PRESIDENTIAL Communications Operations Office Undersecretary and Spokesperson Lorraine Badoy on Tuesday apologized to Senator Manny Pacquiao for sharing on Facebook a photo of a house she claimed was owned by the senator’s mistress.
During the second Senate panel hearing on fake news, Badoy apologized after Pacquiao said she owed him an apology for spreading what he described as “fake news” while he was campaigning for a Senate seat in February 2016.
Her Facebook post at the time said: “Guess what I saw when I went on a run this morning in my village? Manny Pacquiao’s campaign car in front of his mistress’ house.” The house turned out to be owned by a member of Pacquiao’s staff.
“I still cannot forget what you did to me last election. I’m sure you remember that,” Pacquiao told Badoy. “That’s fake news. What you did was fake news.”
Badoy apologized, but said she posted that because she was “very hurt” when Pacquiao compared gays to animals.
“What you said about the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community was very hurting to me. It really, really hurts me because a lot of people close to my heart belong to that community…” she said. “We do affect each other very much so when you put hate out there, you’d better ready for that to come back.”
The PCOO spokesperson said that she was “very sincere” in her apology and was trying her best to take the hate out of her posts. PNA
Pacquiao, however, asked Badoy to “correct” her post, and she agreed to do it.
At the same hearing, Badoy said Vice President Leni Robredo was one of the “primary purveyors of fake news,” painting a gloomy picture of the country to reflect poorly on President Rodrigo Duterte.
When pressed to give an example, however, Badoy could not cite a specific instance, saying only that she painted “a gloomy picture” of the country when she spoke before an international audience.
Badoy later qualified that what she said about Robredo was her “personal opinion.”
PCOO Secretary Martin Andanar, meanwhile, admitted that his agency had made mistakes in the past but said these mistakes had no “malicious intent.”
“We have made mistakes in the past and we have been held accountable for them. But these were honest mistakes with no intention to malign anybody and with no malicious intent,” Andanar said.
“These should not overshadow or speak for the work of thousands in government who work tirelessly to provide the public the right and useful information,” he added.
Andanar also told the committee that the agency should not be judged on the personal blog run by his Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson.
“If we judge PCOO based on Mocha’s blog, I think it’s also unfair to thousands of workers of government media who work so hard to strengthen our platform,” Andanar said in a mix of English and Filipino.
He said that the PCOO and its attached agencies including the People’s Television Network, Philippine Information Agency, Philippine News Agency, among others should be the basis of the agency’s performance.
“The Mocha blog does not represent PCOO. Our various media platforms are the government’s official platforms,” he added.
Earlier this week, Andanar defended Uson, who erroneously said on a video that Mayon Volcano was in Naga City, instead of Legazpi City.
“Well, we know the person made a mistake,” he told GMA News in Filipino. “She didn’t mean it and this is nothing compared to the person’s dedication to the government and the people in terms of public service.”
In August 2017, Andanar reprimanded the PNA for committing two blunders in the span of a week.
On Aug. 6, it posted a Xinhua commentary calling the South China Sea arbitral ruling that favored the Philippines “an ill-founded award.” In the same week, the PNA used a logo of food processing company Dole Philippines to accompany a story about the Department of Labor and Employment or DoLE.
In September 2016, Andanar’s office erroneously announced that President Duterte would be seated next to President Barack Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon during the gala dinner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Vientiane, Laos.
Andanar said he took responsibility for the blunder, which was picked up by media outlets abroad. PNA