OP-ED EDITORIAL: Who sews up fake news

Ablogger who is the main source of yellow fake news against President Duterte has managed to find her way into a Hong Kong broadsheet as a correspondent in Manila and she has now spread the fake news virus to a wider reach.
In a story last April 4, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) headlined “How Cambridge Analytica’s parent company helped ‘man of action’ Rodrigo Duterte win the 2016 Philippines election” written by Raissa Robles.
The article came a day or two after Facebook disclosed that data of more than 80 million Facebook users, 1.2 million of who are Filipinos were compromised and used for the US elections by UK-based political strategy firm Cambridge Analytica.
As in her anti-Duterte blog, Robles presented as proof a photograph taken at the National Press Club (NPC) when now Presidential Communications Undersecretary Joel Egco was its President in May 2015.
Also in the photo were Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, Pompee La Viña and Peter Tiu Laviña who were members of the Duterte campaign team, and Istratehiya chairman Taipan Millan.
The other piece of “proof” Robles offered in her story that Rody’s campaign benefited from the UK political strategist’s service that supposedly had an extensive involvement in the victorious campaign of US President Donald Trump, was an entry in the Cambridge Analytica website claiming that it helped a Philippine president win an election.
“Facing national elections, the incumbent client was perceived as kind and honorable – qualities his campaign team thought were election-winning. By contrast, SCL’s research showed that many groups within the electorate were more likely to be swayed by qualities such as ‘tough’ and ‘decisive’.
Using the cross-cutting issue of crime, SCL rebranded the client as a strong, no-nonsense man of action,” the entry read.
Robles in her SCMP fake news definitely pinpointed Rody as the one referred to in the Cambridge Analytica website when no name or date was mentioned. She then tied up the NPC photo with the Cambridge Analytica claim to sell her story to SCMP.
The NPC photo was, however, a pure spin since it was taken after a regular weekly forum attended by media in which Nix was invited as guest.
Since Nix’s topic was about winning an election through modern technology, political hands such as the two Laviñas attended.
Now it has emerged that the services of Cambridge Analytica’s services were employed during the 2010 elections and not in 2016 and the candidate that it claimed to have helped win obviously was President Aquino.
It is now Butch Abad, Noynoy’s campaign manager then who later became Noynoy’s budget secretary, who is being zeroed in as having tapped the UK firm.
The parent company of Cambridge Analytica, SCL Elections, mentioned that in 2010, it “successfully won the election for their candidate.”
In a SCL’s website listing its achievements, the Philippines appeared under “Case Histories” in the “Client Successes” section of SCL Elections.
“SCL Elections was asked to run the election campaign for a presidential candidate; this included managing all aspects of the campaign including research, strategy and output over a seven-month period. SCL Elections successfully won the election for their candidate,” it said.
An archive of the web page appeared September 2010 or about 4 months after the May 2010 presidential elections.
Abad in a message to a yellow online outfit said “I never heard of that group working with the campaign and never met anyone representing that group.
“To claim that they managed ‘all aspects of the campaign’ is a big lie. And the simple reason is that I never encountered that agency or anybody who claimed to represent them,” he added.
It the final analysis, the whole canard connecting Rody to the Facebook mess appeared to have boomeranged on the source.