Shortly after 42-year-old singer and metal rock band Slapshock’s frontman Jamir Garcia died on Nov. 26, a site pretending to be media network GMA published a fake report claiming his death was a result of “foul play.”
The undated story from GMA News Updates (gma-n3wsupdates.xyz) tagged another singer as the main suspect in his death, as stated in its thumbnail.
This is fabricated. There are no reports of foul play. Garcia was reported to have taken his own life.
Upon clicking the video on the site, GMA News Updates redirects to a new webpage with the URL, balitang-247.xyz. The video in the new site then shows GMA news anchor Mel Tiangco saying, “Natagpuang patay ang sing– (Found dead was sing–),” and gets cut off before being able to finish the word “singer.” To continue the rest of the clip, a reader is instructed to share the video on Facebook (FB).
However, despite sharing the story, the full video could not be viewed.
The video is actually manipulated. The footage and audio that plays in the clip come from two different news reports and neither is related to Garcia’s death.
The footage used was sourced from a Nov. 26 report in GMA’s primetime news show 24 Oras. Though it was the day Garcia died, the portion shown was about former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s appointment as presidential adviser on the Clark flagship programs and projects.
An image of Arroyo shown in the original 24 Oras report was covered with a photo of Garcia sourced from his Instagram account.
It was then spuriously overlaid with an audio clip taken from a Nov. 22, 2016 24 Oras report about the death of singer and comedian Blakdyak. The phrase “sa kanyang kwarto (in his room)” was omitted in the copy of the video on balitang-247.xyz.
A day after the death of the 42-year-old singer, his wife Jaya Garcia said in an FB post that her husband’s death was caused by “envious people.” There was no mention of foul play.
GMA News Updates published the fake report at least three times on its website, based on a search by VERA Files Fact Check. While the fabricated report itself bore no publishing date, a cursory search on FB showed it was first publicly shared on Nov. 28.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
