leaders. This is why Trump’s outspokenness won the hearts of many. The same thing is true with Duterte. He can’t help himself and curse in public, or even make insensitive jokes. His followers think of his strategy as an act of bravery rather than a sign of indecency.

This is how he keeps winning in the eyes of his supporters. For them, name calling his opponents and pinning them down with words make him a successful leader. To begin with, they are enemies and they deserve to be shut down.

A moment of reflection

You might be familiar of superhero films like Superman where the recurring plot is that the superhero wants to do everything to finish the villain off. In the process, he killed a lot of people, destroyed properties, and betrayed friends. In the middle of the road, these superheroes take time to pause and ask themselves if they are still doing the right thing.

We have come to a point where we have to take a step back and see where we are now. Perhaps, for most people who believe in these strong leaders, achieving the goal whatever the strategy is the way to go. There is nothing wrong in pointing out the problems and trying to solve them. As long as we remain in the realms of reality and decency, we can all rally behind these efforts.

However, if with these agenda, we are turning our backs against each other and make us divided more than ever, perhaps something has to change.

In the end though, whether you believe in right or left wing ideologies, we belong in one nation. We must all unite in achieving the same goals for the country. Yes, we have to be supportive in the efforts made by our elected leaders. If these actions though are tearing us apart, we have to resist.

The post The Rise of Tough Leaders and Their Populist Agenda appeared first on .

We always hear politicians accusing the media of being biased and unfair in their delivery of news. President Rodrigo Duterte has in fact been vocal about his distaste with the media, especially given how he is always painted in a negative light. He didn’t even shy away from accusing media of being biased in the middle of interviews.

This begs the questions, should the media always be fair in treating politicians? Is Duterte right in accusing the media of being biased against him? To answer these questions straight forward, it’s both a yes and a no.

The need for fairness

There are different types of articles published by the media. There’s straight news where only facts are being delivered and there’s opinion, where journalists express their personal stance regarding the issues presented.

For straight news, it is imperative for journalists to only give what is asked. In the delivery of news, the people don’t need to know what the journalists personally think about the issue. It must contain the responses to the basic questions of what, when, where, who, why and how.

It is imperative to be fair in providing news to allow the people to give their own judgment. If they are provided with facts without any bias, they can formulate their opinions, and it is essential in a healthy democracy.

There are also some people who don’t want to be dictated on what they should believe in. They make decisions based on what they hear on the news and their personal experiences. For the media to be an effective tool in delivering what people need to know, they have to be fair. Otherwise, people will be deprived of the opportunity to hear the facts. This can also be a bit dangerous in a sense that they might be pushed to look for facts elsewhere.

This drives them to the darker abyss of the Internet where fake news organizations present themselves as sources of facts. If mainstream media couldn’t be a credible source of unbiased information, this gives more credibility to fake news.

Being biased towards the truth

The main goal of media organizations is to deliver the truth. This is why they have to be biased in favor of the truth. This might be deemed unfair by politicians, but it has to be done. There are several options for the media to cast some light on the truth. They can write editorials. They can also provide opinions via talk radio. Shows centered on analyzing political issues may also be a good avenue.

The media is usually given the opportunity to be in the middle of the news as it happens. They know more and they can provide a more in-depth analysis. Hence, they have to make use of this power to help the people make an informed decision. This is also essential in a healthy democracy.

The media must not be crippled if they speak their minds out. Criticizing the government for its policies must not be deemed as biased. Instead, it should be a strong voice to allow the government to function at its best. This lets them know that by doing actions that are illegal or unfavorable to the people, there will be consequences.

We have witnessed several times in history when the media helped changed the course of this country. It was because of the relentless media that the dark secrets of the corrupt Marcos administration started to unfold. It was also because of the media that we have gotten into the bottom of sensational issues like the Napoles scam or the Hello Garci scandal. Let’s not forget the number of corrupt local politicians who were booted out of the office because they were exposed by the local media.

Aside from having a strong voice, the media also has the power to ask tough questions. They place the politicians on a difficult position. This allows the people to see whether or not they are telling the truth. It also lets the people understand where their leaders stand on certain issues, especially when caught off guard. These tough questions extract the truth from the politicians. Hence, they have to keep pounding.

Let’s empower the media

The Philippines ranks among the worst countries in the world when it comes to the safety of journalists. We are among the ranks of countries with a dictatorship like Iraq, Syria or Sudan. This is due to the number of extra judicial killings involving the media.

This only means that instead of treating them as the enemy, we have to empower them. Whether we like how journalists voice their opinion out or not, it doesn’t matter. The point is that outside the three branches of the government, we have a 4^th one that serves as an actual check.

Yes, there are paid media organizations and even fake ones for that matter. Not all of them operate in the same manner. There are a lot of passionate journalists who simply want to be the voice for the Filipino people.

If the criticize the leaders we have come to love, let us understand them. Listening to them is one thing. Believing in what they say is another. It is better that we at least hear from them rather than the time when we are left in the dark. Let’s not go back to the Marcos era when major news outlets were shut down and only state media was allowed to provide the news.

We only feel bad because we don’t want what we hear. Sadly, it is what news is all about. It is not always about what we want to hear. Truth always hurts, but in the end, it would be in our best interest to hear it.

Image via PresidentialCom Facebook. Some rights reserved.

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) .

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While I agree with the principle of social media accreditation, what matters most is citizen engagement, a “two-way interaction between citizens and governments  that give citizens a stake in decision-making, with the objective of improving development outcomes.”

When the incoming Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar messaged me last June 12, 2016, he asked “I am looking at opening the malacanang press office to bloggers. You think they’ll be interested?” I do not speak for the bloggers so I told him , “I am interested”. I added that we faced challenges in the last administration much as they also wanted to accredit bloggers but I was told that the Malacanang Press Corps (MPC) had objections. I am glad the accreditation will be happening soon.

While I agree with the principle of accreditation, what matters most is citizen engagement, a “two-way interaction between citizens and governments  that give citizens a stake in decision-making, with the objective of improving development outcomes.”

Source: Citizen Engagement: History and Definitions by Mary McNeil, World Bank Group

Before I provide my reactions on the social media policy, let me stress the importance of citizen engagement.  As Jane Uymatiao cited in her post “Citizen Engagement: A mission possible?” , “The operative word: “two-way”. The feedback loop must go from top to bottom and back up. Government may provide information for citizens to act upon but if there is no process that allows feedback from the citizenry back up to government with that process looping over and over, then the engagement stays one-way.”

READ: The President and social media

It was during the monthly meetings with Secretary Andanar together with Blog watch and blogger friends, that a feedback mechanism was initiated. Secretary Andanar provided the updates about the PCOO,  followed by the bloggers providing feedback and finally moving forward to address our issues.  Much needs to be improved with this process.  I am hoping that aside from the accreditation, the PCOO  will continue and improve this feedback loop with the accredited social media publishers, bloggers and citizens.

READ: Citizen Engagement: A mission possible?

The first Social Media Policy Town hall is a step towards citizen engagement. Let me now proceed to the draft.

Source: Citizen Engagement: History and Definitions by Mary McNeil, World Bank Group

The working draft of the PCOO Social Media Policy

The purpose of this memorandum is as follows: to recognize social media as a form of public communication and one source of information; to provide guidelines on the use of social media by PCOO personnel; set rules on content management of PCOO offices; and establish a system for social media accreditation.

Draft PCOO Memo on Social Media Policy as of Feb 21, 2017 by BlogWatch.ph on Scribd

Initial feedback on the PCOO social media policy

1. Line 392-  it is not a matter of sharing press releases as part of our responsibility. Bloggers are independent minded and have the freedom of choice which press release to share or write about. Like I said earlier,  a feedback loop or two way engagement is more important.
2. Line 357- In consonance with the prerogative of the PCOO Social Media Office to extend accreditation, it reserves the right to withdraw accreditation for violation of the terms of accreditation, the  PCOO Social Media Policy and pertinent laws and government regulations.
3.  Line 402: What are these additional requirements for group blogs?
4. Will the Social Media Policy become an administrative order?  Will it form part of the Freedom of Information Bill?
5. I suggest a committee composed of the PCOO and stakeholders to finalize the draft.

READ: My thoughts on blogger accreditation

I also suggest that once there are accredited  social media publishers  , they may want to organize and draft their own  community guidelines including best practices. I recognize that bloggers have their own community but now that they belong to the PCOO-accredited social media publishers, this is another community.

Some reactions to the Social Media Policy from my community

I crowdsourced comments on the draft. Let me share a few of them:

1. On line 284 : Section C on  Conduct of Citizens using PCOO Social Media Platform Number 3.  The term “inflammatory” was used. Was it supposed to mean “derogatory to anyone”? On the same guideline, there might be an instance where the language isn’t provocative but the underlying tone is such as to provoke someone/anyone. What could be the action for this? (Jay Agonoy)
2. Line 359 on the part of the hyperlink, will it be possible to have a shortlink (like pcoo dot gov dot ph slash rules…)?
3. Line 373: On accreditation, I have understood the benefit for both the Social Media User (SMU) and the Social Media Publisher (SMP), but I was unable to determine the responsibilities of the SMU aside from that they will be included in the communications regarding Laging Handa. ( Jay Agonoy)
4. Line 404- How are we assured that legitimate bloggers will actually apply?
5. Line 404- Our site supports anything that would somehow advance the cause of recognizing not just social media but as well as bloggers or the blogging community as legitimate media. But certain guidelines must be set. There are those who claim to be bloggers but really are not adept in using the platform to improving the bloggers’ statuses. Some bloggers or blog site owners have been notorious in using their sites to do irregular acts. Prior to accreditation there should be initial screening and all.
6. Line 404 – It is not just about visibility, but credibility of the blogger. Background of the blogger, the kind of contents it provide for online readers.
7. Line 36-37: “Government recognizes social media as the collective voice of the citizenry” I think it may be reworded some other way as I think it gives an impression that what can be found in social media is the collective voice of Filipinos. Although, it may be argued that a lot of Filipinos have begun accessing social media platforms such as Facebook as part of their regular routine, I think we may have to consider that despite the large number, it is not representative of the sentiments of Filipinos. I would agree, though, it is an accessible conduit for getting immediate feedback. (Tess Termulo)
8. Line 45: “form of public communication and one source of information;” perhaps we can change “one source of information” to “a source of information”, as the former seems to imply that social media is a sole source of information. (Tess Termulo)
9. Line 199: “Style Guide for the government” – what guide does this pertain to? (Tess Termulo)
10. Line 231: What would be considered as “offensive”? (Tess Termulo)
11. Line 234, 314: I do not think endorsement of private/commercial products or services should affect PCOO accreditation/representation, unless the government bloggers to be exclusively blogging only for the government. If this is so, then maybe there is no need for accreditation but rather, focus on just which blogs/bloggers can represent PCOO in an official capacity. I have read some of the references used in the draft of this policy (as indicated at the end of the document) and perhaps, what is also needed is to clearly outline the capacity by which bloggers can use a particular social media platform in an official/professional/personal capacity. Should bloggers create a separate blog for PCOO matters? (Tess Termulo)
12. Line 302 Need to be more specific about what kind of sexual content or links to sexual content that are not allowed. Line 306 Emphasize that posting personal information, especially those of others, without explicit consent of the parties involved. (Tess Termulo)
13. Line 412-413: “Applicant must not be involved in prosecuting any claim against the government.” I think the statement sounded a bit defensive and it would help if there are specific details to describe which claims the statement/requirement pertain to. Requirements should also include documents reflective of applicant’s background, criminal record, history of social media practice. Will PCOO have editorial capacity regarding content of all accredited blogs, or only of those bloggers considered to be representing PCOO in an official capacity? As I understand, there may actually be two groups of bloggers concerned in this SM policy: one group is that of bloggers accredited to cover particular events/activities of the government, and the other group is that of bloggers who are considered as officially representing PCOO. (Tess Termulo)

And a friend asks  “Will media who would not want to undergo accreditation be barred from covering palace events?”

While the draft is being finalized, the PCOO has to build a two-way communication process and a feedback loop on the ground and through its social media accounts. Rising expectations and an increasingly mobile population make it challenging to reach and engage the Filipino netizens.  That’s why a citizen-centric digital engagement strategy is vital to helping government organizations connect with its audience, provide critical information and services, and improve the lives of Filipino citizens.

