Manufacturing consent
Manufacturing consent
One journalist did say that President Rodrigo Duterte compounded the “lie” about the reason behind the shutdown of the operations of ABS-CBN’s free TV and radio services. But she did not outrightly call him a liar, and neither did the others.
As Mr. Duterte was delivering his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 26, PhilStar.com, online news site Rappler, and Facebook fact-checker Vera Files were tweeting in real time what were false in his statements, with the latter reminding its audience that he had made the same claims earlier and had been proven wrong several times.
Among other corrections, they pointed out that despite Mr. Duterte’s claim that the nightmarish problems of commuting to and from work or school within the National Capital Region and surrounding areas had passed, the truth is that there is not enough public transport available because of the on-again, off-again pandemic lockdowns. Despite his alleging the contrary, getting information such as Mr. Duterte’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs) from agencies of the executive branch of government is still as problematic as ever despite his executive order that supposedly makes ease of access to government-held information a matter of policy. Among other problems, the Office of the Ombudsman has imposed limits on the media and the public’s right to access the SALNs of executive officials.
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