A Facebook page has distorted a tweet of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV to insinuate that he backtracked on his stance on the “Ang Totoong Narcolist videos” before and after the elections.
Facebook page Duterte Today, which has a history of sharing fake news, on May 23 juxtaposed two statements supposedly made by Trillanes: the first one is an undated tweet from his official account; the second one is an Inquirer.net tweet quoting him the same day. The images were superimposed with the text: “Before and after ellection [sic].”
The post is misleading.
While the Inquirer tweet is accurate, the other tweet is not. The post tampered with Trillanes’ April 4 tweet by omitting a photo statement that accompanied it. The original sentence reads: “Having said that, I really wish I was part of the making of the videos so I could relish these moments but sadly I am not.” The doctored tweet also shows the same number of likes and retweets as the Inquirer.net tweet.
The post was published the same day Peter Joemel Advincula, who claims to be the hooded man in the series of videos that linked the president’s family to the illegal drug trade, surrendered to the police and retracted his earlier allegations, saying they were fake and scripted.
Advincula now claims the Liberal Party, under the handling of Trillanes, was behind the video series.
Duterte Today’s misleading post has since been shared over 8,600 times and has received more than 27,500 interactions and could have reached more than 3.5 million people. Top sharers on Facebook include Duterte Today, MindaVote and Lapu-Lapu.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
