Sotto chides blogger for sharing ‘fake news’ post

Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III has prodded the blogger behind the Pinoy Ako Blog (PAB) website to study the procedures of the Senate, as he reprimanded her over the “Seven Deadly Sens” entry she shared from the “Silent No More” Facebook page.

During Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate committee on public information and mass media on the proliferation of “fake news,” Sotto asked what Jover Laurio did upon finding out that the information she shared in her site was not true.

Pinoy Ako Blog (PAB) Jover Laurio. Photo by INQUIRER.net/CATHY MIRANDA

“Yung time na binlog ko ‘yan, you’re still not signing then I made another blog… There’s a resibo from the office of Senator Kiko Pangilinan that says that an email was sent to some senators,” Laurio responded to Sotto.

But Sotto retorted: “That’s not true because that’s not the procedure here. You must know that in the procedure here in (the) Senate, any member of the Senate can come up to our office and ask us to sign when it’s a resolution. You do not email, when you email that means you’re avoiding.”

“So if you’re asking some people to learn about senate proceedings, you must also learn the proceedings,” he added.
The controversial “Seven Deadly Sens” post that went viral branded Sotto, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III as well as Senators Manny Pacquiao, Cynthia Villar, Gregorio Honasan II, Juan Miguel Zubiri, and Richard Gordon as “Malacañang dogs” for not signing the resolution condemning the so-called extrajudicial killings, especially of children, in the country.

Sotto further pushed Laurio to tell the panel about the action she might have made upon learning that the seven senators were not informed of the resolution and that they later filed their own resolution.

Laurio subsequently admitted that she did not take down the blog post.

“That’s what I’m saying madam chair eh, alam nya nang fake news, alam nya nang mali ‘yung news hindi nya pa inaalis so what do we do about this? ‘Yun ang gusto natin malamaan and hopefully we would come up with a legislation to address this,” Sotto pointed out.                       /kga