RAMIREZ
Fear for fake rice, trust on fake news. This is apparently what is happening to many social media users who consume hook, line and sinker the information that they read on social media pages especially those with video and graphic support.
The inability of many social media users to decipher fake news and the indolence to ascertain fake from real have undoubtedly led to the unfounded fear of the proliferation of fake rice in the island municipality of Santa Fe.
It is ironic that many feared eating fake rice but enjoyed consuming fake news to the extent of making hasty conclusions and arguments based on the inaccurate information that they encountered on social media.
If only the public knows how to distinguish fake news from real ones by being skeptical of all the information they face on social media, they could be saved from a lot of anxieties.
I am not pushing for hard-core philosophical skepticism, but at least we should be mindful that on social media, everyone could assume the sender role and is capable of presenting alternative truth as they please.
Social media consumers should at least test the reliability of the information they are consuming before they believe by subjecting the information to simple systematic investigation on whether the source is credible and accountable.
In the recent incident of the fake rice scare in Santa Fe town, the trepidation started out with a disgruntled 4Ps beneficiary being allegedly forced to use their P600 rice allowance to buy from preselected grains dealers and their recent shot at fake news about fake rice on social media.
The report of the proliferation of fake rice in the island municipality is thwarted anyway with the town mayor’s testimony claiming he has eaten the cooked rice out of the suspected rice grains and said nothing happened to him.
After the dust settles in the fake rice controversy in the town of Santa Fe, the mayor can only grumble in desperation that his municipality has been put to bad light and worry that it might affect the influx of tourists.
If there is something positive that came out of the controversy, that is the allegation from 4Ps beneficiaries that they were forced to buy rice from a preselected grains dealer who turned out to be another group of project beneficiaries of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in their livelihood project.
In the absence of a formal denial from local welfare officials, we can only surmise and rely on circumstantial evidence because the presence of the array of preselected grains dealer stationed outside the cash distribution area can tell a lot of tales.
This is a scenario where one thing abhorred set out an opportunity where a perceived breach of government functionality was also made public.
Despite confirmation that the rice sold by the preselected grains dealer is indeed real rice, it is still alarming to know about an allegation that government project beneficiaries were compelled to use the money they received to buy goods from favored retailers.
Like in the appreciation of information on social media, consumers of information should be given a free hand to exercise their freedom to believe or reject the information after having been capacitated to discern what fake news is.
Like the 4Ps beneficiaries, they are receiving temporary dole-outs from the government in an effort to alleviate their lives by giving food and educational assistance to their children so that they will be capable of discerning for their future.
Directing them where to spend their cash dole-out is outright limiting their capacity to determine what would be right for them using the ample cash assistance provided by the government.
If I were to assess, the anatomy of fake rice controversy in the island municipality started with disgruntled 4Ps beneficiaries coupled with the alleged excesses of a government instrumentality in carrying out their mandate, compounded with the influence of fake information.
Although we are already in the digital age, there are still many people who believe that tech-mediated messages are as credible as before when senders made themselves known and ready to accept accountability.
This is a wake-up call to all government agencies not to confuse some more the already bewildered public who doesn’t dare question the authenticity of the information they consume.
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