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) 

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During the early years of the Internet it has been likened to the movable type of printing press. This is an important comparison because the printing press led to a communication and information revolution. Before the paper, ink and the press, information and stories could only be handed down orally, painted and hand written. The advent of the printing press enable humanity to slowly mass produce books, pamphlets and bulletins. It was a form of democratizing information and stories since more and more people began to have access to information and stories.

The influence of mass produced books, news and pamphlets could not and should not be discounted because without it Shakespeare would not have become popular, Copernicus could not have spread his theory on heavenly bodies and Christians would not have been able to evangelize the word without their bible. At the least it made the sharing and transferring of information and knowledge easier.

Internet and digital technology is doing now what the printing press, the telephone and the telegraph has done to revolutionize publishing and communication. At present anyone using the Internet and digital technology can create, share, comment on, change content and communicate regardless of time difference and geographical location.

A person I met years ago compared this information phenomenon to the miracle of five loaves and two fishes. Through the Internet and digital media one could replicate the afore mentioned miracle but not on fishes and loaves of bread but on digital information and media. Provided though that one has three essential things:

First, One must have a gadget that would allow you to connect and create through the Internet.

Second, One must have Internet connection itself.

Third, One’s internet connection must be stable and fast enough to create, upload, view and interact with content.

Given the revolutionary affect and effects of the internet and digital technology it is still an unequal world. In relation to this it is most glaring in terms of what is called the Digital Divide. But what is the Digital Divide?

The Digital Divide

The Digital Divide are a set of divisions in humanity or more specifically in a country based on the use or lack of use of the Internet and Digital Technology. These set of divisions can be grouped into three and often can be related to one another. Before we proceed it should be noted that these groupings are not clear cut and there are exceptions.

First, The Digital Native and the Digital Immigrants

Digital Natives are those who were born in the Internet and digital technology age and in general they have been made familiar by being exposed or immersed in digital technology and the Internet. On the other hand a Digital Immigrant are those who were born before the advent of the Internet and have become early technology adaptors.

In a sense this divide is superficial because of the learning curve, reluctance and acceptance of technology is individual and not necessarily age dependent. Sometimes people assume that a digital native is very tech-savvy while a digital immigrant is not, but this is not the usual case. And, t would be foolish to assume or stereotype a person whether he or she is a digital immigrant or digital native.

Second, The Digital Rich and the Digital Poor

This is the more critical digital divide because it is based on the financial capacity of an individual to do the following: (I) Buy a gadget; (ii) Buy Internet access; And (iii) buy a reliable, stable and fast Internet access.

This is why in the Philippines those with the funds can possibly get a faster and better gadget and a faster and more stable Internet access. Also, this is the reason why Internet speed and stability is stratified from those who can get fast and stable Internet to those who can only get Internet by sachet or pre-paid Internet connection. Although there are news that even those who pay more do not get stable and fast connection but that is another issue — in particular a consumer and a human right issue.

The divide between the digital rich and the digital poor has caused two more groupings of the digital divide.

Third, The Digital Skilled and the Digital Unskilled

Due to the lack of funds and opportunities there is also a discrepancy in terms of digital skills. This is of course further complicated by the learning curve and reluctance of the individual resulting in a difference of digital skills. Of course , Such skills and knowledge can be gained formally or by self-learning and even on the job-training; People have overcome financial challenges in order to become digitally skilled. Not all though are as fortunate or lucky and as such financial capacity is consistently still a challenge that has to be overcome by the majority.

The Digital Divide in the Philippines

The Philippines has been described as the social media capital of the world and perhaps rightly so but what does it really it mean and is it the truth?

The percentage of a country’s population that can and has access the Internet is called the Internet Penetration Rate; while the percentage of that population that uses social media is called the Social Media Penetration Rate.

At present the Philippines has an Internet Penetration Rate between 47 to 50% while the Philippine Social Media Penetration rate is approximately in the 90 to 95%. At a population size of 120 million this means optimistically that 6 out of 12 Filipinos do not have access to the Internet and nearly the same 6 people that can connect are on social media. (Note: For the 47 to 50% Internet penetration rate — the lower figure comes from live web stats.)

The increase of the Internet penetration rate was and is still due to the affordability of gadgets, brought about by the boom of computer, tablet and smartphone technology. Important or cornerstone technology associated with the increase were the Apple Ipads and Android devices.

The Importance of the Digital Divide

What is the importance of the Digital Divide and why do we need to be familiar with it?

First, It is important to be aware that not all Filipinos are connected to the Internet.

Second, No matter how promising and beneficial the Internet is one important factor to avail of it is financial capability or money.

Third, The Digital Divide is closing because of the boom and drive of technology. In other words that drive to make profit by getting more consumers has helped in bridging this divide.

Fourth, However, Despite this boom, It is my opinion that there is a need to be more proactive to close the digital divide particularly between the digitally skilled and unskilled.

Fifth, One of the impacts of the eventually closing of the digital divide would be a more diversified Philippine Internet Community.

Sixth, This diversity will and has led to a clash of cultures between the different groups (social, ethnic, cultural, religious, economic, political, age and orientation groups). The Philippine Internet will and actually cease to be just our group.

Seventh, As netizens we should be aware of this cultural diversity and become adept to the consequences of the increasing diversity of the Philippine Internet, without giving up on our digital rights, which is the same rights we enjoy off-line.

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). 

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First try to answer the following questions with a yes or a no. Try to be honest”

ONE, I use social media like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or Pinterest throughout the entire day.

TWO, I use social media when I am bored or alone.

THREE, I find myself using social media more and more.

FOUR, I’m afraid of missing out on something important when I am not on social media.

FIVE, My social media use has caused conflict with my friends, distracted me in class or while at work.

SIX. I have tried to cut back on my time on social media, but it didn’t last very long.

Have you finished answering? If you have how many times did you answer yes and how many times did you answer no? Now if you answered yes to three or more of the questions above then you might be addicted to social media and perhaps reconsider your use of social media.

This however is not a pop or online quiz that s number of us take for the hell of it and share on our FB timeline. This test was reported in 2016 and was said to reveal if one was addicted to social media. The test was developed by Dr. James Roberts — The Ben H. Williams Professor of Marketing in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business — and was reported or featured in SCIENCE DAILY.COM last October 27, 2016.

Roberts is the author of the book “Too Much of a Good Thing: Are you Addicted to yourI Smartphone. Also, Roberts is internationally known for his research on the effects of technology — specifically smartphones — on stress levels and relationships. Aside from that he has also conducted research on Smart Phone addiction.

An Explanation of the test

It would seem that Roberts based or patterned his test on substance and behavioral addictions. According to Roberts, Substance and behavioral addictions is made up of six parts: (I) salience; (II) euphoria; (III) tolerance; (IV)conflict; (V) withdrawal symptoms; And (VI) relapse. The six questions and statements can be use to assess each part and ultimately help them make sense if the attachement to social media is an addiction.

A brief explanation of the term and the corresponding question in the quiz:

First, What is Salience?
It is your social media use deeply integrated into your daily life?
(I use social media like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or Pinterest throughout the entire day. )

Second, What is Euphoria?
Do you depend on social media use for excitement throughout the day?
(I use social media when I am bored or alone. )

Third, What is Tolerance?
Do you need to spend more time to get a “buzz” from social media?
(I find myself using social media more and more.)

Fourth, What is Withdrawal symptoms?
Do you get nervous when you are not on social media?
(I’m afraid of missing out on something important when I am not on social media. )

Fifth, What is Conflict?
Does your use of social media cause you trouble?
(My social media use has caused conflict with my friends, distracted me in class or while at work. )

Sixth, What is Relapse?
Have you tried to cut-back on your use of social media but failed?
(I have tried to cut back on my time on social media, but it didn’t last very long.)

Interpretation of the Test Results

Roberts said, “Our devotion to technology and social media has changed how we interact with others, and that’s not necessarily a good thing”.

Roberts believed that indeed technology — in this case digital technology has its advantages, However, The obsession with digital technology — ie smart? phones and others — and our life on social media can come to a cost to our real-life relationships.”

According to Roberts, If you gave three or more questions to the test, then you might need to re-assess your use of social media. Roberts’ quickly followed that with a statement that there is still hope. The advise Roberts gave was to find a sweet a balance between being digitally connected and make time for relationships and community.

Assessment of the test and its significance

The Roberts test of social media addiction is interesting because aside from it being a self-evaluative tool to assess ourselves, it show how digital technology and social media has affected our lives. Is our digital life affecting our real world life? How is it affecting it?

This opens up a wide array of things to look into from the difference of online and offline social behaviour to digital solitude versus the Hikikomori phenomenon — or an individual’s social withdrawal into the digital world, which was previously observed in Japan, where adolescents and young adults withdraw from social life for more than six months.

Perhaps beyond the initial fascination whether or not we are social media addicts. This test and this bit of news can actually push us to re-think and re-evaluate our social media use. Given that the psychological definition of addiction is still the following:

Addiction:

Addiction is a condition that results when a person ingests a substance (e.g., alcohol, cocaine, nicotine) or engages in an activity (e.g., gambling, sex, shopping) that can be pleasurable but the continuation of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary responsibilities and concerns, such as work, relationships, or health. People who have developed an addiction may not be aware that their behavior is out of control and causing problems for themselves and others.
.

Link

References:

Baylor University. “Are you addicted to social media? Six questions.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 October 2016. .
Date Accessed: March 23,2017 – https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161027115714.htm

What is addiction? Psychology Today. psychologytoday.com. Date Accessed: March 23,2017. https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/addiction

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). 

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Today, let us look a three studies on alcohol, drugs and social media. What are they? What are the possible impacts they might have on our own present problems on alcohol and drug abuse? Also how if ever will it shape our own present war against drugs.

Alcohol use and social media

In this first study we look at the link between alcohol use and social media. Party on(line): The link between social media, alcohol use Researchers at Michigan State University conducted a study of 121 participants were one group was exposed FB ads touting beer and another group were exposed to FB ads of bottled water. At the conclusion of the study the participants were given as an incentive the choice between a gift card for a bar or a gift card for a coffee shop. Seventy-three percent of those who watched the beer ads choose the bar cards while for those who saw the bottle war ads after only fifty-five percent chose the bar card.

Project head and MSU Assistant Professor of advertising and public retaliations Saleem Alhbash said, “In this study we wanted to see whether just the mere exposure to alcohol messages on social media makes any difference in terms of people’s expressing intentions to consume alcohol, as well as engage in alcohol-related consumption behaviors”.

According to Saleem Alhbash, “What this tells us is there is an effect and it can be attributed to the sheer exposure to these messages…It primes them to think about alcohol”.

Alhabash warned that the study brings up questions about the ability of social media to influence people. Specifically those who are underage.

The Mexican Drug War and Narcomedia

Carnegie Mellon University’s Paul Eiss looked at how Mexico’s cartel operatives and government ( and its security forces) have used and responded to digital and social media. Eiss — who is an associate professor of anthropology and history in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences —has been studying the nature and implications of what he describes as “narcomedia” — which are forms of digital messagings that have become elements and motivations for the acts of violence in the drug war.

Eiss’ work reveals that the increase access to the Internet, cellphones and otber forms of digital media has significantly changed the landscape of what Eiss’ calls the so-called drug war in Mexico.

Mexico and narcomensajes

In Mexico, “narcomensajes” or narcomessages, are handwritten signs left by drug traffickers, often accompanied by gruesomely disfigured human remains. They have been used by traffickers since 2006 and are typically interpreted as ways for rival groups to claim territory and settle scores… From the onset of their initial emergence, the narcomensajes and “narcovideos” were clearly intended for digital reproduction and transmission to YouTube and other platforms. In effect bypassing the control of traditional media and taking advantage of the increasing number Internet users in Mexico. Internet. Access in Mexico increased from five percent (5%) in 2000 to 33 percent (33%) in 2010.

The study showed the politicization of narco media — in some cases the tactics of the narcomedia seem to have been adopted by government and security forces . For example in 2009 security forces killed cartel leader, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and distributed images of his symbolically desecrated body.

Attempts to curtail narcomedia by traditional media has been unsuccessful given the nature of digital media and social media — which are easy to create and easy to share. Their have been times when the press had been subjected to an unprecedented level of physical attacks — by traffickers as well as police and security forces for attempting to curtail narcomedia.

Eiss said, “I call my analysis of the narcomedia a ‘reader’s guide,’ because it is meant to provide a different way to read the narcomedia, and by extension, episodes of drug war-related violence in Mexico,”

Eiss, who also directs CMU’s Center for the Arts in Society (CAS). Further said, “ Against depictions of the drug war in black and white, as a fight of good guys against bad guys, the narcomedia reveal the conflict to be painted in shades of gray — leaving many observers asking ‘Who is who’? As such the rosy depictions of social media as an engine of progressive social change is countered by narcomedia, which shows that social media can and has been them used also as a powerful as a tactic of violence.

