Several Duterte and Marcos Facebook fan pages shared an article about Senate witness and self-confessed Davao Death Squad (DDS) member Edgar Matobato apologizing for “destroying” President Rodrigo Duterte.
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We clicked on the article they shared that was published by Newstrendph. According to the article, Matobato said he was sorry for the people he killed and that he was ready to die for his sins. The article also noted that the witness has since been living under the protection of former soldiers.
Matobato said that he was “tired of running,” then narrated about his life as a killer, the article said. The hitman also admitted to appearing at the Senate inquiry into the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines because his conscience was bothering him, adding that he wanted to correct his mistakes and find justice for his victims.
According to the article, which later mentioned Reuters as a source, Matobato said he was “tired of this life” and that he does not want to go to prison, preferring instead to get hanged for his sins.
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If you notice, the quote mentioned in the captions of the Duterte and Marcos fan pages is nowhere to be found in the entire article. And the fan pages even made it seem like it was a direct quote from Matobato. They are actually deceiving their readers!
Matobato did apologize, but he was directing his apology to the victims that he killed. He was apologizing for his killings, not for destroying Duterte. This meant that he is standing by his earlier testimonies accusing Duterte of ordering the killings of several people while he was still mayor of Davao City.
We also read the Reuters article “Philippine hitman says tired of running, ready to die,” where some parts of the Newstrendph was lifted from, and Matobato was definitely apologizing for his sins as a killer, not for “destroying Duterte,” as the fan pages claimed.
This is another case of a misleading title and caption, which these Duterte fan pages have done so many times since the elections. The thing is that Duterte’s supporters seem to read only the title and the Facebook caption instead of spending a few minutes to read the entire article. This makes them vulnerable to misleading titles, which these fan pages take advantage of.
If you don’t want to fall victim to wrong titles and captions, take your time reading the article, from start to finish. It helps to find other sources that can corroborate the blog you just read to make sure that what you are consuming as a reader is a real article, not a satire or a fake article. That’s it. And if you can’t access the entire article because of Internet limitations, don’t share it or don’t react to it until you’ve read it. Otherwise, you might be spreading wrong information that will further victimize your gullible social media friends and followers.
Source: (reuters.com)
Be Informed. Beat the Trolls, Share the Truth!
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