The digital world recently buzzed with news of Franco Mabanta’s arrest, a social media personality accused of extorting former House Speaker Martin Romualdez. This incident, however, isn’t just about a single arrest; it pulls back the curtain on a disturbing trend: the rise of “hijacked media.” It’s crucial to understand that Mabanta’s outfit, Peanut Gallery Media Network (PGMN), is not a legitimate news organization. There’s even a resolution in the House of Representatives seeking to investigate PGMN’s disinformation operations. What we’re witnessing here is a form of “pretend journalism,” a business model that fundamentally undermines the principles of real journalism. It prioritizes virality and engagement, often through unverified stories and propaganda, over accuracy and truth. PGMN’s members, for instance, grandiosely call themselves “anchors,” a title usually reserved for those who provide a coherent narrative spine connecting various reports. Yet, Mabanta’s group lacks reporters, a verification system, and their “news” is often nothing more than thinly veiled intrigue and malice.
Moreover, Mabanta’s self-proclaimed title of “social media strategist” is equally disingenuous. While disinformation can be a strategy, Mabanta’s career history reveals a consistent pattern of peddling slander, misogyny, and far-right, ultra-masculine tropes. This career path, sadly, appears to have paved his way to alleged extortion. Individuals like Mabanta thrive in a digital landscape where social media platforms, driven by engagement and profit, inadvertently enable them. This is an example of algorithmic bias, where emotionally charged content, particularly anger and hate, is favored, leading to its wider dissemination. It’s a bitter irony that after consistently demonizing legitimate media, Mabanta then used funds, allegedly acquired through “reputation laundering” for politicians and businessmen, to establish his own “media” entity, PGMN. A former theater enthusiast and manager, Mabanta deftly weaved fantasy into reality. In a perverted information ecosystem where lies spread faster than truth, accuracy became secondary.
This phenomenon, where figures like Mabanta flourish, echoes the “MAGA playbook” (Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement), which, ironically, perhaps learned some of its tactics from the Philippines – often considered a “petri dish” for disinformation. Now, Mabanta, with an audacious front, attempts to invoke “press freedom” as a defense. But let’s be clear: someone who has consistently flouted the laws of decency, transparency, and accountability, and who has leveraged his proximity to abusive power, cannot suddenly appeal to these principles when cornered. He who campaigned for the shutdown of newsrooms and attacked journalists cannot now seek sanctuary in the very Constitution designed to protect newsrooms and journalists. As a commentator noted, there’s karma and consequence. Mabanta’s move to extort Romualdez, perhaps underestimating the former House Speaker’s continued influence or his ties to circles in Malacañang, has ironically made Romualdez appear more virtuous.
Mabanta’s operation, known in media circles as “AC-DC” (Attack-Collect, Defend-Collect), is a familiar and persistent form of media corruption in the Philippines. It involves consistently attacking individuals, often via radio, and then, upon receiving payment, shifting to defending them. This ancient racket, alarmingly, refuses to die. Mabanta, it seems, may have overplayed his hand, perhaps thinking he could rival other “AC-DC” radio commentators who, in their prime, were more cautious, often employing intermediaries to collect payments. The truth is, individuals like Mabanta are dime a dozen. The old propaganda networks, first exposed during the Duterte campaign, have simply evolved into new entities, thriving in a fragmented and polarized environment. Pseudonymous Facebook pages, often pontificating with elegant prose, have proliferated, expertly deceiving unsuspecting users.
The challenge now falls to the public: to cease patronizing and sharing content from pages that hide behind false identities. A fundamental act of citizenship is to actively seek out and share verified content from legitimate newsrooms. Rappler’s meticulous investigative work into Martin Romualdez’s properties serves as an excellent example of what real investigative journalism looks like – a painstaking commitment to truth and accuracy. Ultimately, we are what we consume, what we read. It’s time to detoxify our minds and our information ecosystem from the poison of misinformation and disingenuous “media.” The responsibility lies with each individual to critically evaluate information and support genuine journalism, ensuring that truth, not fabricated narratives, prevails.