Fire Away: Defending Journalism Amidst Fake News and Online Outrage

Fire Away: Defending Journalism Amidst Fake News and Online Outrage | Daily Tribune

It’s a strange time to be a journalist, when every dimwit with a smartphone feels entitled to poison the public discourse with conspiracy theories and hate speech. Give cavemen clubs! Meanwhile, those of us in the mainstream media still show up, take notes, maybe snap a photo or record a video — basically reporting what we see with our own eyes — and yet we’re called liars, peddlers of fake news.

Take Via Bianca Ramones, our intrepid reporter who dared commit the unforgivable crime of accurately reporting that First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos was present at the Goldenberg Mansion concert on the evening of 4 April 2025. Yes, that concert — the one with the violinist inside Malacañang and a very much not-detained First Lady in attendance.

But many netizens — and let’s be honest, a handful of paid trolls — weren’t having it. “Fake news,” they screamed. “AI-generated!” All without offering a shred of proof. No booking photo. No statement from any US authority. Just digital whispers bouncing inside an echo chamber until someone mistook their doubt for truth.

Let’s pause and apply a bit of old-school logic — an endangered mode of thinking these days. Via was there. She named names. She listed musical pieces. This wasn’t a blind item or séance. It was an eyewitness report — detailed, verified, professional. Now compare that to the noise from the “memas,” those who just had to post something: vague claims, zero evidence and a fantasy that somehow gained traction among the terminally online.

Ramones didn’t have to clap back as she wrote the facts. But as someone who still believes journalism deserves the occasional defense, let me say this: the online piling-on reeks of groupthink, projection and recreational outrage. She became a scapegoat not because she was wrong — but because she was right, and the mob couldn’t handle it.

This isn’t about politics — it’s about epistemology. What counts as real? Are facts still facts when they don’t fit your narrative? Or are we all just pretending to be intelligence agents on X, posting grainy edits and calling it “investigative work”?

Say what you want about the Marcoses, but if you truly believe this government would go to the trouble of planting a doppelgänger First Lady at a high-profile concert inside the Palace — while the real one is supposedly being frog-marched through LAX — you’ve probably been watching too much Netflix and not enough news.

Via will keep doing her job like most of us journalists do: with eyes open, notes taken, truth told. And let’s not confuse skepticism with bigotry. One seeks the truth. The other just makes noise.