Infer the Question

New Fake News Tactic Found!

I noticed this twice in the past few weeks and only decided to write about it now. The first time I noticed this was when someone decided to put side by side quotes taken from the two candidates who were up for the position of Chancellor of UP Diliman - Dr. Nemenzo and Prof. Manegdeg. Of the two, Dr. Nemenzo is more friendly to the activists of the UP community.

Dr. Nemenzo's quote was about his plans for the UP Diliman community and how he would lead it to the future. Prof. Manegdeg's quote, however, just him saying that former Chancellor Michael Tan might want to rest after being Chancellor of UP Diliman. Make no mistake, I like that Dr. Nemenzo got the Chancellorship but this news bit didn't present either one of them fairly.

This is when I thought to "infer the question". What question was asked of each candidate which would've warranted the answer or the quote given. Of course, when you ask a candidate about their plans, they will give a more substantial answer than if they would be asked about the previous Chancellor. Add that to the fact that Prof. Manegdeg didn't play nice with former Chancellor Michael Tan and you can see why his comments would be very shallow.

The news bit seemed to imply that it was clear who should be chancellor based on these quotes. Prof. Manegdeg has other flaws which are why he shouldn't be chancellor but highlighting a quote taken way out of context is not how you do it. To their credit, the Engineering Student Council came out with a statement which highlighted the flaws of Prof. Manegdeg in a fair manner.

More recently, we have news outlets reporting that President Duterte connected the shortage of face masks to the outbreak of the corona virus. He was quoted as saying that if there was no outbreak, there would be no shortage of face masks. The implication of the news outlets was that this was President Duterte's do-nothing response to the shortage of face masks.

When I try to infer what kind of question was asked, I can see what kind of question was posed to get this kind of response. If the question was "why?" then the answer of the president makes sense and doesn't mean the government won't do anything about it. If the question was "what will we don about it?" then the response is indeed one of complacency. Given the news articles now which say Duterte was going to find a way to procure more face masks, I think it's safe to say the question posed was a "why" question.

This is a common tactic which I just recently identified. It's taking a quote out of context and making it say what you want the person saying it to say. When one infers what kind of question was asked, you get a fuller idea of the context and get a better idea of the character of the person saying the quote.