Earlier, we busted the newly appointed Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) chief Charito “Ching” Plaza for sharing a fake article about the Philippines being ranked as “the most reformed country” since President Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency.
Yesterday, she’s back to sharing fake articles again.
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Did Trump acknowledge Filipinos’ support to his campaign?
Plaza shared an article from a website called thet1mes.com with a title, “Donald Trump: I hear Filipinos stood with me during our campaigns, I won’t disappoint.”
Even without reading the article, the source itself is already suspicious enough to make you think twice about taking its claims seriously.
We clicked on the article and found out that thet1mes claimed that Trump acknowledged the Filipinos’ contribution to his campaign, how he vowed not to deport any Filipino immigrant, and how he would prioritize restoring US’ relationship with the Philippines. It even claimed that Trump and Duterte are “close” allies and the US President-elect even complimented the Filipinos for being “disciplined” like Duterte.
As expected, all of these are fake claims that we have busted with this article: “Busted: Did Trump acknowledge Filipinos’ support to his campaign? It’s just another fake article!”.
And the commenters on that post were telling Plaza that the article she shared is fake.
Did Trump appoint a Fil-Am to handle US immigration?
On the same day she shared the fake article above, she also shared another fake article from a site trying to pass off as Huffington Post. She even shared the fake article, entitled “Trump appoints a Filipino-American to deal with Immigration matters,” with a caption that many Fil-Ams did vote for the US President-elect.
If you’re not careful, you might fall for this site that looks like it is Huffington Post, when it’s not, seeing as how it has a URL huffingtonpost-fm.com.
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The article claimed that Fil-Am Leon Rodriguez was appointed as Immigration chief by Trump. However, this is not true. Rodriguez was already appointed as the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in 2014 and he is of Cuban descent.
You can read the full story of our bust for this fake story here: “Busted – Trump did not appoint a Fil-Am as US Immigration chief! It’s fake news!”.
Plaza is one of Duterte’s appointees and should have been more responsible in sharing articles on her Facebook page, given her government position as PEZA chief. If she continues to share fake articles, she is contributing to the misinformation that is now afflicting the Internet. As a government official, given her position and influence, she should have been more vigilant in using her social media accounts in spreading her message to the Filipinos.
Be Informed. Beat the Trolls, Share the Truth!
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