Two videos on YouTube are claiming that President Ferdinand Marcos fired Defense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. from his post. This is false.
Published on July 10, the videos continued to circulate this week on social media. One of them bore the false headline:
“KAKAPASOK LANG : GRABE TO! LAHAT NA GIMBAL (sic) SA MATINDING UTOS NI PBBM. GIBO KUMPERMADO NA! (Just in: This is insane! All were shocked by the grave order of PBBM. Gibo confirmed!)”
The following text was also superimposed on the video thumbnail:
“TANGGAL SA PWESTO! ITO ANG MATINDING KARMA NI GIBO (Fired from his position! This is is just awful karma for Gibo)”
Teodoro remains to be chief of the Department of National Defense. Marcos has made no official statement announcing his removal from the post.
The video never showed any evidence to substantiate its claim. Instead, it played a nine-minute clip of a vlogger talking about a supposed petition to sack Teodoro over a foiled Philippine resupply mission to Ayungin Shoal in June.
In a July 12 Facebook post – two days after the false videos were published on YouTube – Teodoro even gave a message as Defense Secretary commemorating the 8th anniversary of the country’s 2016 arbitral award on the South China Sea.
The untrue posts circulated two days after the Philippines, represented by Teodoro, and Japan signed an agreement which will allow Filipino soldiers to coordinate joint combat exercises with their counterparts in Japan.
YouTube channels BANAT NEWS UPDATES (created on July 27, 2022) and PINAS NEWS REVIEW (Nov. 28, 2017) published the spurious videos, collectively garnering over 19,900 views and 690 online engagements. They could have reached over 170,000 YouTube users.