The Tamesis
March 10, 2026
Manila – Fake news has seeped into the fabric of our society. Gone are the days when media scholars put the term in quotation marks and viewed it as an oxymoron. It is no longer background noise buzzing around the edges of public discourse.
Now it roars across every platform and pollutes every conversation. It divides people into partisan camps. It makes the gullible believe every word they read and the critical people distrust every post they see.
But fake news is not a naturally occurring scourge. It is the creation of secret networks that profit from outrage and viral engagement. Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Secretary Dave Gomez rightly called disinformation “the venom that poisons the hearts and minds of people.”
Consider the speed and scale with which lies now spread.
A vlogger posted a digitally altered photo of mothers of drug war victims clutching luxury bags while attending proceedings against former President Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
Share widely
The headline mocks the lifestyles of the wealthy as these women live. However, this is not the case as there is no bag in the original photo. In fact, the women borrowed clothes and received donated funds to make the trip.
However, by the time the fact-checkers issued the correction, the post had been widely shared, both by those who didn’t know better and by many more who should have.
Take the case of the vlogger who was arrested for posting fake medical certificates of President Marcos, who admitted that he did so “to keep up with the trend.” Malacañang was later forced to debunk rumors that the president had colon cancer and was wearing a colostomy bag at an event.
There is also a group of alleged ex-Marines who claim to have delivered suitcases containing cash to politicians including Mamayan Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima, but their lawyer acknowledged that including her may have been an oversight because she was incarcerated at the time.
Far from being harmless hoaxes, these orchestrated fabrications equally blatantly disregard the truth and promote confusion and polarization. But the greater damage is how they erode trust in institutions, especially the media.
The 2025 Reuters Digital News Report found that while overall trust in news in the Philippines remains at 38%, trust in nearly all media brands has declined over the past year “due to heightened political disinformation.”
“Oplan Kontra Fake News”
Reuters noted that this “message of information” is “often amplified by political influencers and partisan media,” with some media critical of those in power “actively distrusted and subject to coordinated harassment by supporters of the politicians in question.” Even the most trusted brands, which include GMA Network and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, saw their ratings drop from the previous year.
It is against this backdrop that “Oplan Kontra Fake News” was born, a memorandum of understanding between the PCO and print media publishers signed last week in Malacañang. Among the signatories were the heads of several top newspapers, including Paolo Prieto, president and CEO of Inquirer Interactive Inc.
The initiative includes media literacy campaigns and the establishment of an “anti-fake news desk” at the PCO, which can report questionable or misleading content to agencies.
This is a welcome first step and must be treated with caution.
Efforts to combat disinformation must not be an excuse to regulate legitimate speech. The line between combating deliberate falsehoods and protecting constitutional guarantees of press freedom must remain clear.
In the war against fake news, transparency must be the main weapon. Strong freedom of information regimes, timely disclosure of public records, and proactive data release can eliminate the vacuum that fake news purveyors exploit.
coordinators and financiers
Law enforcement cannot just file a few complaints against individual perpetrators. If, as the PCO itself admits, there is a “coordinated disinformation campaign,” there are coordinators and financiers.
Follow the money. Who funds these operations? Are they domestic political actors or foreign interest groups? What networks of pages simultaneously amplify the same narrative? Cyber investigations should not target only the most obvious provocateurs.
The media, for its part, must be more proactive in refusing to become a megaphone for those who habitually spread lies. Newsrooms must be relentless in fact-checking and equally relentless in exposing lies, especially when they are told by public officials.
Fake news thrives because its creators understand their audiences’ online behavior. It’s visual, heartfelt, and designed to go viral.
If the media and governments cannot counter these tactics with equal sophistication, they will continue to be at a disadvantage—always reacting and taking the bait when the next lie has already caught on.
