Vice President Leonor “Leni” Robredo. INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA
In this age of disinformation, Vice President Leni Robredo said on Thursday there is a need for government policies that would ensure only “genuine information” is made available to the public.
“We should be instituting policies that will make sure that the information that is available is genuine information. Millennials, for their part, should be very vigilant. Let us not believe anything [fed to us] without checking their veracity,” Robredo said at a student forum at the Far Eastern University in Manila.
Robredo told the students that she has been a victim herself of massive disinformation online—from being rumored about wearing a $700 pair of Ferragamo shoes at a typhoon-hit area to getting pregnant and having an abortion, among other things.
“We can never base our judgment and our prejudices on information that is not true,” she said.
Robredo told her audience that as college students, they are now in a position to discern right from wrong.
“You are not being forced to believe in a particular school of thought. But hopefully, the basis of the belief is correct,” she said.
In her speech, Robredo asked the students whether it is right to make “divisiveness, polarization, and being mean the ‘in’ thing.”
“Where our liberties, democracy, and our very way of life is under attack, and where Facebook posts look more real than real life, the boundaries between right and wrong could get blurred,” she said.
Robredo emphasized that “honesty, civility, integrity, empathy, and dignity… are the leadership qualities” that the youth must embrace as the country’s future leaders “to build a nation of greatness.” JE/rga