Roque defends he’s not encouraging spread of fake news

FILE: Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque (YANCY LIM/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO)

Presidential Spokersperson Harry Roque on Wednesday defended that he is not encouraging the spread of fake news in the country.

“What I said earlier that without fake news we would not know what is true news should not be taken as governmental encouragement of fake news. Far from it,” Roque said in a statement.

The Palace official was referring to remarks he made in a press briefing last January 28, where he said the public wouldn’t be able to distinguish “true news” if there’s no “fake news.”

“For sure and to be clear, fake news as is known today should find no place as a matter of governmental policy. Enlightened citizens should be able to pick out chaff from grain and appreciate what good journalism is about,” Roque added.

To further explain his point, the Palace official cited United States (US) jurisprudence on the issue of fake news.

Roque said that even US journalism has “a sordid history” of “promoting quackery and all sorts of things that today would not be considered respectable journalism” or the so-called “penny press.”

“US jurisprudence on free speech developed a conviction that the solution is never governmental censorship, but better journalism. It is an idea as old as John Milton’s Areopagitica,” the Spokesman said.

The Palace official said that in New York Times v. Sullivan case in 1964, the US Supreme Court “allowed that even mistakes in reportage on public figures are excusable because otherwise the free and unimpeded discussion of public issues would be hindered.”

“Free and open debate about the conduct of public officials, the Court reasoned, was more important than occasional, honest factual errors that might hurt or damage officials’ reputations,” he added.

Citing the US Supreme Court and quoting John Stuart Mill, Roque stressed that “even a false statement may be deemed to make a valuable contribution to public debate, since it brings about ‘the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.’”

He also mentioned the 1927 Whitney v. California case where Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that “the remedy for bad counsel is wise counsel, and not any form of governmental compulsion.”

“This rests on the firm belief that the fear of punishment is never a stable basis for good government. Rather, reasoned public deliberation is the better recourse, despite the attendant risks posed by falsehood and misinformation,” Roque explained.

The Spokesman’s remark came after the Senate resumed its hearing on public information and mass media, where officials of Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), bloggers, and the media were questioned regarding the proliferation of fake news.

Roque, in a press briefing held last Sunday on the sidelines of Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo City, claimed that he had been misunderstood by “prestigious publication” which allegedly reported fake news about his statement on Philippine Rise, internationally called as Benham Rise.

He defended that he continued to be an advocate of freedom of speech and freedom of press despite rapid increase of fake news in the Philippines.