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MANILA, Philippines — Issues and concerns over House Bill No. 2971 which is seeking to outlaw fake news have been raised during deliberations at the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The bill, authored by Representatives Josephine Lacson-Noel from the lone district of Malabon City and Florencio Gabriel Noel of An Waray party-list, and moved to criminalize the “creation and dissemination of ‘fake news’.”
The said bill would amend sections three and four of Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime prevention Act of 2012 to include fake news.
Several resource speakers, however, raised concerns.
Richard Martin de Leon of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center said that there is a “lack of guidelines with regard to what exactly is fake news”.
GMA Network’s Assistant Vice President for Litigation and Legal Affairs Jose Vener Ibarra also warned of a “chilling effect”, as it could stifle the gathering of news “ in the free discussion of matters that could be of interest to the public.”
“Criminalizing fake news, your honor, without proper borders of what fake news is, I think is similar to, I would say, poisoning the entire body just to get a cancerous cell, your honor. It may be the only way that the patient can be cured, but I think the cure is more terrible than the disease itself,” said Ibarra.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) also manifested that it could not support the bill due to its lack of clear provisions.
“We also would like to manifest that even in the absence of a special amendatory bill for fake news, we can still address it, or we have sufficient existing laws that can address this type of problem,” said Angela Marie De Gracia-Cruz from the DOJ Office of Cybercrime.