Despite this Eiss believes that in a climate of censorship and open physical assaults on the press, Narcomedia and the blogs that mine narcomedia for news are an increasingly important source for Mexicans, who are seeking news and perspective on the drug war and looking for ways to respond to it.

Professor helps track illegal drug use via social media in the United States

Yong Ge an assistant professor in the University of North Carolina’s College of Computing and Informatics , Department of Computer Science has developed a tool that uses social media data to help analyze the patterns of illegal drug use in the United States. The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).Founded in 1887, the National Institutes of Health is one of the world’s foremost medical research centers, and the Federal focal point for medical research in the United States. The NIH, comprising 27 separate Institutes and Centers, is one of eight health agencies of the Public Health Service which, in turn, is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

According to Ge the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration does a national survey once a year to find out what type of illegal drugs people are using. Ge believes this is costly and might not even be accurate. Furthermore, Ge said that the once a year survey makes it nearly impossible to capture the dynamics of illegal drug use.

Ge said that with the use of social media analysis, researchers can now capture and analyze data on an ongoing basis and gives them a much more powerful tool to determine what is happening… One of challenges in setting up this data mining and analysis tool would be the creation of its database is the different names used to describe drugs. This is important because Ge believed that people use many different street names to describe illegal drugs. Ge said. “Therefore, we need to capture that data in order to get a good sampling of what people are using. It is very rare that folks will use the real names of the illegal drug.”

The tracking of illegal drug use through social media analysis is important because as Ge explained through the tool it would be able to see among other things where certain illegal drugs are being used, sort patterns of usage of drugs, detect new ways of using drugs. He said as soon as the real-time information is obtained then it will be possible to detect and report immediately what is trending and where. Ge said they hope to be able to supply this information to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and law enforcement authorities, eventually.

The importance of these three studies/researches to the Philippines

It should be noted that these three studies were not done in the Philippines: Two were done in the United States and one was done in Mexico. It is important for the Philippines because of the present drug problem. Drug war and the increasing use of social media by Filipinos. What can we learn from these efforts and how can we use it to solve our present drug problems; And what role will social media play?

A quick look at the three studies will show the three different research areas in social media and drug abuse:

First, How social media factors in drug and alcohol abuse, which is study on how alcohol ads as compared to bottle water FB ads affects alcohol consumption.

Second, How is digital media (and social media) being used by both sides of the drug wars, which is the study on narcomedia.

Third, How data mining and social media analysis can be used identify and study use of illegal drugs, which is the project of Professor Ge from the University of North Carolina.

What do you think of these studies? Can we in the Philippines make use of these studies? What can we learn from them?

Looking at the first study will we have to regulate on-line ads and digital contents — like FB posts and blog posts? I think we do have laws that regulate but do we have extend it to a more wide array of digital content and digital platforms? Furthermore, If this is done how will this impact the freedom of expression right? Can and should we control content from websites staked outside the country?

Now looking at the second study are we in danger of the proliferation narcomedia or do we have our own version? Given that traditional media in the Philippines does not seem to nor want to curtail the showing of the casualties of the drug war will narcomedia arise? One way to look at it perhaps would be is the media coverage just too much that it builds that it does not shock Filipinos anymore and it has become a new norm. The use shock news as a propaganda tool does not seem to come from the drug cartels but from other players and groups — vigilante and terrorist groups.

Finally looking at the third study how effective is data mining and social media analysis in a country that has an Internet Penetration Rate of fifty percent (50%) ? Also, Will the mining and analysis of social media although potentially expedient, accurate and effective bring up the fear of an Orwellian society: a digital panopticon from the dystopian society of Big Brother? As a citizen would you accept this?

Or would there be other ways to use these and other studies like these that takes a look at social media, drug abuse and the war on drugs?

References:

Eiss, P. K. . The Narcomedia: A Reader’s Guide. Latin American Perspectives, 2014; 41 (2): 78 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14521388

Eiss, P.K. . The Narcomedia: A Reader’s Guide. Latin American Perspectives, 2014; 41 (2): 78 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14521388. Carnegie Mellon University. “How social media shaped the ‘drug war’ in Mexico.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 March 2014. Date Accessed: . .

Carnegie Mellon University. “How social media shaped the ‘drug war’ in Mexico.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 4 March 2014. .

Saleem Alhabash, Anna R. McAlister, Wonkyung Kim, Chen Lou, Carie Cunningham, Elizabeth Taylor Quilliam, Jef I. Richards. Saw It on Facebook, Drank It at the Bar! Effects of Exposure to Facebook Alcohol Ads on Alcohol-Related Behaviors. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 2016; 16 (1): 44 DOI: 10.1080/15252019.2016.1160330

Michigan State University. “Party on(line): The link between social media, alcohol use.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 May 2016. .

University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “Professor helps track illegal drug use via social media.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 June 2016. .

This post is supported by a writing grant from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). 

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The current game being played by the administration of Pres Duterte and opposition led by Leni Robredo can be likened to a complicated match of three dimensional chess, with battles being staged at multiple levels.

A first in Philippine politics took place on the 2nd of April 2017.  Supporters of a sitting president gathered at a public square to call for the ouster of his vice president. The vice president whom the constitution mandates to do, well nothing, except serve as a spare tire for the president. The role is mostly ceremonial in nature. Never mind that. Thousands of protesters still demanded she be replaced.

Why? What for? According to the event organizers, it was for publicly shaming the president before the international community. What exactly did she do? Well, about a fortnight ago, a pre-recorded video of Vice President Robredo was played at a UN conference on narcotics in Vienna. In her statement, she highlighted the human rights abuses being carried out under Pres. Duterte’s war on drugs. This included 7,000 extra-judicial killings of suspects, warrant-less searches of the poor, beatings of those who insisted on their rights under the law, and misleading information in prosecuting the case for the war on drugs.

In her message that lasted for nearly six minutes, she said, “Our people have fought long for our rights and freedoms. We are not about to back down now.” This was a reference to the protest movement under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos that culminated in the People Power revolt of February 1986 that toppled his regime.

What came before

In August 2016, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Philippines, Chito Gascon, a party-mate of the vice president suggested that extra-judicial killings being committed had reached an unprecedented scale and could constitute crimes against humanity. This meant that a case against Pres. Duterte could eventually be mounted with the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

On the eve of the 31st anniversary of the people power revolt in February this year, Senator Leila De Lima, the most vocal critic of the president was imprisoned based on what the opposition believes are trumped up charges. The Liberal Party, led by former president Benigno Aquino and Vice President Robredo marked the celebration of People Power day by protesting what they saw was a return to the dark days of authoritarian rule under Pres. Duterte.

On March 16, the same day that Ms Robredo’s statement was aired, an impeachment complaint against President Duterte was filed by an opposition lawmaker in the lower house of the Philippine congress. On March 21, the New York Times ran a feature article entitled, Becoming Duterte: The making of a Philippine strongman. On the same day, the first impeachment complaint against the vice president was filed by a former Marcos loyalist.

The speaker of house was mulling the day after the filing of a similar complaint against her, but then Pres. Duterte called on his allies not proceed with it. About a week later, the justice secretary bared that the speaker would continue prosecuting the impeachment case against Ms Robredo. The grounds would be betrayal of public trust based on her video message to the UN, which the Solicitor General said was tantamount to treason.

A complex chess match

The current game being played by the administration and opposition can be likened to a complicated match of three dimensional chess, with battles being staged at multiple levels.

On one level is the election protest case that will decide who rightfully won the vice presidential race of 2016. This legal battle pre-dates all this. When the Supreme Court denied Robredo’s motion to dismiss the case filed by Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. back in February this year, the distinct possibility of a Duterte-Marcos administration emerged. This is what led to the pre-EDSA anniversary rumblings, which eventually culminated in an impeachment case against Mr Duterte. This is really more symbolic than anything, because the opposition does not have the numbers at the lower house to impeach him. That leads to the second stage.

The second level is the public relations war, or the court of public opinion. In this theater, the opposition seeks to delegitimise Duterte by throwing the spotlight on the human rights abuses under his watch and the many missteps he or his acolytes make in domestic or foreign policy. This is the primary reason for the vice president to issue her statement to the UN. She is essentially piling on the pressure already mounted by the EU that opposes the reimposition of the death penalty in the country, the international press, and former Latin American leaders who have criticized Duterte’s approach to solving illegal drugs.

The supporters of Duterte counter by depicting the vice president as an out-of-touch elitist whose sense of political correctness results in the coddling of narco-politicians. The campaign on social media has been vicious. It began when she took a vacation over the Christmas holidays in New York, while a storm ravaged her home town of Naga. Critics depict her as a usurper, plotting the overthrow of Duterte, a pretender to the thrown with no demonstrable administrative capability. The campaign seemed to be having an effect with her approval and trust ratings taking a plunge after her resignation from Duterte’s cabinet less than six months on the job.

At the third and final level of the chess game is the political battle. This is where Duterte supporters hope to win the war. On this plane, several options are available. They can neutralize the opposition by replacing the vice president either by influencing the electoral protest case filed against her or through impeachment. If that does not work out, they can declare a state of emergency or a revolutionary government. With the police and military under fire for implementing Duterte’s war on drugs, the administration can claim that it has no choice but to impose martial law to save the republic from the advent of a narco-state.

Lessons of history

To understand and play this multi-layered chess game wisely, one would have to learn from history. The opposition leaders love to draw parallels between Duterte and Marcos, and often claim that the administration has not learned the lessons from the dark days of dictatorship. Yet, they seem to be falling into the same trap as did their predecessors in the lead up to Marcos’ declaration of martial law.

Pres. Marcos used the chaos and civil unrest following the first quarter storm as the predicate for imposing an iron fist in 1972. The activists who hurled a coffin at him as he was leaving congress, after delivering the state of the nation address in January 1970, probably felt they could bring him down.

When they converged at the University of the Philippines to prolong their resistance, they perhaps felt they would bring about change the same way their counterparts at UC Berkeley did in the 1960s when they staged their historic sit-ins on campus to press for civil rights. Little did they know they were playing into the hands of Marcos who was plotting to stay in power beyond his constitutionally limited terms of office.

The opposition claims that Duterte is lifting a page from the Marcos playbook. Yet they somehow remain oblivious to the fact that they are doing exactly what the playbook says they need to do for the play to succeed: fomenting social unrest, staging protest rallies, running to the international press to decry the abuses of the administration. All this is laying the predicate for something that Duterte has in the past said he would do when met with stiff opposition: declare a revolutionary government.

Not only that, the opposition is doing this at the height of Duterte’s popularity, while he controls both houses of congress, and has allied the police and military with him in a kind of siege mentality. He has offered them immunity in prosecuting the war on drugs. When the going gets tough, they will surely stick with their commander-in-chief who has demonstrated a willingness to die in the trenches with them.

How to win the war

So how should Leni Robredo set out to win the war against Duterte? Well, for one, she and the rest of the Liberal Party need to act like a loyal opposition. Any hint of destabilization and bad mouthing Duterte and his supporters in public must stop. Calling Mr Duterte and his ilk human rights violators is like calling Trump and his followers a “basket of deplorables”. It only serves to galvanize the people behind him.

The opposition needs to learn why Duterte became so popular in the first place. Ms Robredo claims to stand for the people on the fringes of society, and yet it is those same people who feel betrayed by those of her ilk who have run the country for 30 years since the people power revolt of 1986. The structural divide between the haves and have-nots of society was not altered in those years. The wealthy could afford to live safely in their gated communities, while the rest had to fend for themselves amid the lawlessness and lack of order outside.

Duterte’s anti-drug campaign may seem controversial to those belonging to the people power tradition, but they are really unremarkable when compared to the way our ASEAN neighbors have handled it. Instead of threatening to take Duterte to the International Criminal Court or airing our dirty linen before the UN, the opposition should look at constructive ways of engaging with the administration.

If they feel that civil rights of citizens have been violated, they should press for oversight through the appropriate committees in congress. They should scrutinize the budgets of agencies prosecuting that war and seek to properly resource programs that provide better solutions. In her speech to the UN, the vice president talked about certain measures to address the underlying issues of poverty that go hand in glove with the drug problem. Her party should take the time in opposition to scope out what those policies mean on the ground. They need to propose legislation to make it happen.

