MANILA, Philippines (The Adobo Chronicles, Manila Bureau) – We’ve all been waiting for Vera Files to fact-check news reports that the 2020 Appropriations Acts recently signed by President Donald Trump included a provision that would ban the entry into the U.S. of Philippine officials and others responsible for the alleged wrongful detention of Senator Leila De Lima. We’re all still waiting.
Now we know why: the Facebook fact-checker cannot find the facts, as she admitted in a tweet sent to Senators Dick Durbin and Patrick Leahy, proponents of the supposed ban. Will Vera Files soon tag the news reports as fake?
We can’t really expect the other fact-checker, Rappler, to be checking these reports because of a conflict of interet. The online news source earlier reported that the U.S. Senators had also urged the Philippine government to drop all criminal charges against its CEO, Maria Ressa. We’ll let Vera Files fact-check that too.