Uncreative non-fiction

Cong Corrales

“Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.” -Joseph Goebbels, Nazi party propagandist

I WOULD like to thank the Philippine News Agency for making this column a helluva lot easier to write by posting not one but two fake news articles. Now we have two articles to dissect which will be easier to separate truth from Goebbels-like propaganda.

I was thinking of sharing with you, my dear avid readers (Yes, all 250 of you), the things I learned at a seminar I attended last week. The seminar was about how to spot fake news. I prepared notes on the subject when PNA posted those fake news stories on their website.

This means that I might have to make this a two-part opinion piece. I will discuss and share tips on how to hunt for fake news on my second installment. But for now, let’s first tackle PNA’s latest foray into blatant disinformation.

Unfortunately for us, PNA took down the story and edited the fake news articles.

But good for us because many in the mainstream media (this paper included) screen grabbed the articles before PNA took down the article.

That’s good news for us because now, at least, we know PNA and the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) still feel “hiya.” Well, they should be, since their salaries are taxpayers’ money.

On May 15, PNA ran a story entitled: “95 nations in 3rd UPR convinced no EJKs in PHL.” The story, which ran for five days, claimed that 95 member-states who were present in the 27th Universal Period Review of the of the United Nations Human Rights Council believed in Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano’s report that there are no extrajudicial killings in the country.

Newly appointed Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson wasted no time in posting the erroneous article on her blog on May 18. So the “crusading” blogger–who branded mainstream media “presstitutes”–now became an official “presstitute” of this administration by passing along an inaccurate article.

Vera Files checked its blog and found that as of May 20, at least 8,000 netizens had reacted and more than 900 gullible ones shared it.

The international council took notice of the erroneous article that it posted on its official Twitter account on May 19: “#UPR27 Clarification: To our best knowledge, 95 states were not convinced that EJK is non-existent.” The UN body then posted the full webcast of the UPR session.

The government news wires service took down the story on May 20 (may hiya rin pala) but not before posting a replacement story which is still inaccurate and also served to bolster Cayetano’s claim that the UPR was impressed with his report on the human rights situation in the country. The replacement story bears the odd title: “PHL’s human rights situation commended at UPR.”

So what did really happen at the 27th UPR? To answer this. I went to the international body’s website, www.upr-info.org. Here are samples of the real recommendations of the member-states:

• Further consolidate its national human rights infrastructure, including support to the Commission on Human Rights. (Egypt)
• Continue to improve its capacity to uphold human rights, including by increasing the Commission on Human Rights’ (CHR) fiscal autonomy and organizational capacity, as well as further efforts to prevent human rights violations by Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippines National Police personnel. (Australia)
• Continue to work as a matter of urgency to ensure that there are mechanisms to completely eliminate torture and extrajudicial killings, and to intensify its efforts to carry out investigations and prosecutions on extrajudicial killings and punish those responsible. (Trinidad and Tobago)
• Conduct independent and impartial inquiry in relation to all enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions and that the perpetrators of these crimes be brought to justice. (France)
• Work towards the complete elimination of torture and extrajudicial killings, and intensify efforts to carry out the prosecution of such crimes. (The Holy See) For the newbies: The Holy See means The Vatican.
• Further capacity building, such as through human rights education targeting government authorities, particularly law enforcement agencies, and an effective implementation of a national oversight mechanism. (Japan)
• Continue the work to build up the capacity in the area of human rights protection, including through strengthening the national human rights institution. (Russian Federation)

That last one should be a doozy, considering that President Rodrigo Duterte is visiting Russia this week.

For good measure, I also audited the database on the UPR website. I found that extrajudicial killings were mentioned 18 times. Human rights violation was cited 81 times in the 191 recommendations and 74 of which are recommendations that seek “general action” in the categories of action that need to be done. A general action is No. 4 in the action categories of the council. The action categories are: 1 – Minimal action 2 – Continuing action 3 – Considering action 4 – General action 5 – Specific action.

So there. Good luck with your lies and disinformation, PNA and PCOO.