Things like drug rehabilitation and psychological treatment services and tax reforms that would pay for these and other programs to increase economic opportunity and provide for social services to the poor. Then the administration would feel less of a need to conduct a witch hunt among them. To prove that her philosophy of serving the forgotten people is viable, she needs to demonstrate a capacity to govern. This means working with the administration on practical measures and not simply making angry noise from the street.

To her followers, she might be the second coming of Corazon Aquino, the widow that dispatched a tyrant. To her critics, she might be the reincarnation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the usurper who took down a populist. But to ordinary Filipinos, she simply needs to be plain old Leni, the lady who trimmed the rough edges off a thug, and taught him to walk the line.

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The International Fact-checking day  on April 2, 2017  is not a single event but a rallying cry for more facts – and fact-checking – in politics, journalism, and everyday life. The website shares its resources on fact-checking, including a lesson plan for teachers, a fake news trivia quiz, a “hoax-off” among top debunked claims and a map of activities being held around the world in occasion of the day.

Last year , I wrote about the Tools and strategies to determine fake news, half-truths, from real news at the height of the fake news brouhaha after the US Elections. In my article,  I listed the tools and strategies to determine fake news from real news.  It is crucial for social media users to triple check sources and fact check news before sharing them.

Five months later, it is great to know , a lot of positive development have occurred to combat fake news, misinformation, half-truths and the like.

Fake News. It’s complicated.

The term “fake news” is an old term now.  Fake news is associated with   “misinformation” and “disinformation”. To understand the misinformation ecosystem, First Draft news listed a break down of the types of fake content, content creators motivations and how it’s being disseminated.  The  term “fake doesn’t begin to describe the complexity of the different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false).”

Source: https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

Source: https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

Before First Draft News came out with  the “Different Types Of Mis And Disinformation”, on February 16, 2017,  I posed this question on my facebook wall to get an idea on how my followers view the fake news phenomena.

Is Fake news just bad journalism?

Is misleading news or half-truths, fake news? Who are the spin doctors? Is it orchestrated? or ?organic?

Allow me to share some of the responses:

“Fake news is used as a manner of propaganda. They begin with real news and when their following grows, they inject fake news little by little in an effort to sway public opinion towards some kind of agenda” – Arpee Lazaro

“Fake news is both borne from bad journalism and groups/individual(s) with an agenda. it may be both orchestrated an organic.” – Troy Zarate de leon.

Fitz Villafuerte had more to say . Fake news can be bad journalism, “due to lack of research or verification by the journalist. People, media, websites, etc. reporting and/or sharing false news that happened before is mostly because of this reason. However, most fake news on social media today are intentional. Some fabricate news for propaganda. Some for profit, i.e. getting traffic to their websites which earns from advertisements such as Adsense.” He agrees that misleading news or half-truths are fake news.  He adds that “a fact is absolute and should not contain false information. At best, it can be called a satire, which is still fake news.”

Joseph Nico Cando opines that “even a valid news can become fake – depending on the belief or perspective of the consumer. If a person doesn’t believe the legit news for one reason or another, then that piece of news to him/her becomes false.”

A friend who wants to remain anonymous would like to “separate bad journalism and fake news, but they’re two inter-related concepts. Bad journalism incubates an environment for fake news to prosper. Misleading news however is bad journalism. It is the duty of the journalist, bound by media ethics, to cover as many angles to a story as possible, and not only posit partial or partisan facts.”

My friend added that “accusation of media bias, leading to possible bad journalism, is nothing new. It started during the Presidential campaign for then Sen. Noynoy Aquino. But ever since, no effort was done to clear that matter up. Even media organizations themselves accuse each other of such. This lack of transcendence from finger pointing to actually taking a stand and strengthening media ethics created a void that fake news unfortunately filled. These fake news producers, no matter how vague the identity, hints at professional experience. Who they are? Mocha Uson, et. al. is just the tip of the iceberg. Digging deeper, this is an industry as anonymous and potentially as dark as drug trade.”

Today , we live in a world where facts are obscured by propaganda, deliberately false or misleading news, and, of course, people’s own echo chambers. What can we do now?

Fact-check alerts and handy tips to help spot misinformation are useful but…

Adam Mosseri, VP, News Feed of Facebook announced that we want to see accurate information on Facebook. He said “and so do we. False news and hoaxes are harmful to our community and make the world less informed. All of us have a responsibility to curb the spread of false news.”

Read : Tools and strategies to determine fake news, half-truths, from real news 

Trying to decide what’s true and false can be  difficult. “There are murky lines between disagreeable opinions, bad information, and outright lies. Picking them apart is understandably something that both Internet giants [Google and Facebook] are afraid to do.”

For now, that role falls to all of us. You can begin by training yourself to be a savvy news consumer.

PolitiFact is part of the International Fact-checking Network, a group formed to encourage fact-checking around the world. Here are seven handy tips from PolitiFacts on how you can stand up for facts.

1. Seek out trusted news sources that have a strong track record of accuracy in their reporting. Look for well-researched, detailed reports. Find news organizations that have a demonstrated commitment to the ethical principles of truthfulness, fairness, independence and transparency.
2.  Be very cautious about sharing inflammatory news stories on social media. If a headline strikes you as so outrageous that you want to immediately tell all your friends about it, take a quick pause. It might well be fake. You can do your homework by inspecting the source of the news story. Is it a news organization you’ve heard of?
3. Look at the web address. Is it a clever knock-off? For example, abcnews.com dot co is a phony version of the actual news site abcnews.go.com and is a purveyor of fake news.
4. A website might be fake are grainy graphics, off-kilter logos, and too many ads with flashing visuals or pop-ups. These click-bait websites offer quick-turn, low-quality content in a quest to maximize revenues. If every other story on the site seems outrageous and partisan, you might have stumbled onto a fake news site.
5. Be especially suspicious if the story makes a claim about people who hold the opposite political views as yourself. If you hate Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you will be susceptible to stories that vilify them.
6. It’s fine to have political views, but we need to accept our own biases and how our strongly held viewpoints can make us more credulous about things we’d like to believe. There’s an old saying that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. The opposite of that applies on the Internet: If something sounds too awful to be true, it might not be. The bottom line is we all should do a little homework before clicking the share button.
7. Then there’s what you do when you see a friend or acquaintance has shared fake news on the Internet. It’s good to correct it, but do so with evidence and do it gently. When people are confronted harshly, it’s human nature to dig in and refuse to change. The best hope to get the truth out is to politely correct people and offer a link or two for evidence. Better yet, have those conversations in person. It’s easy for people to argue fiercely on the Internet, but it’s much more convincing to have a convivial discussion over dinner, drinks or coffee.
8. Finally, be prepared to work your brain in search of knowledge and dialogue. No one will hand you the truth on a silver platter. The wisest among us have always known that truth-seeking is a process. We get closer to truth when we stay open minded, seek multiple sources, check, re-check, look again and discuss.

You might also want to know how to fact-check online photos and videos. Don’t forget the rich resources on fact-checking including a lesson plan for teachers, a fake news trivia quiz, a “hoax-off” among top debunked claims and a map of activities being held around the world in occasion of the day. There is a reading list of non-academic readings related to different aspects of the “fake news” debate.

Let’s do our share without waiting for the internet giants to fix this.  First Draft News believes we “all play a crucial part in this ecosystem. Every time we passively accept information without double-checking, or share a post, image or video before we’ve verified it, we’re adding to the noise and confusion.”

Source : https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

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(first published at What is all this ado about bloggers at #ASEAN2017? )

I am compelled to write this piece, if only to document our ongoing struggle to make citizen engagement in the Philippines a NORMAL part of participatory governance. It is a constant uphill battle that is often tiring, makes me question why I even want to go on with a thankless job (oh, I do not even draw any salary so it is not a job!), and just go on with my peaceful apolitical life as it used to be before 2009.

I am one of the “14 bloggers” the Palace accredited to cover the 50th anniversary of the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The better phrase to describe us actually is “citizen advocates”. With me were Noemi Dado and Sonnie Santosfrom Blogwatch and an independent blogger-advocate, Tess Termulo, who is a practicing doctor in a government hospital. I cannot speak for the other bloggers who are not part of my usual circle of bloggers.

A Rappler article by Pia Ranada dated August 7, 2017, “ASEAN accreditation granted to 14 bloggers – Andanar”, contained statements which, in the absence of any qualification, makes me assume they were directed at all 14 of us who covered the recent ASEAN events from August 2-8. I will respond to each of Ms. Ranada’s statements below but first, I would like to say that not all bloggers are citizen advocates like me; conversely, not all citizen advocates are bloggers. I just happen to be all this rolled into one, including being a social media practitioner.

Citizen advocates want to engage government (participatory governance).

This has been our message to the previous administrations, to this one, and the administrations to come — LET’S TALK AND CONVERSE. TELL US YOUR PLANS. LISTEN LIKEWISE TO WHAT WE CITIZENS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT YOUR GOVERNANCE.

From the time Blogwatch started in November 2009, I already knew what we WERE NOT. We were not journalists. What we wanted was constructive conversation where ordinary citizens could come closer to its government and the policy/law makers in a more direct way.

The breakthrough came in 2010 when the Aquino administration became open to allowing bloggers more access to the Palace. Despite the lack of media credentials (we began Blogwatch only in November 2009), we were allowed to cover the inauguration of then Pres. Aquino, both at Luneta and at Malacanang. This was followed by access to SONA 2010, the first 100 days of Pres. Aquino, and the 25th anniversary of EDSA.

READ OUR STORY: Blog Watch: A microcosm of the evolution of citizen engagement in the Philippines

My IDs for the inauguration of Pres. Aquino and his first SONA in 2010

If there is anything positive that I attribute to the Aquino administration concerning citizen engagement, it is that they were the first to open the doors to citizens. Unfortunately, those doors did not stay open long. When we started questioning and disagreeing with some policies, including the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), they shut the door.

With a new administration, we are once again hopeful that citizen engagement will finally take off. Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Sec. Martin Andanar has shown a willingness to give access for bloggers and social media practitioners to cover government events. I like his inclusivity mindset. However, we made it clear to him that as advocates, we were not just message carriers for the government; we would speak our minds freely on matters of governance, positive or negative. Unfortunately, the recent social media accreditation guidelines issued was not quite what we hoped for. But that is for another blog post.

Back to the Rappler article…

There are two paragraphs in Ms. Ranada’s article that I specifically took exception to. The first paragraph, found somewhere in the middle of the article, goes: “With their IDs, bloggers were given access to the International Media Center, press kits, lunch buffet, and various activities organized for media, like Media Night. All these are paid for by taxpayers’ money.” This same section is a prominent introductory snippet found just below the article’s title.

This is followed by another paragraph that goes: “Rappler saw tables at the IMC in which seats were reserved for some bloggers. Such perks are typically given to mainstream media in cognizance of their role in reporting about the ASEAN meetings for the public good.”

Let’s address these points.

Ranada: “With their IDs, bloggers were given access to the International Media Center, press kits, lunch buffet, and various activities organized for media, like Media Night. All these are paid for by taxpayers’ money.” (underscoring is mine)

Did she imply that we were at ASEAN for fun and food at the expense of taxpayers’ money? I cannot let this pass.

First, I was at #ASEAN2017 as a citizen advocate who just happened to be a blogger and social media practitioner. It was not my job to cover ASEAN but since we had long been covering local government and private sector advocacy events, I wanted to expand my appreciation of an important regional event. I applied with the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) media accreditation group using their website form and submitted the required documents and ID picture with white background.

I took my accreditation seriously. So did my colleagues. On all days we were there, we had our equipment including laptops, tablets, smartphones, selfie sticks and tripods. Noemi even brought her Go Pro. We live tweeted and live streamed, read the press materials given at IMC, and queued for media signups to cover special events open to us.

Second, with all advocacy events I cover, I inevitably have to SPEND MONEY. Unlike media who can reimburse stuff like transportation, food and whatever else because they work for a media outlet, I have to dig from my own pocket just to cover such events. I bring a car and a driver. I spend for gas. I pay for the driver’s meal/s, toll (if any), parking. These are all non-reimbursable. My advocacy goes beyond just government. I also support the advocacy events of the private sector on days when I am free. Believe it or not, there are also other citizens who commute to attend similar fora. Many even pay for their own Uber/Grab transportation (no reimbursements either).

