Days after Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto called news anchors out for accepting millions of pesos to do lifestyle features on contractors Pacifico “Curlee” and Sarah Discaya, whom he ran against in the Pasig mayoral race, several journalists and reporters aired grievances about Sotto and news anchors included in his post, Julius Babao and Korina Sanchez. The two have denied claims that they were bribed by the Discaya couple.
On Instagram, broadcast journalist Arnold Clavio challenged Sotto’s accusations that Babao and Sanchez were paid P10 million each to feature the Discayas in their respective programs, saying that the mayor’s claims are harmful not only for the news anchors but also for other journalists and the news industry.
“Ang akusasyong ito laban kina Babao at Sanchez ay tila ‘di makatarungan hindi lamang sa dalawa kundi sa buong industriya,” Clavio said. “Hindi ito para ipagtanggol ko ang dalawang mamamahayag sa paninira ni Sotto kundi ang ma-proteksyunan ang buong industriya ng pamamahayag — na kinukuhanan ng impormasyon ng publiko.”
In the comments, he added, “Mayor, huwag ka nang makisawsaw sa mapanganib na panahon dahil sa sarili mong interes na politikal. Nasa demokrasya tayo at may karapatan ang sinuman na marinig ang kanilang panig.”
An op-ed published by the Daily Tribune warned readers to “beware of Mr. Clean,” alluding to Sotto and his thrust for good governance. The editorial said that Sotto was “unimpeachably neat that he can claim anything outrageous and people will still clap.”
The op-ed further criticized him for sowing distrust against the news media. “It doesn’t even matter if it’s true, nor does he have to censor the press; he needed only to radicalize his significant youth base into seeing media as the irrelevant, compromised, old-guard trash,” the unidentified author wrote.
While challenging the veracity of Sotto’s bribery claims, the author also speculated that “some bigger player in politics or business or a donor or a party machine or an elder at his ear might need a clean-looking frontman to hurl the grenade while smiling like the boy next door.”
Other journalists, on the other hand, have expressed disappointment in the anchors and other media practitioners for being dishonest about advertisements and paid content.
Responding to an X user that said “There is a difference between journalism and PR, and all that Vico did was expose that some people profit from pretending there is no difference,” former The Washington Post reporter Regine Cabato said that covert advertising has been “a plague in journalism for years” and made the norm in the age of content creation. “But it is not benign, especially when public interest is at stake. If you don’t tag sponsored content as sponsored, it’s deception.”
The Straits Times Philippine correspondent Mara Cepeda said that it is unethical for journalists to be paid for interviews. “Maybe fewer lines would be crossed if journos weren’t overworked and underpaid, a harsh reality in [the Philippines]. So newsrooms must pay better,” she said. “But if you’re privileged enough but still accept bribes? That’s just greed.”
Investigations
On Facebook, veteran writer Chelo Banal-Formoso said she stood with Sotto, and that Babao and Sanchez should have questioned the Discayas’ displays of wealth. “O sige, let’s say the Discaya piece was not a paid placement. They claim that this was a ‘lifestyle’ feature. Okay, good,” she said. “But the second they saw that huge garage and those many super expensive cars, that lifestyle story should have instantly turned into an investigative story. Right there and then they were being fed clues of wrongdoing. They didn’t smell the rotten deals? What happened to their journalistic instinct?”
She added later on that after the release of the video features, the government should have investigated “the ostentatious home and the fleet of cars that the Discaya couple credited to their association with the DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways].”
Bureau of Customs Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno said in a True FM interview on Monday, August 25, that he will order a probe into the Discayas’ luxury car collection, which was featured in both Babao and Sanchez’s videos.
The Discaya couple’s construction company Alpha and Omega Gen. Contractor & Development Corp. is one of the 15 contractors currently under investigation by the Senate for the government’s failed flood control projects, which has also put the DPWH in hot water.
Sotto previously stated that the Pasig government had conducted investigations into allegations of fraud and anomalous contracts associated with the Discaya-owned St. Gerrard General Contractor and Development Corporation (SGGCDC).
The DPWH suspended SGGCDC for a year in 2015 for submitting a falsified tax clearance to the Department of Budget and Management Procurement Service. However, during the suspension period, the company still won contracts worth P440.5 million, according to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
