A YouTube video is claiming the Supreme Court (SC) has issued a verdict against Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers. This is false.
A group of vloggers filed libel complaints only on March 5 against Barbers in the Quezon City prosecutor’s office, not in the Supreme Court. The complaints have yet to undergo preliminary investigation before these are brought to court for trial.
Posted on Feb. 28, the video’s title, which substituted some letters with numbers to avoid keyword detection, read:
“KAKAPASOK LANG Karma na! K0ngres0 Nagulat sa Hat0L kay Barbers? Naisahan ng mga DDS (diehard Duterte supporters) at VPSARA sa SC?
(Just in, karma hits! Congress, shocked at the verdict against Barbers? DDS and VP Sara outsmarted them in the SC?)
The spurious video referenced an opinion piece spread across social media since Feb. 21 through several fictitious accounts, suggesting that vloggers can “sue and file a class suit against Barbers.”
Social media vloggers, including former press secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles and press undersecretary Lorraine Badoy, sued the Surigao del Norte lawmaker after he had asked the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate them for their possible connection to illegal drugs and the Philippine offshore gaming operations or POGOs.
Barbers chairs the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs and is a member of the TriCom – composed of the House Committees on Public Order and Safety, Information and Communications Technology, and Public Information- that conducted an inquiry on online disinformation.
In a Feb. 4 joint hearing of the TriCom, Barbers said there is an increase in malicious accounts on social media that peddle disinformation and “engage in character assassination.”
“The sources of funding for these operations remain in the shadows, possibly linked to illicit activities such as POGO (Philippine offshore gaming operators) operations or criminal syndicates,” he added.
YouTube account PINAS NEWS HEADLINES (created July 24, 2017) has 269,000 subscribers and upwards of 23 million accumulated views. The false video garnered over 70,000 views and more than 200 comments as of writing.