 

See this packed Commune Cafe at one of our viewing parties during the Presidential debates prior to the 2016 elections? Everyone here paid for his/her own food and drinks just to be present and participate. I even had to tell the media outlets that sent TV crews that we had no food budget.

So… enough of these insinuations that we were out for a good time at ASEAN at taxpayers’ expense. NO. We did what we set out to do — to bring the ASEAN experience to our social media community in our own way. Our ASEAN participation does not stop with this last ASEAN celebration. Even now, some of us are brainstorming on how we could bring together more citizens from the different ASEAN nations into a social media community.

One last word on this topic. I was NOT at Media Night.

Ranada: “Rappler saw tables at the IMC in which seats were reserved for some bloggers. Such perks are typically given to mainstream media in cognizance of their role in reporting about the ASEAN meetings for the public good.”

I can almost hear the subliminal messaging – feeling privileged and entitled.

Ms. Ranada must have been referring to the Bangon Marawi briefing last August 4 when she mentioned seat reservations because that was the only time the bloggers were seated together inside the briefing room. Here is the story from my point of view.

My colleagues and I were unaware that seats were supposedly reserved for bloggers. Noemi was at the hotel at 7am and there were no media around yet. Seats were free for the taking. She took the first row of the middle section of the briefing room. I arrived just past 7am and placed my things on the seat beside Noemi. We stayed outside the briefing room though because the room was very cold. Sonnie, who arrived soon after, also took the seat near us.

Taken around 7:30 on the morning of August 4, you can see that only Noemi and I were at the International Media Center lobby.

Inside the briefing room, PCOO staff came to us and told us there were reserved seats for bloggers at the back. Noemi and I refused to move from our seats because we were already set up and were planning to live stream. As everyone knows, our cameras are only from our smartphones, unlike mainstream media whose bulky cameras have powerful zoom capability. From past coverage, we have learned already to strategize where to sit to avoid being totally blocked by the tripods and huge cameras of media outlets. We also try to be as early as possible so we can get the best seat view.

My smartphone camera ready for Facebook Live

I don’t think anyone has exclusive right over what is considered “public good”. If media is covering ASEAN for public good, I also want to think that our work as citizen advocates (without salary and oftentimes shelling out our own money as I described above) just to engage government is also public good.

Just for the record, this is not the first time we applied for accreditation to cover an international event.

I could not apply for accreditation during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in 2015 due to a yin yoga teacher training I had already committed to. But my Blogwatch colleague, Noemi Dado, did. Sadly, hers was initially approved, then revoked. For what reasons, we still do not know. I am posting below the emails she received, with her permission.

October 7, 2015: Noemi gets an email from the APEC Media Accreditation team that her application is approved

November 7, 2015: Exactly one month later, she receives another email revoking her approved application.

The world of communication is changing and social media is one of those disruptive phenomena that are changing how things are done in media.

Bloggers occupied online space long before mainstream media went into online publishing and began including social media in its reportage. However, the opposite is happening too. Social media is allowing citizens like me to get nearer and up close to government. Our opinions and feedback, once confined to our circles, can now be public discussions online. And they sometimes heat up. But that is democracy.

I have always believed that mainstream media and proactive citizens, combined, are a potent force in governance. Journalists, well trained in the Who, What, Where, How, and Why, report the facts. Citizen advocates and other social media people use these facts to form opinions and decide how to push the envelope further by engaging public servants. I am hoping we can one day find that middle ground where journalists and citizen advocates can coexist, cooperate, and co-influence — all for public good.

Maybe it is time for us to meet you, Ms. Ranada. I think you will find that we have more in common for the good of this country.

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How should one react to Facebook posts these days? When I talked to a Facebook representative  for Public Policy Southeast Asia in October 2016, I was told to use “counter speech”.

“Look it up”, I was told. So I did and found “Facebook Adds New Tool to Fight Terror: Counter Speech”– to recognise and encourage users who discredit extremist views with their own posts, images and videos.

Ruth Coustick-Deal defines counter speech as ” like a balance at the other end of a see-saw, creating a neat equilibrium.” It looks like this.

Nazi gets book deal = black academics get book deal
Racists speak = racists listen to their victims

Some kind of balance is the effect of counter-speech but is it worth it? Counter speech works for those who have voices to start with.  That is why we have advocates to speak for the voiceless. This is how counter speech works.

“it’s more like: Nazi speaks -> thousands of his supporters speak with him -> his opponents are attacked. There is no balance when someone replies to your speech by threatening to kill your family. There’s rarely any acknowledgement of that power imbalance when we advocate counter speech, rather that control on speech.”

In the Philippines, critics of the current administration are labelled as “Yellow” (Liberal Party) or “Red” (leftist) as if color-coding the protesters “diminish the validity of the issues being raised.” When I stood by a friend associated with the Liberal Party, I got accused of being “yellow” when I have never been associated with any political party. There is a post that insinuates Blog Watch is associated with the Liberal Party.

This Facebook thread shows a discussion about the government and the blogger got branded as “Yellow” (Liberal Party) and a hypocrite.

Let me give another examples. Early this year, Rappler wrote an article on Veteran bloggers push criteria for Malacañang accreditation and this pro-Duterte blogger seemed to have an issue with my thoughts.  Take note that I did not call myself a “veteran blogger”.  I received many private messages from her followers getting berserk over Rappler calling me a “veteran blogger” .

How is that for counter speech when there is no balance at all when someone replies to my blog post by threatening to kill me?

Only the courageous bloggers like Inday Varona and Tonyo Cruz spoke up and they too got their fair share of attacks, just because they stood by me.

Not everyone has the option to engage in counter speech. In fact, some of my blogger friends didn’t want to stand by me or say anything for fear of being harassed. It is precisely unseen forces like harassment that stop a person from being able to speak at all. How is that for counter speech, Facebook? When people see someone harassed, it stops members of that group from speaking out.  It is similar to “chilling effect” in surveillance. Ruth Coustick-Deal adds that “Harassment operates in much the same manner. The knowledge that we are under constant surveillance stops us from expressing ourselves freely. This same censoring effect happens through harassment, when the fear of abuse silences us.”  No wonder  anonymous sites from the anti-administration proliferate.

While counter speech is encouraged, it is only “possible for those who have the freedom to exercise it without repercussions. It is easy to advocate counter speech when you can engage in it freely and without repercussions.” You can just imagine the marginalized who have no voice. It’s easy to advocate counter speech when it is always open to you. When you already always have a voice.

Facebook should rethink its counter speech initiative to tackle online extremism and hate speech . Not everyone has courageous friends to counter hate messages. It is harder for some people to do it than others.

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The current game being played by the administration of Pres Duterte and opposition led by Leni Robredo can be likened to a complicated match of three dimensional chess, with battles being staged at multiple levels.

A first in Philippine politics took place on the 2nd of April 2017.  Supporters of a sitting president gathered at a public square to call for the ouster of his vice president. The vice president whom the constitution mandates to do, well nothing, except serve as a spare tire for the president. The role is mostly ceremonial in nature. Never mind that. Thousands of protesters still demanded she be replaced.

Why? What for? According to the event organizers, it was for publicly shaming the president before the international community. What exactly did she do? Well, about a fortnight ago, a pre-recorded video of Vice President Robredo was played at a UN conference on narcotics in Vienna. In her statement, she highlighted the human rights abuses being carried out under Pres. Duterte’s war on drugs. This included 7,000 extra-judicial killings of suspects, warrant-less searches of the poor, beatings of those who insisted on their rights under the law, and misleading information in prosecuting the case for the war on drugs.

In her message that lasted for nearly six minutes, she said, “Our people have fought long for our rights and freedoms. We are not about to back down now.” This was a reference to the protest movement under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos that culminated in the People Power revolt of February 1986 that toppled his regime.

What came before

In August 2016, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Philippines, Chito Gascon, a party-mate of the vice president suggested that extra-judicial killings being committed had reached an unprecedented scale and could constitute crimes against humanity. This meant that a case against Pres. Duterte could eventually be mounted with the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

On the eve of the 31st anniversary of the people power revolt in February this year, Senator Leila De Lima, the most vocal critic of the president was imprisoned based on what the opposition believes are trumped up charges. The Liberal Party, led by former president Benigno Aquino and Vice President Robredo marked the celebration of People Power day by protesting what they saw was a return to the dark days of authoritarian rule under Pres. Duterte.

On March 16, the same day that Ms Robredo’s statement was aired, an impeachment complaint against President Duterte was filed by an opposition lawmaker in the lower house of the Philippine congress. On March 21, the New York Times ran a feature article entitled, Becoming Duterte: The making of a Philippine strongman. On the same day, the first impeachment complaint against the vice president was filed by a former Marcos loyalist.

The speaker of house was mulling the day after the filing of a similar complaint against her, but then Pres. Duterte called on his allies not proceed with it. About a week later, the justice secretary bared that the speaker would continue prosecuting the impeachment case against Ms Robredo. The grounds would be betrayal of public trust based on her video message to the UN, which the Solicitor General said was tantamount to treason.

A complex chess match

The current game being played by the administration and opposition can be likened to a complicated match of three dimensional chess, with battles being staged at multiple levels.

On one level is the election protest case that will decide who rightfully won the vice presidential race of 2016. This legal battle pre-dates all this. When the Supreme Court denied Robredo’s motion to dismiss the case filed by Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. back in February this year, the distinct possibility of a Duterte-Marcos administration emerged. This is what led to the pre-EDSA anniversary rumblings, which eventually culminated in an impeachment case against Mr Duterte. This is really more symbolic than anything, because the opposition does not have the numbers at the lower house to impeach him. That leads to the second stage.

The second level is the public relations war, or the court of public opinion. In this theater, the opposition seeks to delegitimise Duterte by throwing the spotlight on the human rights abuses under his watch and the many missteps he or his acolytes make in domestic or foreign policy. This is the primary reason for the vice president to issue her statement to the UN. She is essentially piling on the pressure already mounted by the EU that opposes the reimposition of the death penalty in the country, the international press, and former Latin American leaders who have criticized Duterte’s approach to solving illegal drugs.

The supporters of Duterte counter by depicting the vice president as an out-of-touch elitist whose sense of political correctness results in the coddling of narco-politicians. The campaign on social media has been vicious. It began when she took a vacation over the Christmas holidays in New York, while a storm ravaged her home town of Naga. Critics depict her as a usurper, plotting the overthrow of Duterte, a pretender to the thrown with no demonstrable administrative capability. The campaign seemed to be having an effect with her approval and trust ratings taking a plunge after her resignation from Duterte’s cabinet less than six months on the job.

At the third and final level of the chess game is the political battle. This is where Duterte supporters hope to win the war. On this plane, several options are available. They can neutralize the opposition by replacing the vice president either by influencing the electoral protest case filed against her or through impeachment. If that does not work out, they can declare a state of emergency or a revolutionary government. With the police and military under fire for implementing Duterte’s war on drugs, the administration can claim that it has no choice but to impose martial law to save the republic from the advent of a narco-state.

Lessons of history

To understand and play this multi-layered chess game wisely, one would have to learn from history. The opposition leaders love to draw parallels between Duterte and Marcos, and often claim that the administration has not learned the lessons from the dark days of dictatorship. Yet, they seem to be falling into the same trap as did their predecessors in the lead up to Marcos’ declaration of martial law.

Pres. Marcos used the chaos and civil unrest following the first quarter storm as the predicate for imposing an iron fist in 1972. The activists who hurled a coffin at him as he was leaving congress, after delivering the state of the nation address in January 1970, probably felt they could bring him down.

When they converged at the University of the Philippines to prolong their resistance, they perhaps felt they would bring about change the same way their counterparts at UC Berkeley did in the 1960s when they staged their historic sit-ins on campus to press for civil rights. Little did they know they were playing into the hands of Marcos who was plotting to stay in power beyond his constitutionally limited terms of office.

The opposition claims that Duterte is lifting a page from the Marcos playbook. Yet they somehow remain oblivious to the fact that they are doing exactly what the playbook says they need to do for the play to succeed: fomenting social unrest, staging protest rallies, running to the international press to decry the abuses of the administration. All this is laying the predicate for something that Duterte has in the past said he would do when met with stiff opposition: declare a revolutionary government.

Not only that, the opposition is doing this at the height of Duterte’s popularity, while he controls both houses of congress, and has allied the police and military with him in a kind of siege mentality. He has offered them immunity in prosecuting the war on drugs. When the going gets tough, they will surely stick with their commander-in-chief who has demonstrated a willingness to die in the trenches with them.

