A July 14 report by website philupdates.top saying the Liberal Party got some young people intoxicated to make them participate in a rally is fake.
The report, which bore the headline “LP PINAINOM NG BEER ANG MGA KABATAAN PARA SUMAMA SA RALLY (LP made the youth drink beer so they could join rally),” carried a 10-minute clip of a 30-minute CNN Philippines’ Newsroom Weekend newscast that day. The episode aired a three-minute segment about the group Kaya Natin! Youth’s July 13 protest against the Duterte administration’s proposed charter change.
The report carried as its thumbnail an image splicing together a grimacing Vice President Leni Robredo, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV holding a bottle of beer and a man eating at a table surrounded by bottles of alcohol.
The “protest party” was organized by the youth group and was attended by opposition figures like Trillanes and LP leaders Robredo and Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino. Bottles of alcohol could be seen in the footage of the event held at a Quezon City food park but none showed young people getting intoxicated. CNN Philippines also made no claim in its report that attendees were “made” to drink alcohol.
Philupdates.top published its fake story, which could have reached almost 2.2 million people, the same day the group held the protest. Apart from the proposed shifting of the country’s form of government to federalism, the group also held the event in protest of the administration’s anti-tambay (loiterer) campaign.
The story’s biggest traffic generators from social media were the pages President Rody Duterte -Federal Movement International, Marcos Loyalist and President Duterte Supporters. Philupdates.top was created on July 12; Youtube channel TOKHANG TV, which uploaded the CNN PH clip, in November 2016.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this methodology.)
