‘Fight for truth’: Bongbong Marcos wants youth equipped to detect fake news

MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on Monday said he wanted the youth to be equipped with the necessary tools to identify fake news in an increasingly digital world. 

Marcos graced the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Presidential Communications Office, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Education, the Commission in Higher Education, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development to launch the government’s Media Information Literacy campaign. 

“We also direct our attention to young people because they are the most involved; they are the ones who consider being online, working on the internet is part of their life; it’s like breathing to young people. But we must be able to give them the tools to be able to look and see what are these things we are reading,” said Marcos in his speech at the Hilton Manila in Pasay City. 

Marcos and government officials and representatives from social media platforms like Google, Meta, Tiktok, and X (formerly Twitter) signed the poster symbolizing the pledge. 

“If you will notice, when we signed the poster on the media and information literacy campaign, what I wrote there is ‘fight for the truth.’ And this is all that we are talking about, and this is as much as we are talking about. What we are fighting for is the truth,” said Marcos. 

According to the President,  the truth is the first casualty of misinformation and disinformation. 

“We must allow everyone to be able to discern for themselves, we will help them, but people have to learn to be able to discern for themselves what is real and what is not, what is propaganda and what is facts, what is data and what is speculation,” said Marcos.   

In June, Marcos proclaimed that “fake news should have no place in modern society.”

During his presidential bid in 2022, Marcos also stated that he was a victim of fake news.

gsg/abc