Some Duterte fan pages on Facebook are sharing a blog stories about how President Rodrigo Duterte has allegedly been named as the best president in the world. The post came with a thumbnail of an anchorman with Korean writings in the news ticker and it looked quite familiar. It turned out we already wrote an article about the Korean news report allegedly branding Duterte as the world’s best president, posing questions that we could not really be sure that it was what the Korean anchorman was talking about in the report.
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Still, the story was shared several fan pages declaring support for the Dutertes, such as “Duterte OFW Supporters,” “President Rodrigo ‘Digong’ Duterte for New Philippines,” “Sara Duterte Worldwide Supporters,” “Diehard Duterte Supporters,” “Duterte Phenomenon,” “President Duterte Astig Supporters,” “Duterte,” and “President Duterte Global Supporters,” among others.
However, we have already pointed out our doubts in our previous article about the MBC report citing Duterte that was first uploaded by the Korean TV and radio network company on August 1, 2016.
This time, blogs like pilipinasnews.info, pinasnewsportal.info, echonewsph.info, ptvbalita.info, socialcastph.info, dds-tambayan.info, among others, already shared the MBC report on a YouTube video with the title claiming that Duterte was indeed named as the best president of the world.
We checked MBC’s caption of the report with Google translate and this is what we got.
Facebook translated the caption to this:
The MBC report has no English subtitles but it showed photos of a congested jail in the Philippines, clips of the PNP drug operation and crime scenes of the killings, President Duterte voting in the 2016 elections, Duterte promising not to stop his drug campaign until the last drug lord is behind bars or “below the ground” during his 2016 SONA, and part of Duterte’s election campaign.
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Based on the comments, there were opposing reactions in the comments section, based on the translation provided by Facebook, with some sort of praising “awesome” Duterte, while some mentioned something about “human rights” and “innocent people.”
Here are the factors that cast a doubt over the claim that the Korean news report called Duterte the best president in August 2016, as what we’ve written previously:
- The Korean report has no subtitles.
We cannot confirm whether the Korean anchorman really said that Duterte was the world’s best president, as the blogs claimed. There are just so many ways to interpret a report that we could not understand.
- Even Koreans have divided reactions to the report.
Some seemed to be praising Duterte, while others mentioned something about “innocent people” and “human rights,” something that the opposition have also talked about when it comes to Duterte’s war on drugs.
- The Korean report first came out in August 2016.
Even if the Duterte fan pages just re-uploaded the blogs’ coverage of the MBC report in the first week of November, the MBC report was actually posted on Facebook on August 1, 2016. During this time, it was too early for anyone, including the Korean anchorman, to say that Duterte was the best president in the world when he was then only about a month into his administration on August 1, 2016.
According to Facebook search results, this was not the first time the story was uploaded on Facebook. It was also uploaded in March and April this year by some Duterte fan pages.
You can read more about our first article on this Korean news report here, “Busted: Korean reporter called Duterte “the best president of all time”? But Korean news has no subtitles.”
While it was understandable how Filipinos wanted to stay optimistic about the new administration, especially with Duterte’s campaign promises about stopping drugs and crimes in six months if he’d get elected, it was also wrong to deliberately exaggerate and mislead the people. We can praise Duterte’s achievements but call him out whenever he does something wrong.
In December 2016, Duterte asked to his deadline for his promise to end drugs and crimes to be extended for six more months. A few months later, in April 2017, he admitted to being wrong about his six-month deadline to stop the illegal drug trade.
This is not the first story allegedly praising Duterte’s leadership skills. There has been several fake stories about how Duterte was hailed to be the “best president.” There was one from a satirical site that called him as the “world’s best president” and another edited photo posted on Facebook calling Duterte as “the best president in the solar system,” something that some of the President’s supporters fell for, despite how obviously fake the story was.
Sources: ( rappler.com , inquirer.net , philstar.com )
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