The Amateur Media Association of Philippine Scouts (AMAPS) intensified its battle against fake news as part of a first-of-a-kind initiative #FactsFirstPH and launched the online vodcast “Facts You!”.
The independent Scout media group is one of the more than 120 media, coalitions, civil society groups, business organizations, and research and legal groups working together to debunk dubious claims and spread facts, and hold perpetrators accountable.
In January 2022, AMAPS launched its first-ever Scout Journalism Skills Training dubbed Kamalayaan 2022: Paglinang ng Kasanayan sa Pagsulat tungo sa Malayang Pamamahayag with aiming to upskill their members and promote citizen journalism among them.
The group worked with several credible news organizations and journalists associations to realize its goals including the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, College Editors Guild of the Philippines, and Rappler.
“This is the first time that we have worked with NUJP and CEGP, but this is the second project we had partnering with Rappler and its civic movement arm MovePH,” AMAPS President Win Sharm Cinco said.
AMAPS has been working with Rappler since August 2021 during the PinasALAMIN webinar. Since then, AMAPS has been part of several initiatives including the #PHVote and #CourageON coalition. The group was one of the first members of the #FactsFirstPH initiative by Rappler, Meedan, and Google News Initiative.
On February 25, AMAPS introduced an online parody vodcast Facts You! Facts you need to know. The show is hosted by JK Gamora as Defective Shareback Holmes and Emman Rivera as Proctor Di ‘yan Watson—a parody impersonation of the infamous Holmes and Watson known for their deductive reasoning skills.
Facts You! uses a satirical and comical approach to engage its audience and broaden its reach in debunking lies and misinformation. Equipped with fact-checking articles of #FactsFirstPH members and with the unorthodox approach, since the launch, it gained more than 500 new followers with more than a 25% rise in video engagement.
The show was also launched to build up their fight against the growing number of fake news online, especially with a few days left until the 2022 national and local elections.
Facts You! will continue to run until July 2022 and is co-presented by #FactsFirstPH.
