Muslim leader Amina Rasul-Bernardo, the first head of the National Youth Commision and a cabinet secretary of President Fidel V. Ramos, urged writers and artists to fight fake news.

Delivering the annual Jose Rizal Lecture during the 61st congress of the Philippine PEN (Poets & Playwrights, Essayists, Novelists) recently at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Rasul, the daughter of former senator Santanina Rasul, deplored what she called “truth decay.”

To fight truth decay, she urged the PEN to come up with a “truthpaste,” a pun on “toothpaste.”

“Lies are being weaponized to kill the truth!” she said, adding “the truth is the greatest, mortal enemy of the lie.

Rasul-Bernardo noted that Oxford Dictionary declared “post-truth” as its international word of the year, whose use rose a whopping 2,000 percent in 2017.

“Since post-truth thrives in the use of emotions to disseminate information. It is worth the shot to use an art form that has the ability to point out deficiencies in social issues, using humor. It encourages audiences to think critically but in a fine way,” Rasul said.

“In this time of change and rising turmoil, there is increasing demand by the people to get information whenever and wherever. Coupled with the vacuum created by mistrust of traditional information sources in the post-truth era, it has opened the door to an influx of new sources, particularly on the internet. Because of the proliferation of social media platforms, dominance once enjoyed by responsible media and government. Institutions as credible information sources have been consistently reduced.”

She said that “sadly we live in a post-truth society” where powerful individuals “are able to assert statements which have no factual basis,” she said. But fact-checking may not be enough.

Rasul noted that the Philippine PEN had much to contribute in defense of the truth, not just via writing but also comic strips, satire, and other art forms.–CONTRIBUTED