Who holds a monopoly on the “truth”? According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, members of the Opposition do. The publication recently named their 2017 Filipinos of the Year and with the exception of members of the military and police officers who served in Marawi City, most of the people included in the list are those who are critical of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his supporters.
According to the Inquirer, the choices for the Filipinos of the Year award represent a “chorus of voices resisting the ‘fake news’ that overflowed social media platforms”. But their statement and choices is tantamount to saying that those who support Duterte are the only purveyors of fake news. The editors gave special mention to Jover Laurio, the blogger behind Pinoy Ako Blog who they claim “stood out for her patriotic daring, the frequency and freshness of her posts, the dark humour of her blog, and, not least, the courage she showed in the face of overwhelming personal abuse.”
If you ask me, you know the Philippines is pretty much screwed when a major newspaper calls Jover Laurio “patriotic”. This is the height of mediocrity in Philippine society. Laurio’s posts lack substance and are not groundbreaking. She’s only criticising people who don’t share her views. She’s not doing investigative work or providing something that would make people think. It seems the key criterion applied by the Inquirer when considering who is “patriotic” is around how rabid a Liberal Party supporter one is and how vitriolic one’s blog posts against her opponents are. Laurio is a rabid Liberal Party supporter. She campaigned for Mar Roxas and current Vice President Leni Robredo. She doesn’t hide the fact that she is a yellow. She fits the profile to a tee.
Before being outed as the blogger of Pinoy Ako Blog, Laurio did not have the courage to put her name on the articles she published. Before Netizens found out who the person behind the blogposts was, she was publishing articles that were malicious personal attacks against other people who held “contrarian” views. Laurio only adjusted her style and became more sober after she was outed.
In other words, when Laurio was anonymous, she was vicious. This explains why a lot of Netizens were angry at her and did not feel sorry for her when her personal profile was exposed. They felt that she was simply getting a dose of her own medicine. The only thing I agree with with what the Inquirer editorial said about Laurio is that, those who outed her made her what she is today. I did notice that when some of the Netizens were using personal attacks against her, she started to play the victim card. She played it so well that members of mainstream media allied with the Liberal Party like Rappler and the Inquirer immediately jumped on the chance to portray Laurio as a victim of cyberbullying by the Duterte supporters. It was wrong of the Netizens to make fun of her physical appearance. But the truth is, Laurio herself also had a habit of making fun of people’s appearance when she was still anonymous. That’s the reason why some Netizens were shocked after they saw her photos.
I knew the exposé on Jover Laurio was not handled well. All it did was create a monster because, instead of sticking to the issues — her penchant for posting vile attacks against her opponents — some of her critics focused, instead, on attacking her appearance. In the eyes of the people who did not know her history of abusive behaviour, she looked like the injured party. You see, there are people who can turn things around and make it look like they are the victim even when they were the ones who initiated posting nasty stuff against others to begin with. They are like sociopaths. Laurio does play the victim well. It helped that the Yellows desperately needed someone to rally around and use as some kind of mascot.
Members of mainstream media do not like bloggers to begin with. A lot of them hate the fact that bloggers are taking their audience away. It’s quite surprising that they are rallying around blogger Laurio now. Her articles are appalling. She cannot even express her thoughts in any other language apart from Tagalog. This seems to say that the editors from the Inquirer who see her as a champion had to lower their standards just to fit her into their mould. If we are to be honest, Laurio’s work sucks.
The members of mainstream media like the editors of the Inquirer who voted to award her the Filipino of the Year title are quite suspect. The publication does not pretend to be non-partisan anymore. The editors just outed themselves as Liberal Party backers.
No one holds a monopoly on being right. Everyone has an opinion, but only time can reveal who is telling the truth. Time has proven again and again that the Liberal Party and their supporters are the enemies of the Filipino people. Those behind the naming of Laurio as Filipino of the Year are merely attempting to get the monopoly on being “king makers” back. They lost that privilege when they supported a political party that duped the public. It’s actually pathetic that they have resorted to using someone like Laurio to get back at the bloggers who took their power away. It’s like an insult to everyone’s intelligence.
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