Climate of distrust

A climate of distrust is upon us.This is now a fact of life we must remember when decisions are made, especially by public officials.

- BOO CHANCO

We all know about fake news and how many are still deceived by it. A spokesperson in the Trump administration called it an "alternative truth."

You believe in your truth, and I believe in mine. Of course, truth is truth, and there can be no alternative truth.

We have our share of tall tales. There was that false narrative that went "viral" prior to and during the Presidential elections in 2022 about the Tallano gold myth.

Dr. Ronald Mendoza of Ateneo led an academic group that studied it using an empirical analysis of an extensive social media dataset of almost 24,000 social media posts compiled by the Ateneo Policy Center using CrowdTangle. The Ateneo group found evidence that the Tallano gold myth spread across partisan groups and proved resistant to fact-checking efforts.

I bring up these points to provide perspective on the factual news story in Esquire Philippines about the BSP being the biggest seller of gold in the world in the first half of this year. The news of the central bank selling a large amount of gold awakened latent feelings of distrust because of the bad history of the old central bank's handling of gold during the Marcos martial law era.