How a BuzzFeed reporter deceived me

HFirst of 2 parts

ER name is Davey Alba, “senior reporter on the technology desk with BuzzFeed News,” as she introduced herself to me in an

She sounded congenial. But all classic treachery starts with a sweet offer, like the proverbial pedophile seducing his prey with sweets.

She was clear about the feature story she wanted me to be a part of: “I’m reporting a feature story for BuzzFeed, and the idea is that social media has completely democratized our ability to get a message across to the public — you don’t need to be with a traditional publisher or with the mainstream media anymore to get your voice heard out there.”

“Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have enabled people to build an audience of devoted followers, when in just the recent past this would not have been possible. I’ve followed your work in amplifying your political messages, and I’d love to talk to you about what goes into your process.”

To gain my trust, she enticed me with something we have in common. She grew up in our country.

Her treacherous seduction continued: “So I think that some of the foreign media is missing some crucial context in telling this story, but since I have a foot in both worlds — I still consider the Philippines my original home, and am employed in US-based media…”

She ended it with the perfect sweetener: “I feel like I could do a much better job than some others you might have spoken to in the past.”

I fell into her trap.

conversation via Skype. During that time, she once again explained to me that she was writing about the democratization of social media in the Philippines.

She asked me to tell my story — how I rose to prominence as a blogger. I told her my commentaries about the South China Sea issue led to my rise. She even asked me how long I had been using social media. She wanted to know what I write about, the process that goes into my writing, and, of course, my relationship with the top political bloggers in the Philippines — Mocha Uson and Thinking Pinoy (TP). We talked about the democratization of social media in the Philippines.

article was released. It wasn’t about the democratization of social media but about, her claim: “How Duterte Used Facebook to Fuel the Philippine Drug War.” And she characterized Uson, TP, and myself as “an ecosystem not dissimilar from the pro-Trump internet world.”

Save for more details, there was nothing new in what Alba wrote. It’s a rehash of the same stories meant to perpetuate the black propaganda of the Liberal Party of the Philippines against the bloggers supporting Duterte. Rappler’s journalists often write those stories.

Alba touched on # LeniLeaks and characterized it as “misleading information.” She said Uson, TP and I had claimed that “‘leaked’ emails…proved the existence of an international anti-Duterte propaganda machine run by the Vice President of the Philippines.”

If memory serves me right, we touched upon this in our interview. I explained to her that #Lenileaks was about the email Imelda Nicolas, former head of the Commission on Filipino Overseas, sent to the Yahoogroups of the Global Diaspora Council.

The email was the social media

- dent (OVP) sent to her by Pete Silva, a

media campaign team. An archived copy of that email can be found here: . Despite having the habit of hyperlinking her sources, she never referenced that.

During the height of the issue

posts explaining what #LeniLeaks was. Alba linked to one of them. And in that post, I was very clear about what the issue was: “The social media strategy of the OVP directly instructs its so-called ‘communities’ who to attack and what against Leni Robredo. The OVP is directly instructing its supporters to attack PRIVATE CITIZENS critical of Leni Robredo.”

Did Alba read it? If yes, then where exactly in that post did I claim that there was an “international antiDuterte propaganda machine run by the vice president of the Philippines”?

Then Alba zeroed in on my story about the Sinaloa drug cartel. She said: “When pictures of a drug war victim wrapped in brown packaging tape began circulating on Facebook, Sasot…suggested that Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel must be responsible — even though the corpse was accompanied by a handwritten note naming Duterte

To support her claim that I did that, she linked to my column in “Tale of 2 drug wars” (

that column where I suggested that the Sinaloa drug cartel “must be responsible.” That column was about the different treatment the drug war in Mexico and the Philippines received from the US government.

Quite deceptively, she didn’t mention that the body she was talking about appeared when President Benigno Aquino 3rd was still president. Yet, as she insinuated, it must be Duterte who did