A satirical post about actress-host Toni Gonzaga getting hospitalized for stressing out her vocal cords after attempting to hit high notes in her performances at presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s campaign rallies is being taken as fact by social media users.
On March 13, the Facebook (FB) page Cebu Dairy News published the post featuring an image of Gonzaga singing during Marcos’ campaign sortie in Laguna two days earlier with this text: “Toni suffers laryngitis, pleads Marcos supporters to show enthusiasm in rallies.”
Cebu Dairy News is a satirical FB page created in July 2021 that imitates the news site Cebu Daily News. It states on its homepage that its content is “all made-up and should not to be taken as factual.”
Part of the satiric post’s caption claims that Gonzaga said in an interview that she “gave all [her] efforts due to the fact that [she] was paid” by the Marcos camp and that she was singing “for our country” — which drew ire from netizens who thought the remark to be true.
No such interview ever happened.
Several netizens believed the post was legitimate and criticized Gonzaga for saying she was hosting the rallies for the country when she was actually doing it “for the love of money.” Some also said Gonzaga cannot force the crowd to be more “cheerful” if they are also “being paid.”
This is not the first time Gonzaga figured in a satirical post that misled people. (Read VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Toni Gonzaga signing on as ‘PTV4 talent’ is SATIRE)
The new satiric piece emerged after videos of Gonzaga singing “Titanium” and “Roar” in the recent Marcos rallies went viral on social media.
So far, the post has garnered more than 38,000 reactions, 4,600 comments, and 7,800 shares. It was reposted by FB page Vash Mellow (created Oct. 26, 2017) and was shared by FB pages Filipinos Against China Invasion to Philippines (June 8, 2013), Samasa Kontra Mandarambong (April 9, 2016), Kuya Kiko (May 6, 2020).
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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.)
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