How to win the war

So how should Leni Robredo set out to win the war against Duterte? Well, for one, she and the rest of the Liberal Party need to act like a loyal opposition. Any hint of destabilization and bad mouthing Duterte and his supporters in public must stop. Calling Mr Duterte and his ilk human rights violators is like calling Trump and his followers a “basket of deplorables”. It only serves to galvanize the people behind him.

The opposition needs to learn why Duterte became so popular in the first place. Ms Robredo claims to stand for the people on the fringes of society, and yet it is those same people who feel betrayed by those of her ilk who have run the country for 30 years since the people power revolt of 1986. The structural divide between the haves and have-nots of society was not altered in those years. The wealthy could afford to live safely in their gated communities, while the rest had to fend for themselves amid the lawlessness and lack of order outside.

Duterte’s anti-drug campaign may seem controversial to those belonging to the people power tradition, but they are really unremarkable when compared to the way our ASEAN neighbors have handled it. Instead of threatening to take Duterte to the International Criminal Court or airing our dirty linen before the UN, the opposition should look at constructive ways of engaging with the administration.

If they feel that civil rights of citizens have been violated, they should press for oversight through the appropriate committees in congress. They should scrutinize the budgets of agencies prosecuting that war and seek to properly resource programs that provide better solutions. In her speech to the UN, the vice president talked about certain measures to address the underlying issues of poverty that go hand in glove with the drug problem. Her party should take the time in opposition to scope out what those policies mean on the ground. They need to propose legislation to make it happen.

Things like drug rehabilitation and psychological treatment services and tax reforms that would pay for these and other programs to increase economic opportunity and provide for social services to the poor. Then the administration would feel less of a need to conduct a witch hunt among them. To prove that her philosophy of serving the forgotten people is viable, she needs to demonstrate a capacity to govern. This means working with the administration on practical measures and not simply making angry noise from the street.

To her followers, she might be the second coming of Corazon Aquino, the widow that dispatched a tyrant. To her critics, she might be the reincarnation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the usurper who took down a populist. But to ordinary Filipinos, she simply needs to be plain old Leni, the lady who trimmed the rough edges off a thug, and taught him to walk the line.

The post Is Leni Robredo playing into Duterte’s hands? appeared first on .

The International Fact-checking day  on April 2, 2017  is not a single event but a rallying cry for more facts – and fact-checking – in politics, journalism, and everyday life. The website shares its resources on fact-checking, including a lesson plan for teachers, a fake news trivia quiz, a “hoax-off” among top debunked claims and a map of activities being held around the world in occasion of the day.

READ: Fake news: 7 types of mis- and disinformation 
READ: Be a savvy news consumer. Here are 6 tips for identifying fake news

Last year , I wrote about the Tools and strategies to determine fake news, half-truths, from real news at the height of the fake news brouhaha after the US Elections. In my article,  I listed the tools and strategies to determine fake news from real news.  It is crucial for social media users to triple check sources and fact check news before sharing them.

Five months later, it is great to know , a lot of positive development have occurred to combat fake news, misinformation, half-truths and the like.

Fake News. It’s complicated.

The term “fake news” is an old term now.  Fake news is associated with   “misinformation” and “disinformation”. To understand the misinformation ecosystem, First Draft news listed a break down of the types of fake content, content creators motivations and how it’s being disseminated.  The  term “fake doesn’t begin to describe the complexity of the different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false).”

Source: https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

Source: https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

Before First Draft News came out with  the “Different Types Of Mis And Disinformation”, on February 16, 2017,  I posed this question on my facebook wall to get an idea on how my followers view the fake news phenomena.

Is Fake news just bad journalism?

Is misleading news or half-truths, fake news? Who are the spin doctors? Is it orchestrated? or ?organic?

Allow me to share some of the responses:

“Fake news is used as a manner of propaganda. They begin with real news and when their following grows, they inject fake news little by little in an effort to sway public opinion towards some kind of agenda” – Arpee Lazaro

“Fake news is both borne from bad journalism and groups/individual(s) with an agenda. it may be both orchestrated an organic.” – Troy Zarate de leon.

Fitz Villafuerte had more to say . Fake news can be bad journalism, “due to lack of research or verification by the journalist. People, media, websites, etc. reporting and/or sharing false news that happened before is mostly because of this reason. However, most fake news on social media today are intentional. Some fabricate news for propaganda. Some for profit, i.e. getting traffic to their websites which earns from advertisements such as Adsense.” He agrees that misleading news or half-truths are fake news.  He adds that “a fact is absolute and should not contain false information. At best, it can be called a satire, which is still fake news.”

Joseph Nico Cando opines that “even a valid news can become fake – depending on the belief or perspective of the consumer. If a person doesn’t believe the legit news for one reason or another, then that piece of news to him/her becomes false.”

A friend who wants to remain anonymous would like to “separate bad journalism and fake news, but they’re two inter-related concepts. Bad journalism incubates an environment for fake news to prosper. Misleading news however is bad journalism. It is the duty of the journalist, bound by media ethics, to cover as many angles to a story as possible, and not only posit partial or partisan facts.”

My friend added that “accusation of media bias, leading to possible bad journalism, is nothing new. It started during the Presidential campaign for then Sen. Noynoy Aquino. But ever since, no effort was done to clear that matter up. Even media organizations themselves accuse each other of such. This lack of transcendence from finger pointing to actually taking a stand and strengthening media ethics created a void that fake news unfortunately filled. These fake news producers, no matter how vague the identity, hints at professional experience. Who they are? Mocha Uson, et. al. is just the tip of the iceberg. Digging deeper, this is an industry as anonymous and potentially as dark as drug trade.”

Today , we live in a world where facts are obscured by propaganda, deliberately false or misleading news, and, of course, people’s own echo chambers. What can we do now?

Fact-check alerts and handy tips to help spot misinformation are useful but…

Adam Mosseri, VP, News Feed of Facebook announced that we want to see accurate information on Facebook. He said “and so do we. False news and hoaxes are harmful to our community and make the world less informed. All of us have a responsibility to curb the spread of false news.”

Read : Tools and strategies to determine fake news, half-truths, from real news 

Trying to decide what’s true and false can be  difficult. “There are murky lines between disagreeable opinions, bad information, and outright lies. Picking them apart is understandably something that both Internet giants [Google and Facebook] are afraid to do.”

For now, that role falls to all of us. You can begin by training yourself to be a savvy news consumer.

PolitiFact is part of the International Fact-checking Network, a group formed to encourage fact-checking around the world. Here are seven handy tips from PolitiFacts on how you can stand up for facts.

1. Seek out trusted news sources that have a strong track record of accuracy in their reporting. Look for well-researched, detailed reports. Find news organizations that have a demonstrated commitment to the ethical principles of truthfulness, fairness, independence and transparency.
2.  Be very cautious about sharing inflammatory news stories on social media. If a headline strikes you as so outrageous that you want to immediately tell all your friends about it, take a quick pause. It might well be fake. You can do your homework by inspecting the source of the news story. Is it a news organization you’ve heard of?
3. Look at the web address. Is it a clever knock-off? For example, abcnews.com dot co is a phony version of the actual news site abcnews.go.com and is a purveyor of fake news.
4. A website might be fake are grainy graphics, off-kilter logos, and too many ads with flashing visuals or pop-ups. These click-bait websites offer quick-turn, low-quality content in a quest to maximize revenues. If every other story on the site seems outrageous and partisan, you might have stumbled onto a fake news site.
5. Be especially suspicious if the story makes a claim about people who hold the opposite political views as yourself. If you hate Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you will be susceptible to stories that vilify them.
6. It’s fine to have political views, but we need to accept our own biases and how our strongly held viewpoints can make us more credulous about things we’d like to believe. There’s an old saying that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. The opposite of that applies on the Internet: If something sounds too awful to be true, it might not be. The bottom line is we all should do a little homework before clicking the share button.
7. Then there’s what you do when you see a friend or acquaintance has shared fake news on the Internet. It’s good to correct it, but do so with evidence and do it gently. When people are confronted harshly, it’s human nature to dig in and refuse to change. The best hope to get the truth out is to politely correct people and offer a link or two for evidence. Better yet, have those conversations in person. It’s easy for people to argue fiercely on the Internet, but it’s much more convincing to have a convivial discussion over dinner, drinks or coffee.
8. Finally, be prepared to work your brain in search of knowledge and dialogue. No one will hand you the truth on a silver platter. The wisest among us have always known that truth-seeking is a process. We get closer to truth when we stay open minded, seek multiple sources, check, re-check, look again and discuss.

You might also want to know how to fact-check online photos and videos. Don’t forget the rich resources on fact-checking including a lesson plan for teachers, a fake news trivia quiz, a “hoax-off” among top debunked claims and a map of activities being held around the world in occasion of the day. There is a reading list of non-academic readings related to different aspects of the “fake news” debate.

Let’s do our share without waiting for the internet giants to fix this.  First Draft News believes we “all play a crucial part in this ecosystem. Every time we passively accept information without double-checking, or share a post, image or video before we’ve verified it, we’re adding to the noise and confusion.”

Source : https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

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(first published at What is all this ado about bloggers at #ASEAN2017? )

I am compelled to write this piece, if only to document our ongoing struggle to make citizen engagement in the Philippines a NORMAL part of participatory governance. It is a constant uphill battle that is often tiring, makes me question why I even want to go on with a thankless job (oh, I do not even draw any salary so it is not a job!), and just go on with my peaceful apolitical life as it used to be before 2009.

I am one of the “14 bloggers” the Palace accredited to cover the 50th anniversary of the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The better phrase to describe us actually is “citizen advocates”. With me were Noemi Dado and Sonnie Santosfrom Blogwatch and an independent blogger-advocate, Tess Termulo, who is a practicing doctor in a government hospital. I cannot speak for the other bloggers who are not part of my usual circle of bloggers.

A Rappler article by Pia Ranada dated August 7, 2017, “ASEAN accreditation granted to 14 bloggers – Andanar”, contained statements which, in the absence of any qualification, makes me assume they were directed at all 14 of us who covered the recent ASEAN events from August 2-8. I will respond to each of Ms. Ranada’s statements below but first, I would like to say that not all bloggers are citizen advocates like me; conversely, not all citizen advocates are bloggers. I just happen to be all this rolled into one, including being a social media practitioner.

Citizen advocates want to engage government (participatory governance).

This has been our message to the previous administrations, to this one, and the administrations to come — LET’S TALK AND CONVERSE. TELL US YOUR PLANS. LISTEN LIKEWISE TO WHAT WE CITIZENS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT YOUR GOVERNANCE.

From the time Blogwatch started in November 2009, I already knew what we WERE NOT. We were not journalists. What we wanted was constructive conversation where ordinary citizens could come closer to its government and the policy/law makers in a more direct way.

The breakthrough came in 2010 when the Aquino administration became open to allowing bloggers more access to the Palace. Despite the lack of media credentials (we began Blogwatch only in November 2009), we were allowed to cover the inauguration of then Pres. Aquino, both at Luneta and at Malacanang. This was followed by access to SONA 2010, the first 100 days of Pres. Aquino, and the 25th anniversary of EDSA.

READ OUR STORY: Blog Watch: A microcosm of the evolution of citizen engagement in the Philippines

My IDs for the inauguration of Pres. Aquino and his first SONA in 2010

If there is anything positive that I attribute to the Aquino administration concerning citizen engagement, it is that they were the first to open the doors to citizens. Unfortunately, those doors did not stay open long. When we started questioning and disagreeing with some policies, including the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), they shut the door.

With a new administration, we are once again hopeful that citizen engagement will finally take off. Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Sec. Martin Andanar has shown a willingness to give access for bloggers and social media practitioners to cover government events. I like his inclusivity mindset. However, we made it clear to him that as advocates, we were not just message carriers for the government; we would speak our minds freely on matters of governance, positive or negative. Unfortunately, the recent social media accreditation guidelines issued was not quite what we hoped for. But that is for another blog post.

Back to the Rappler article…

There are two paragraphs in Ms. Ranada’s article that I specifically took exception to. The first paragraph, found somewhere in the middle of the article, goes: “With their IDs, bloggers were given access to the International Media Center, press kits, lunch buffet, and various activities organized for media, like Media Night. All these are paid for by taxpayers’ money.” This same section is a prominent introductory snippet found just below the article’s title.

This is followed by another paragraph that goes: “Rappler saw tables at the IMC in which seats were reserved for some bloggers. Such perks are typically given to mainstream media in cognizance of their role in reporting about the ASEAN meetings for the public good.”

