Atty. Barry Gutierrez INQUIRER.net file photo / JULLIANE LOVE DE JESUS
The camp of Vice President Leni Robredo hit back at Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy after the latter tagged Robredo as “one of the primary purveyors of fake news” when she allegedly painted “a gloomy picture” of the country before an international audience regarding extrajudicial killings.
Atty. Barry Gutierrez, legal adviser of Robredo, said with the appointment of Badoy at the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), the public can visualize what kind of work is going on at the Palace communications department.
READ: Lorraine Badoy appointed as PCOO undersecretary, says DSWD OIC
“That this person is now in Presidential Communications Operations Office, though, is a very clear indicator of the kind of work it focuses on these days,” Gutierrez said in a statement on Wednesday.
During the hearing of the Senate committee on public information and mass media on Tuesday, Badoy branded Robredo as a fake news purveyor and that President Rodrigo Duterte was a “bigger victim” of it than the vice president.
READ: Palace exec tags VP Robredo as one of ‘purveyors’ of fake news
Gutierrez also said Badoy is not a credible person to talk about “fake news.”
“If this is the Lorraine Badoy who insisted that a high school class project was an ‘LP publication,’ and, when corrected, refused to accept her mistake and tried to bully Jillian Robredo and her high school classmates, then I hardly think she is the most credible person to talk about ‘fake news,’” Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez was referring to Badoy’s viral Facebook post last December 2016 when she mistook the younger Robredo’s school project as an official Liberal Party magazine.
Jillian’s groupmates later came in to her defense and corrected Badoy through a Facebook comment on the Palace official’s post. /jpv