A propagandist, not a journalist
From the ardent defenders of the fourth estate, there was only radio silence.
No urgent alerts or angry dispatches came from the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and the Committee to Protect Journalists, following the arrest of Franco Mabanta and his associates at a posh country club in Pasig City on Tuesday.
The reason couldn’t be more obvious: Mabanta’s Peanut Gallery Media Network (PGMN) has no business calling itself a news organization, and Mabanta is no journalist.
While the social media propagandist-cum-political operator deserves due process as he faces the P300 million robbery-extortion charge filed by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) at the behest of former Speaker Martin Romualdez, Mabanta’s case must not be conflated with the afflictions of the news media.
No, this is not an issue of press freedom but of disinformation.
More accurately, it is evidence of how peddlers of fake news and disinformation are now masquerading as media organizations to advance partisan interests and, if the NBI’s allegations hold water, to line their own pockets.
‘No suitcases of cash’
The details provided by NBI Director Melvin Matibag and his subordinates were jarring. Mabanta allegedly pressured Romualdez with a 90-minute video purportedly linking him to corruption, demanding the payout in four tranches of P75 million.
The entrapment operation, involving three suitcases of marked money, paints a picture of a digitized, industrial-scale version of the age-old “attack and collect, defend and collect” (AC-DC) scheme that continues to proliferate in media circles.
That lends a biting irony to PGMN’s own mantra: “We built PGMN with no suitcases of cash, no China funding, no oligarchs, and no dynasties behind us, just a small team that believes Filipinos deserve honest, fearless storytelling.”
Needless to say, this arrest, like that of broadcaster-turned-political influencer Jay Sonza days before it, is not so much about “honest, fearless storytelling” as it is about the war of political narratives raging online.
It couldn’t have come at a more dangerous period for the press.
As the 2025 Reuters Digital News Report notes, trust in the news media has been sliding amid “intensified political disinformation” fueled by the widening rift between President Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte.
Duterte, Marcos links
Mabanta’s trajectory is a symptom of this trend. A self-proclaimed strategist who once called the President “Tito Bonget” and served as his chief social media director, he pivoted toward the Duterte camp just as UniTeam fractured. Now, even the apologists on either side of that deceased alliance are unsure whether to disown him or defend him.
It’s imperative that the public be more discerning, as the Philippines enters a volatile period in the lead-up to the 2028 elections. The lines between commentary and extortion, and between influencers and reporters, are being deliberately blurred, and personality-led content creators are hard at work trying to displace legitimate media.
News organizations are far from faultless, and some are entrenched in the ethical transgressions that give the press a bad name; however, no self-respecting media outfit would take hostage its own blood-and-sweat reporting for a king’s ransom. PGMN, despite its name, has left no footprint in the media spaces where reporters congregate to report on wrongdoing in the government or elsewhere. Its content is not news, and its commentary has an agenda.
The allegations against Mabanta are grave, and if true, reveal the growing audacity of disinformation purveyors to commit the same sins committed by mainstream media, and at a far more predatory scale.
Larger, darker allegory
The damage inflicted by these groups on the nation could be lasting, leaving Filipinos so exhausted by politics that they avoid the news altogether, choosing the path of the apathetic and the ill-informed.
The government deserves credit for its relentless campaign to unmask disinformation networks. But it must tread carefully, lest it trample on free speech and the right of citizens to criticize those in power. That line is not always easy to draw, but it must be drawn nonetheless with transparency and accountability.
While the charges facing Mabanta will rise or fall on evidence, his case serves as a larger, darker allegory for a polarized media landscape, where the “peanut gallery,” or the rowdiest, most clueless section of the audience, has grown so bold that it now attempts to storm the stage. These influencers try to sway public opinion by the volume of their noise and the depth of their pockets.
But true press freedom is the right to speak truth to power. It does not entitle journalists, or those pretending to be journalists, to chase clout and accumulate riches by repackaging lies as fact. More than ever, we need the free, independent and responsible press to light the shadows that keep our people in the dark.
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