The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Friday, May 2, launched a committee composed of different agencies to combat the spread of fake news.
“We created the Joint Anti-Fake News Action Committee (JAFNAC). We want to stop all those who spread fake news,” PNP chief Police General Rommel Francisco Marbil said in an informal interview.
“Let us choose truth over virality. Accuracy over exaggeration. Integrity over convenience. This is the war we must fight and win,” he emphasized.
Marbil said the JAFNAC aims to hold fake news peddlers accountable and come up with a framework to swiftly take down wrong information online.
The PNP said the fight against fake news takes the whole-of-government approach anchored in legal offensive, technological innovation, and public education. Laws need to be crafted or amended to address fake news, it added.
Marbil said they are serious about fighting “fake news,” hence the creation of JAFNAC to investigate the emergence of fake news, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation.
“If we allow this (disinformation) to persist, we will wake up to a nation where lies travel faster than facts, where distrust overtakes unity, and where good is thrown in noise. That is why today we declare war not against people but against lies,” Marbil said.
“This is a war we must fight and win not with weapons but with vigilance, individual responsibility and collective will because in defending truth, we defend what is right. In protecting truth, we protect our people,” the PNP chief added.
Present at the said discussion against fake news were Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Secretary Jay Ruiz and National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) Executive Director Ernesto Torres.
Also present were Philippine Coast Guard Spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea Commodore Jay Tarriela, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla, and the information officers of various government agencies.
JAFNAC chairman and Deputy PNP Chief for Operations Lt. Gen. Robert Rodriguez signed a pledge of commitment for what they consider to be the “war on fake news.”
The PNP also said a national monitoring system or Al-powered dashboard would be set up to detect and track disinformation trends in real-time.
They also plan to collaborate with tech platforms like Meta, Google, X, TikTok to flag harmful content and enforce responsible platform policies locally.
