Two viral Facebook (FB) posts are erroneously claiming that local media did not report the presence of then senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s at the arrival honors for the Special Action Force (SAF) troopers killed in a botched mission in Mamasapano in Maguindanao six years ago.
FB page Igorotack posted on Nov. 26 a photo of a distraught Marcos during the ceremony, with a caption explaining why they will vote for him. Part of the caption in Ilocano read: “Adi u mapansin walang na media sa kanya, ammu tayun very biased ti Mainstream Media (Haven’t you noticed how the media won’t report on him, we already know that the Mainstream Media is very biased).”
A few hours later, a netizen posted the same image and captioned it: “Fackt our mainstream media! Look at the grief of this man! How come we didn’t know about this?! He saluted every single SAF-44 then but not a single fcking media told us about it! To think, Noynoy Aquino was not here to receive them!!!”
This is wrong. A cursory online search shows that several media organizations mentioned that Marcos was at the ceremony. Among the media organizations are the following:
Websites Pinoy Trending News and Pinoy Chismis echoed the false claim by storifying the netizen’s post.
On Jan. 29, 2015, 42 of the 44 slain members of the SAF, an elite unit of the Philippine National Police, arrived at the Villamor Air Base and were received by top officials and the victims’ families. The late President Benigno Aquino III was criticized for his glaring absence at the ceremony, instead attending an inauguration of a car plant in Laguna.
The circulating untrue posts are another piece of disinformation accusing the media of unfair and biased reporting against the Marcoses. (See VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Video makes FALSE claims about Marcos human rights victims, ABS-CBN)
They surfaced as Marcos faced a number of petitions at the Commission on Elections challenging his candidacy for president in 2022.
The two false FB posts have collectively garnered over 31,000 reactions, 3,700 comments and 11,200 shares. The websites have gotten more than 12,000 FB interactions and were shared by at least 17 FB groups and pages. Igorotrack was created in July 2019.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