Let’s address these points.

Ranada: “With their IDs, bloggers were given access to the International Media Center, press kits, lunch buffet, and various activities organized for media, like Media Night. All these are paid for by taxpayers’ money.” (underscoring is mine)

Did she imply that we were at ASEAN for fun and food at the expense of taxpayers’ money? I cannot let this pass.

First, I was at #ASEAN2017 as a citizen advocate who just happened to be a blogger and social media practitioner. It was not my job to cover ASEAN but since we had long been covering local government and private sector advocacy events, I wanted to expand my appreciation of an important regional event. I applied with the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) media accreditation group using their website form and submitted the required documents and ID picture with white background.

I took my accreditation seriously. So did my colleagues. On all days we were there, we had our equipment including laptops, tablets, smartphones, selfie sticks and tripods. Noemi even brought her Go Pro. We live tweeted and live streamed, read the press materials given at IMC, and queued for media signups to cover special events open to us.

Second, with all advocacy events I cover, I inevitably have to SPEND MONEY. Unlike media who can reimburse stuff like transportation, food and whatever else because they work for a media outlet, I have to dig from my own pocket just to cover such events. I bring a car and a driver. I spend for gas. I pay for the driver’s meal/s, toll (if any), parking. These are all non-reimbursable. My advocacy goes beyond just government. I also support the advocacy events of the private sector on days when I am free. Believe it or not, there are also other citizens who commute to attend similar fora. Many even pay for their own Uber/Grab transportation (no reimbursements either).

 

See this packed Commune Cafe at one of our viewing parties during the Presidential debates prior to the 2016 elections? Everyone here paid for his/her own food and drinks just to be present and participate. I even had to tell the media outlets that sent TV crews that we had no food budget.

So… enough of these insinuations that we were out for a good time at ASEAN at taxpayers’ expense. NO. We did what we set out to do — to bring the ASEAN experience to our social media community in our own way. Our ASEAN participation does not stop with this last ASEAN celebration. Even now, some of us are brainstorming on how we could bring together more citizens from the different ASEAN nations into a social media community.

One last word on this topic. I was NOT at Media Night.

Ranada: “Rappler saw tables at the IMC in which seats were reserved for some bloggers. Such perks are typically given to mainstream media in cognizance of their role in reporting about the ASEAN meetings for the public good.”

I can almost hear the subliminal messaging – feeling privileged and entitled.

Ms. Ranada must have been referring to the Bangon Marawi briefing last August 4 when she mentioned seat reservations because that was the only time the bloggers were seated together inside the briefing room. Here is the story from my point of view.

My colleagues and I were unaware that seats were supposedly reserved for bloggers. Noemi was at the hotel at 7am and there were no media around yet. Seats were free for the taking. She took the first row of the middle section of the briefing room. I arrived just past 7am and placed my things on the seat beside Noemi. We stayed outside the briefing room though because the room was very cold. Sonnie, who arrived soon after, also took the seat near us.

Taken around 7:30 on the morning of August 4, you can see that only Noemi and I were at the International Media Center lobby.

Inside the briefing room, PCOO staff came to us and told us there were reserved seats for bloggers at the back. Noemi and I refused to move from our seats because we were already set up and were planning to live stream. As everyone knows, our cameras are only from our smartphones, unlike mainstream media whose bulky cameras have powerful zoom capability. From past coverage, we have learned already to strategize where to sit to avoid being totally blocked by the tripods and huge cameras of media outlets. We also try to be as early as possible so we can get the best seat view.

My smartphone camera ready for Facebook Live

I don’t think anyone has exclusive right over what is considered “public good”. If media is covering ASEAN for public good, I also want to think that our work as citizen advocates (without salary and oftentimes shelling out our own money as I described above) just to engage government is also public good.

Just for the record, this is not the first time we applied for accreditation to cover an international event.

I could not apply for accreditation during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in 2015 due to a yin yoga teacher training I had already committed to. But my Blogwatch colleague, Noemi Dado, did. Sadly, hers was initially approved, then revoked. For what reasons, we still do not know. I am posting below the emails she received, with her permission.

October 7, 2015: Noemi gets an email from the APEC Media Accreditation team that her application is approved

November 7, 2015: Exactly one month later, she receives another email revoking her approved application.

The world of communication is changing and social media is one of those disruptive phenomena that are changing how things are done in media.

Bloggers occupied online space long before mainstream media went into online publishing and began including social media in its reportage. However, the opposite is happening too. Social media is allowing citizens like me to get nearer and up close to government. Our opinions and feedback, once confined to our circles, can now be public discussions online. And they sometimes heat up. But that is democracy.

I have always believed that mainstream media and proactive citizens, combined, are a potent force in governance. Journalists, well trained in the Who, What, Where, How, and Why, report the facts. Citizen advocates and other social media people use these facts to form opinions and decide how to push the envelope further by engaging public servants. I am hoping we can one day find that middle ground where journalists and citizen advocates can coexist, cooperate, and co-influence — all for public good.

Maybe it is time for us to meet you, Ms. Ranada. I think you will find that we have more in common for the good of this country.

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How should one react to Facebook posts these days? When I talked to a Facebook representative  for Public Policy Southeast Asia in October 2016, I was told to use “counter speech”.

“Look it up”, I was told. So I did and found “Facebook Adds New Tool to Fight Terror: Counter Speech”– to recognise and encourage users who discredit extremist views with their own posts, images and videos.

Ruth Coustick-Deal defines counter speech as ” like a balance at the other end of a see-saw, creating a neat equilibrium.” It looks like this.

Nazi gets book deal = black academics get book deal
Racists speak = racists listen to their victims

Some kind of balance is the effect of counter-speech but is it worth it? Counter speech works for those who have voices to start with.  That is why we have advocates to speak for the voiceless. This is how counter speech works.

“it’s more like: Nazi speaks -> thousands of his supporters speak with him -> his opponents are attacked. There is no balance when someone replies to your speech by threatening to kill your family. There’s rarely any acknowledgement of that power imbalance when we advocate counter speech, rather that control on speech.”

In the Philippines, critics of the current administration are labelled as “Yellow” (Liberal Party) or “Red” (leftist) as if color-coding the protesters “diminish the validity of the issues being raised.” When I stood by a friend associated with the Liberal Party, I got accused of being “yellow” when I have never been associated with any political party. There is a post that insinuates Blog Watch is associated with the Liberal Party.

This Facebook thread shows a discussion about the government and the blogger got branded as “Yellow” (Liberal Party) and a hypocrite.

Let me give another examples. Early this year, Rappler wrote an article on Veteran bloggers push criteria for Malacañang accreditation and this pro-Duterte blogger seemed to have an issue with my thoughts.  Take note that I did not call myself a “veteran blogger”.  I received many private messages from her followers getting berserk over Rappler calling me a “veteran blogger” .

How is that for counter speech when there is no balance at all when someone replies to my blog post by threatening to kill me?

Only the courageous bloggers like Inday Varona and Tonyo Cruz spoke up and they too got their fair share of attacks, just because they stood by me.

Not everyone has the option to engage in counter speech. In fact, some of my blogger friends didn’t want to stand by me or say anything for fear of being harassed. It is precisely unseen forces like harassment that stop a person from being able to speak at all. How is that for counter speech, Facebook? When people see someone harassed, it stops members of that group from speaking out.  It is similar to “chilling effect” in surveillance. Ruth Coustick-Deal adds that “Harassment operates in much the same manner. The knowledge that we are under constant surveillance stops us from expressing ourselves freely. This same censoring effect happens through harassment, when the fear of abuse silences us.”  No wonder  anonymous sites from the anti-administration proliferate.

While counter speech is encouraged, it is only “possible for those who have the freedom to exercise it without repercussions. It is easy to advocate counter speech when you can engage in it freely and without repercussions.” You can just imagine the marginalized who have no voice. It’s easy to advocate counter speech when it is always open to you. When you already always have a voice.

Facebook should rethink its counter speech initiative to tackle online extremism and hate speech . Not everyone has courageous friends to counter hate messages. It is harder for some people to do it than others.

The post Counter speech is hard for a lot of us appeared first on .

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the freedoms over which we stand guard. Understand that we will see things this way. No, you will not be granted the impunity to make such attacks on ANY news outlets in the Freest Press in Asia.” –Alma Anonas-Carpio

I stand with Rappler.

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa said the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruling did not go through due process.

“They didn’t go through due process. The en banc, essentially, issued an order to shut us down without giving us the opportunity to respond to what the special panel found. It wasn’t a normal process,” she said.

The SEC order “revoking Rappler’s license to operate is the first of its kind in history – both for the Commission and for Philippine media.” It is obviously politically motivated.  I don’t always agree with Rappler.  When Rappler was new in 2012, I had initial misgivings. about their  “social media” branding.   But we learned along the way , learning to collaborate in social good projects. The recent actions  against Rappler is  an attack on freedom of the press. Granting Rappler violated the Constitution, where is the due process? Many of my fellow advocates stand with Rappler and are out to defend press freedom.

Movement Against Tyranny (MAT) : “For a government that violates the multiple constitutional provisions on territory, checks and balances, separation of powers and the Bill of Rights, the Duterte regime is fooling no one in its “constitutionality” case against Rappler. Duterte has no credibility on constitutionality.

MAT reminds the public that wannabe dictator Rodrigo Duterte had openly said he wanted this to happen, and now it has happened. And as the DDS thought-leaders have repeatedly said, the regime will do everything to bring down Rappler and other media outlets they cannot control or shake down.”

Let’s Organize for Democracy and Integrity (LODI): LODI sees the SEC’s move as an open attack on the people’s rights to free expression and to a free press.

Renato Reyes: A bit hypocritical, this use of “foreign ownership” as the basis for revoking Rappler’s license, when the thrust of the regime’s Charter change is to actually allow 100% foreign ownership of media.

Tonyo Cruz: “Only Duterte, Duterte factotums and the DDS misinformation/disinformation network believe their own lie about foreign ownership of Rappler.  The consensus outside the DDS bubble is that this is a shameful attack on press freedom and a shakedown meant to scare journalists.”

Even media friends are making a stand on the SEC decision.

The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines or FOCAP ” expresses deep concern with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to cancel the certificate of incorporation of Rappler.

The decision, which is tantamount to killing the online news site, sends a chilling effect to media organizations in the country.

I agree with MAT that “SEC decision on Rappler is a preview of what’s in store for media under an an openly-fascist Duterte dictatorship. Media outlets would be slapped with questionable cases, their registration revoked and accreditation taken back — simply because Duterte and his DDS media network perceive them as critical of the regime.”

Let’s continue to defend press freedom.

The post I stand with Rappler. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. appeared first on .

Photo via Beth Angsioco

I am grateful to all the  bloggers for agreeing or planning to sign the Bloggers for Freedom statement. …. We are happy and proud of this great community of freedom fighters! Initially 59 bloggers signed .. 91 more signed (as of January 20,2018 11:00 AM) or total of 150 signed and more to come … Bloggers from various communities like Travel bloggers , Mom bloggers , lifestyle bloggers , beauty bloggers , finance bloggers, photo bloggers , advocates , thought leaders have made a choice.

You can still be part of the “Bloggers For Freedom” by signing this form. http://bit.ly/bloggersforfreedom . We will vet the signatories as soon as we can.

Here is the statement of  “Bloggers for Freedom”

We concerned Filipino bloggers stand for the rights to free expression and to free speech.  And our first responsibility is to protect these rights.

We thus stand with Rappler, its right to exist, the rights of its working journalists and contributors, and the rights of its community of readers.

We stand against moves to silence and scare journalists, bloggers and media practitioners just because the President and his ardent supporters dislike their news and views.

Now is a time for making choices amid battles between truth and lies, debate and dissonance, democracy and dictatorship. We sign our names here to tell everyone we have made a choice. We are bloggers for freedom.

Those who wish to sign the statement can sign in this form http://bit.ly/bloggersforfreedom

“Ipapakita natin sa taong bayan ang ating kasalanan. Ipapakita natin sa taong bayan ang dahilan kung bakit tayo pinaparushan ng president – ang paguulat ng katotohanan…. “Ito ang dahilan kung bakit kinikitil ang Rappler.”

Let this statement be a good start for our communities to discuss what’s happening. Let’s keep in touch for the next steps we would all agree to take. The fact remains: “Why can’t the president and his supporters accept criticism and dissent? Why not address the criticisms and listen to dissenting voices? Why do they harass, threaten, bully and falsely charge them?”

