A video on YouTube is claiming that President Ferdinand Marcos and Sen. Rafael “Raffy” Tulfo are planning to shut down the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). This is not true.
On April 16, a channel published the video with this headline:
“KAKAPASOK LANG SAWAKAS (sic) NAIA SARADO NA! SEN TULFO SUMABOG sa GALIT NILUSOB ang NAIA mga BUWAYA IYAK (Just in, NAIA’s closed! Sen. Tulfo exploded in anger, charged thru NAIA. Crocodiles cry).”
The thumbnail of the video also carried the following text:
“NAIA IPASARADO, ITO ANG MATINDING UTOS NI SEN TULFO PBBM (Close NAIA, this is the dire order of Sen. Tulfo and Marcos).”
Contrary to the video’s headline and thumbnail, some netizens are actually the ones calling for the international airport’s shutdown because of its poor facilities and unsatisfactory customer service, which the narrator commented on at around the 29-second mark.
There are no plans to shut down the NAIA. Neither Marcos nor Tulfo has made any statement related to this.
The video showed two mirrored clips of Tulfo taken from the Feb. 21 and March 20 Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings on the reported human trafficking incidents that occurred at NAIA. Nowhere in these meetings did Tulfo bring up any plans to close down the international airport.
This video emerged a week after officials from the Bureau of Immigration urged NAIA authorities to investigate an airport employee accused of involvement in human trafficking schemes.
YouTube channel PINAS NEWS INSIDER (created on Dec. 26, 2015) published the untrue video, garnering over 130,000 views and 3,500 interactions. Website GLOBAL BALITA PH also reposted the video in an article that was shared by at least 19 Facebook groups and pages according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
PINAS NEWS INSIDER was just flagged by VERA Files Fact Check this week for publishing another spurious video with a false claim. (Read VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Video FALSELY claims Cayetano has been removed as senator)
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