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A meme is not news.
It is often a humorous image, a video, a piece of text or anything that can be posted on the web, especially on social media, that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.
What is not news could not be fake news, however. News is a printed or broadcast report of information about important events in the world, the country, or a local area.
It contains important — sometimes unimportant — facts and often carries the name, place and time of the event and its circumstances. The five Ws and one H. It’s that basic.
It was an error for House Speaker and Philippine Southeast Asian Games Committee (Phisgoc) chairman Alan Peter Cayetano to quickly dismiss what he called were fake news about his handling of the biennial meet that the country is presently hosting in Clark, Subic and several areas in Metro Manila.
Cayetano centered on the widely spread image of a Philippine flag that was used as a tablecloth for a previous event unrelated to the SEA Games as an example. That meme was reportedly spread by trolls, which at these times of social media wars, could mean coming from all sides trying to muddle up issues in favor of their payroll masters.
These are usually people maintaining troll farms working for politicians. There are no more off-seasons in politics. Every day has become a campaign day for each and every one of them. They have created an industry that doesn’t pay taxes.
His team also centered on the claim by one Filipino coach who complained about the food served as breakfast for her athletes. It was merely kikiam and egg served with rice, she said.
She later retracted, but not after she got some nice words from several officials who told her to move on.
The Phisgoc presented a well-known chef to explain that it was not kikiam afterall. It was sausage that was served with the egg and rice. Nice.
Only that it looked like kikiam after the hotel staff reportedly tried to tweak the sausage with spices. That’s what he said. Nice.
We all know what kikiam looks and tastes like, however. But okay, let us move on.
Cayetano, however, did not address the more serious issues that hounded his welcome of the thousands of athletes and officials from the 10 other Southeast Asian nations.
A prince from one of the guest countries was served with food with peanuts despite informing Phisgoc and the hotel management about his allergies.
Muslim athletes and officials were fed pork. That is a no-no, a matter of life and death for them, whose religion and beliefs should be respected as we respect ours.
Guest athletes and officials were given a shabby welcome.
Some of them were made to sleep on the floor after their red-eye flights. Phisgoc did not seem ready for all these arrivals and only adjusted as the situations got worse.
Some teams opted to transfer to other hotels because Phisgoc had failed to provide them any when needed.
There were more issues that Cayetano’s team hoped would have been forgotten after the elaborate opening ceremonies that cost our pockets all of P642 million.
The total budget for our last hosting of the SEA Games was merely P500 million. Government shelled out just P350 million, San Miguel Corp. doled out P100 million and other private companies chipped in the remaining P50 million.
The Philippine team emerged as the overall champion that year. With P6 billion in total budget this year, we could hope for another overall championship from our wards this time.
The SEA Games, however, were not without controversies from the start.
Cayetano is leading Phisgoc that was originally created for the Games hosting. The chiefs of the Philippine Olympic Committee and the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) are acting as co-vice chairmen.
But there is another entity called Phisgoc Foundation. Cayetano is no longer part of Phisgoc Foundation. But his staff and some of his trusted men and women are part of the foundation that signed deals with private sponsors.
It is not confusing which runs the SEA Games show between them.
The latest news, however, is that President Rodrigo Duterte is unhappy with how the Games’ hosting has turned out.
He has reportedly ordered PSC chairman William “Butch” Ramirez to “take over the management of the Games” from Phisgoc.
The President does not want any discomfiture for the country, the Daily Tribune source said.
This is not fake news.
“There were more issues that Cayetano’s team hoped would have been forgotten after the elaborate opening ceremonies that cost our pockets all of P642 million.
“Cayetano, however, did not address the more serious issues that hounded his welcome of the thousands of athletes and officials from the 10 other southeast Asian nations.