Several YouTube videos and Facebook (FB) posts are claiming that former president Rodrigo Duterte bid farewell to his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, following her supposed death. These are false.
The earliest copy of the spurious video, published on Feb. 20, carried the headline:
“VP Sara Duterte, NamaaIam na! RODRIGO Duterte, EMOSYONAL sa SINAPIT ng ANAK! PBBM.
(VP Sara Duterte has passed away! RODRIGO Duterte, EMOTIONAL over what happened to his daughter! PBBM)”
Two other YouTube videos bore similar headlines, with one even claiming in the text overlay on its thumbnail:
“TINAPOS ni SARA ang SARILI nyang BUHAY (Sara ended her own life)”
The thumbnails of these fraudulent videos featured several photos of the former president appearing to be grieving beside a coffin, kissing it, and crying over it.
Other copies of these claims resurfaced on Facebook early this March, shared by three pages accompanied by the caption:
“SHOCK: VP Sara Duterte, Heartbreaking News LEAKED! Rodrigo Duterte BROKEN and EMOTIONAL Over His Daughter’s Shocking Fate! PBBM’s Surprising Reaction Revealed…”
The three FB posts used the same mourning photos of the former president as seen in the YouTube video thumbnails, and cited identical articles from morenews247.com, philipstoire.info, and hotnewsnowus.com to falsely imply the vice president’s death.
A reverse image search reveals that the images of erstwhile president Duterte were taken from unrelated past events, particularly when he attended the funeral of Anesia Marapon Dela Rosa, mother of Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, in 2023 and his visit to the tomb of his late father, Vicente Duterte, in 2016 after he won in the presidential election.
In March, the vice president posted a number of video messages on her official FB page for various occasions, such as Fire Prevention Month, Araw ng Dabaw, and Ramadan.
She also visited the wake of a soldier, who was killed during an encounter with the New People’s Army, in Aloran, Misamis Occidental on March 6.
The false YouTube video initially emerged two days after the vice president filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the validity and constitutionality of the impeachment complaint against her. A similar petition was filed by a group of Mindanao lawyers on Feb. 18.
The first version of the inaccurate video, published by YouTube channel Viral TV (created on March 30, 2019), amassed 197,846 views and 2,100 reactions. The reposted copies on FB collectively garnered over 1,334 reactions and 2,578 comments, with many users flagging the posts as “fake news.”