See, I may not always agree with Maria Ressa , Rappler and even other media outfits  but I stand with journalists, bloggers and media practitioners. They play a very important role in our democracy.

There were more speakers at the #BlackFridayForPressFreedom

Malou Mangahas: The freedom of the press is deeply attached with the people’s right to know.

Mae Paner: Kung papayag tayo na kitilin ng ating pangulo ang ating karapatan sa pamamahayag, anong klaseng bayan tayo? Sino ang kikibo?

Those who wish to sign the “Bloggers For Freedom” statement can sign in this form http://bit.ly/bloggersforfreedom

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Fake news. It’s complicated. I prefer not to call it “fake news” but it has already become an umbrella term that talks about a specific kind of propaganda/misinformation/disinformation, so let me just refer to it as “fake news” for brevity. I have written many articles in the past that the only way to combat fake news is fact checking and studying literature from reliable sources like First Draft.

READ: Fact-checking day is every day. Here are 8 tips on how you can stand up for facts

READ: Fake news: 7 types of mis- and disinformation (Part 1)

READ : Be a savvy news consumer. Here are 6 tips for identifying fake news (Part 2)

It is 2018 and my fearless forecast earlier this year was there will be more public awareness in fighting fake news. A Senate Hearing on a possible legislation vs Fake news is in progress but additional legislation is the not the answer. I believe that the public needs to be aware of the “Threat of the Dunning-Kruger Effect”. Not everything on the internet is true. It always pays to give something the benefit of the doubt.

The Internet is getting swarmed by self-declared political analysts, watchdogs, and authorities who think that their voices are general truths and their intelligence superior.

Dunning-Kruger effect is what you call this cognitive bias that says people who are incompetent overrate themselves while people who are indeed intelligent think of themselves otherwise.

Simply, Dunning-Kruger effect says that no matter what happens, these “incompetent” individuals do not have the very cognitive abilities to understand that they are wrong. Thus, they incorrectly judge themselves as well as matters outside their circle.

READ: Additional legislation may not be the answer to curbing fake news

There are action plans to help curb the proliferation of fake news.

1. 1. Download resource on digital methods to study false viral news

(Download here)

There is a project of the Public Data Lab with support from First Draft that is a valuable resource for fact checking. A Field Guide to “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders explores the use of digital methods to study false viral news, political memes, trolling practices and their social life online.

It responds to an increasing demand for understanding the interplay between digital platforms, misleading information, propaganda and viral content practices, and their influence on politics and public life in democratic societies. There are five chapters that helps track fake news on facebook, twitter and on the web.

Chapter 1 MAPPING FAKE NEWS HOTSPOTS ON FACEBOOK
Chapter 2 TRACING THE CIRCULATION OF FAKE NEWS ON THE WEB
Chapter 3 USING TRACKER SIGNATURES TO MAP THE TECHNO-COMMERCIAL UNDERPINNINGS OF FAKE NEWS SITES
Chapeter 4 STUDYING POLITICAL MEMES ON FACEBOOK
Chapter 5 MAPPING TROLL-LIKE PRACTICES ON TWITTER

2. Facebook changes the News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.

Prioritizing what your friends and family share is part of Facebook’s effort to help people spend time on their site in what it thinks is a more meaningful way. So do we expect to see less politics and brands?

Facebook head of its News Feed team, Adam Mosseri, wrote that showing more posts from friends and family “means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.” He further explained that “other posts that your Facebook connections find engaging will also rise to the top. Conversations stemming from live videos, celebrities’ posts, private groups and other highly interactive post types will be among those highlighted on the new News Feed.”

3. Facebook announced it would highlight “trusted sources” of news based on community feedback.

Starting this week, Facebook will begin tests in the first area: to prioritize news from publications that the community rates as trustworthy.

How? Mark Zuckerberg will survey “a diverse and representative sample of people using Facebook across the US to gauge their familiarity with, and trust in, various different sources of news. This data will help to inform ranking in News Feed.” They will start with the US and plan to roll this out internationally in the future.  Though Facebook’s two-question trustworthiness survey is sound, the results will still be biased. Steven S. Smith, a professor of political science and director of the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis, called it “not so bad.”  Smith adds that  “the selection of the source and their attitude toward it are all a product of their bias” So, while the two-question survey format may be valid, the overall results likely won’t be. “I think that their responses are going to represent audience bias more than any reasonable standard of trustworthiness,” Smith said.

3.  Democracy and Disinformation Conference 

The Democracy and Disinformation Conference will be held on February 12 and 13—Monday and Tuesday. It will be an international conference for journalists and bloggers, scholars and students, advertising professionals and PR Practitioners.  The theme is both a cri de coeur and a call to action: “Why ‘fake news’ and other forms of disinformation threaten our freedoms, and how to fight back.” Three of the country’s leading universities are partnering with us: the University of the Philippines (UP), the De La Salle University (DLSU), and the Ateneo de Manila, which is hosting the event at its Rockwell campus in Makati City in Metro Manila. The Department of Journalism of UP, the Department of Communication of DLSU, and the Department of Communication of the Ateneo are taking the lead. BlogWatch is also one of the partners.

The biggest media organizations in the Philippines are full partners, including the two largest TV networks, Rappler the online news site, Vera Files, and the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

4. Government to hold information summit vs fake news in 2018

As a start, Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) chief Martin Andanar  described the upcoming information summit as “grand” as it would gather information officers of provinces, cities, and municipalities under the PCOO. In fact , the National Information Convention for all government information officers across the country will be held on Feb. 19 to 21 in Davao City. The three-day national convention would be able to provide knowledge to information officers on how to create their communications plan, responsible sharing of information, freedom of information, how to combat fake news and how to further become responsible information officer.

They are also eyeing collaboration between the government and private media as well as educational institutions, including the Department of Education after the Convention. He said the PCOO could not resolve fake news alone as he described social media as “big” and “massive.”

I cannot trust Facebook to fix their algorithm to solve the fake news issue. Neither can I rely on the government to educate the public. Of course, they can try as long as their resource speakers are not limited to government.

It is our decision to continue to provide proper guideposts to allow our community to be savvy news consumers.  Continue to write articles of national interest and those that educate the users of social media platforms on its judicious use and inculcating a culture of critical thinking and respect for truth and reason.

The post Moves to fight “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders in 2018 (updated) appeared first on .

This is my position paper as one of the resource speakers for the second public hearing held by the Senate Committee on Public Information and Mass Media on January 30, 2018.

The hearing will elaborate on the following issues.

1. The extent of responsibility and accountability of journalists, mass media personnel, and bloggers in spreading misinformation;
2. How online platforms affect public opinion and facilitate the spread of misinformation; and
3. Can the government be made accountable for the use/misuse of resources

• in spreading misinformation or “fake news”
• or suppressing the truth (by intimidating journalist, trolling)

The hearing will continue the discussion of the following :

Good morning, I am Noemi Lardizabal -Dado, blogger and advocate for over 11 years. As momblogger, I believe in  making a difference in the lives of our children by advocating social change for good .

Fake news. It’s complicated. I prefer not to call it “fake news” but it has already become an umbrella term that talks about a specific kind of propaganda/misinformation/disinformation.  As an internet freedom/internet rights advocate, I am painfully aware that “fake news” is being used to stifle the same rights we are fighting for.  For the purpose of this hearing, I will use the term “fake news” for brevity. First Draft News says “the term fake doesn’t begin to describe the complexity of the different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false)” *

Having been online for over 21 years, and a blogger for 11 years, I value credibility, truth and fairness.  It’s just following the norms which govern ordinary human relations. If I wouldn’t say it truthfully and honestly to any person over a cup of coffee, I don’t post it. The best defense against anything that would curtail freedom of expression, be it online or offline, is to express myself in words and deeds that are thoughtful, truthful and honest.

I’d like to point out blogger communities are unique in their own ways but most of us collaborate on social issues that affect our country. It was one reason BlogWatch was organized in 2009.

Blog Watch, a community I am proudly part of, is an informal group of bloggers and social media empowered citizens who have been blogging, tweeting and creating digital content on politics, business, social, international, and cultural issues here and abroad since 2009. In relation to this we have been covering, crafting and participating in press conferences and events since the mid-2000s.  We do not consider ourselves as journalists, but as bloggers and social media-empowered citizens. We work on our own time and we have no support from media companies, But the content created by the community adheres to our collective principles that have guided us through the years. We believe in citizens getting involved in the participatory process of governance. We are in it for the long haul so it is important that we are accountable to our readers and community because credibility is all we have.

Additional legislation is not the remedy to curb fake news

I’m suspicious of any new law that throws cold water on free expression — whatever the motivation. We already have lots of laws abridging free expression. Libel, cybercrime, terrorism, bullying, video voyeurism are all valid concerns that deserve to be properly addressed. But these laws may also be used to curtail dissent and free debate of ideas. The problem of disinformation and misinformation is fundamentally political — because our political leaders and their supporters resort to disinformation and misinformation. For example: saying foundlings are not natural-born Filipinos.

Additional legislation may not be the answer to curbing fake news, for the following reasons:

1. The disinformation and misinformation cannot be solved by a new law which rival politicians wish to use against each other or their proxies. Article 154 of the Republic Act 10951 has already a similar provision of “Fake News” which is the “Unlawful use of means of publication and unlwaful utterances.”

“1. Any person who by means of printing, lithography, or any other means of publication shall publish or cause to be published as news any false news which may endanger the public order, or cause dausage to the interest or credit of the State;

2. We have enough laws to address the problem of fake news, the Revised Penal Code and the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (R.A. 10175) being the most obvious examples. What we need is fair and just enforcement.
3. The proposed legislation, such as S.B. No. 1492, are so vaguely worded and overbroad in defining what it considers as “fake news” as to be constitutionally questionable. The proposed laws will almost surely infringe upon rights guaranteed by the Constitution such as freedom of expression and the right to information of public interest or concern.
4. The very nature of social media and its enabling technology will make restrictions difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Online platforms, such as Facebook, are here to stay, whether we like it or not. As noted by the Senate itself, these platforms are tools for people empowerment. And just like any tool, they can be used for good or bad ends. But by themselves, they are neutral.

How then can we curb the spread of fake news?

As a blogger, I will to continue to write articles of national interest and those that educate the users of social media platforms on its judicious use and inculcating a culture of critical thinking and respect for truth and reason.  People must be provided proper guideposts but they have to navigate the path themselves and become savvy news consumers.

READ: Fact-checking day is every day. Here are 8 tips on how you can stand up for facts

READ: Fake news: 7 types of mis- and disinformation (Part 1)

READ : Be a savvy news consumer. Here are 6 tips for identifying fake news (Part 2)

Bloggers and advocates are now collaborating with each other to spread awareness on fact checking. False news is harmful to our community and to our role as advocates.  Fellow bloggers and advocates work together to debunk “fake news” by tapping our various communities.

READ: Moves to fight “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders in 2018

Advocates help each other through counterspeech when faced with malicious and vicious attacks in the course of debunking fake news.

I have made mistakes as a blogger and even deceived by a wrong website URL but I learn from all these. I make corrections immediately. I believe that false news is fake news if no recantation nor correction is made after falsity is established or information is debunked.

All bloggers have their own communities with their own best practices such as mandatory disclosure or disclaimer and even a corrections policy like we have on BlogWatch.

We will publish corrections on our own and in our own voice as soon as we are told about a mistake by anyone — our contributors, an uninvolved reader, or an aggrieved reader — and can confirm the correct information.

Recommendations

Lastly, I would like to recommend the following

1. Government entities or employees can be made accountable for the use/misuse of resources in spreading misinformation or “fake news” by invoking Republic Act No. 6713 , Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.”
2. Instead of crafting a new law, enforcement should be strengthened and supported, but balanced by the need to protect the constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech and free expression.

4. Libel should be decriminalized as the prison penalty creates a chilling effect on the media, and threatens press freedom and free speech.
5. Legislators should take time to sit down with the blogging /social media communities and understand their role in using technology for social good. Constructive engagement, taking into consideration diverse views from all sides of the political spectrum, will ensure that we are all given a voice as citizens, fellow travelers and Filipinos.

While we can pass laws for every conceivable human act, we cannot legislate good judgment.

I would like to thank Tonyo Cruz , Pierre Galla, Carlos Nazareno, Marnie Tonson, Nica Dumalao and other fellow advocates and bloggers who gave me inputs for this position paper.

Thank you

Noemi Lardizabal-Dado

*https://firstdraftnews.com/fake-news-complicated/

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