These are easily verifiable even with a quick google search. I do notice, however, a subtle form of fake news. One that gets all the facts right but inserts their own spin to it to push an agenda. More recently, the LFS was come out with the statement against mandatory ROTC and the story they cite involves the death of the ROTC cadet Willie Amihoy by one who is an ROTC officer.
The incident itself had absolutely nothing to do with any ROTC activity. It stemmed from an argument between two people, one happened to be a cadet and one happened to be an officer. Again, the facts were correct but the narrative being pushed was misleading. And we see this popping up on our news feed every now and again. I thought about putting in recurring news articles (bombings, Duterte-isms etc.) but I find that to generalize them all would be counter productive. As such, I've linked to the news articles which promote an untrue narrative.
Here's a couple more I found:
- A few months ago, a friend of mine shared a news article which said conservatives share more fake news than liberals. The data is clear. More conservatives do in fact share more fake news than liberals. But a little digging into the studies gave a clearer explanation as to why. The study actually found that the older demographic generally share more fake news than the younger demographic regardless of political views. Younger conservatives and younger liberals share fake news at a similar rate and so do older conservatives and older liberals. The reason why more conservatives share fake news is simply because more of the older demographic hold to conservative views. Also, the study cited that a liberal news site was the one that decided whether the news was fake or not.
- https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/01/10/19/older-people-conservatives-more-likely-to-share-fake-news-study
- Late last year, news broke out about numerous child molestation cases in the US by Catholic clergymen and the implication by most mainstream news outlets was that this is a common occurrence in the Catholic Church and that the church simple moved priests around. A closer look at the cases being brought up shows that most of the cases were from before 2006, when the US bishops started to put in actual measures to address the issue of child abuse. Again, the facts of the news article were correct but to omit this crucial fact seems irresponsible. Another fact almost never mentioned is that child abuse is NOT a Catholic problem. Protestant pastors, school teachers, sports coaches commit child abuse at a rate similar to or more than Catholic priests.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/has-the-catholic-church-committed-the-worst-crime-in-us-history/2019/03/12/1875bb84-44ee-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b9d588d5bbb8
- This next bit is a double feature where two news outlets were trying to cover the same story but in different ways. Both were clearly trying to push their own biases to their viewers. I can't track down the news articles as they were unremarkable. But basically, ABS had an anti-Duterte spin to their news while CNN had a pro-Duterte spin to the same news bit. I laughed when I those two news bits. You'll actually see this in several news outlets where one newbit will claim, "Duterte curses during military event." while another might claim that, "Duterte shows his support during military event." Both might tell the truth but single out one particular thing that will does not give the full picture of the entire event.
- The last bit of fake news I want to tackle cannot be found online. I may come up months after the fact but that's what makes it so hard to identify. I'm talking about the events that never make it into the news. Some journalists will purposely not report certain events that do not fit their own agenda. When, for example, have you heard about the booming economy during the time of PGMA or how her project of the strong nautical highway has helped the economy. All we used to hear was how these projects are marred by corruption but never their economic pluses.
Now, I'm not saying we should disregard all of these news bits. What I am saying is we should be alert to spot the color of the news and remove the color they add - I might write more on this at a later date. The point of all this is, newscasters and journalists are human too. They carry their own biases and whether wittingly or unwittingly, they add the color of their own biases into the news they carry or the news they choose not to carry. What we should do as a people is learn to remove the color these journalists add to their storytelling.
It may be difficult but it's something we need to do if we are to get the bigger picture.
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