Website newstoday3ph.info published April 13 a false story claiming a “yellow” Catholic bishop dissuaded people from voting for then candidate Rodrigo Duterte in the 2016 elections.
The story bore the headline, “Nabisto Na Ang Kslnungallngan Ng Dllawang Bishop (Yellow Bishop’s Lies Found Out),” and carried an 11-minute clip of a two-hour monologue on video posted the same day by a certain Dante Maravillas of Tarabangan Albay News Television, who made claims about an unidentified “yellow” bishop opposing Duterte’s candidacy. “Yellow” is a colloquial term identified with vocal supporters of the Liberal Party and its members.
The video, uploaded by Youtube channel Tokhang TV, deliberately misleads by using in its thumbnail photos of Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas.
The website was created in February 2018. Along with the Youtube video, the story could have reached almost 150,000 people, its biggest traffic generator on social media being the Diehard Duterte Supporters Facebook page.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
