Bongbong Marcos told his supporters to give Rappler “another chance to find honesty in their heart.”
Former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has recently called on his supporters to end a hate campaign against Rappler, telling them that the online media company should be given “another chance to find honesty in their heart”.
Bongbong aired his appeal to his supporters even as many social media users have started to question Rappler’s own credibility as a Facebook fact-checker in the Philippines.
Despite asking his supporters to control their anger against Rappler, Bongbong nonetheless commended his supporters for “check the survey facts of Rappler” relative to its online polling activity.
Netizens, mostly Marcos followers, have accused the online media firm of manipulating the results of its own online poll survey on presidential aspirants.
“Those behind the manipulation of a simple exercise to get the voters’ pulse on the 2022 presidential race might have been overwhelmed by their desire to accomplish whatever mission assigned to them… so let’s give them another chance to find honesty in their heart,” Bongbong said.
Manila Bulletin reported that Rappler drew the ire of Marcos supporters after they “discovered” supposed manipulation of the online poll survey.
It was explained that Rappler recently conducted the survey by assigning different emoji react buttons to presidential aspirants from which social media users can choose from.
The “wow” react button was assigned to Bongbong Marcos while Vice President Leni Robredo was given the “heart” react button. The “laugh” react button was appointed to Senator Panfilo Lacson, the “like’ react button to Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, and the “care” react button to Senator Manny Pacquiao.
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Based on a report, a netizen claimed “dishonesty” when he uploaded on TikTok a video of himself checking out the number of reactions for each of the presidential candidates.
In the said video, the total number of votes cast for Robredo was at 161,000 while Marcos only had 87,000. However, the said video also showed that the actual “wow” reactions far outnumbered the “heart” reactions upon counter-checking the pages.
Several vloggers, including Maui Becker and Kasangga Jay, then quickly accused Rappler of “bias”, thus, triggering a swift condemnation of the Rappler poll survey from among Marcos supporters.
According to the Marcos camp, Rappler deleted its own presidential survey on Facebook.
“Rappler also apologized to angry netizens and explained that the survey had to be taken down since it was not aligned with their objectives,” a press statement distributed by Bongbong Marcos’ office said.
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