Oslob, Cebu blogger’s ‘false’ news: Capitol, Cebu City Hall failed to nail alleged violators in two 2020 cases. No law then, still none, specifically punishing fake news.
NBI official presents arrested woman vlogger from Oslob, Cebu, where she admitted she altered message for money. [From GMA News video]
Oslob, Cebu blogger’s ‘false’ news: Capitol, Cebu City Hall failed to nail alleged violators in two 2020 cases. No law then, still none, specifically punishing fake news.
PACHICO A. SEARES
First published under “Media’s Public” column in SunStar, March 24, 2025. Adapted to CJJ, March 31, 2025
Any person who by means of printing, lithography or any other means of publication shall publish or cause to be published as news any false news which may endanger the public order, or cause damage to the interest or credit of the state.”
– Art. 154, Revised Penal Code (Act No. 3815 of 1932), which punishes “Unlawful Use of Means of Publication and Unlawful Utterances”
A quick look
[1] Congress still has to pass a bill for a law on fake news, specified to meet the serious problem of disinformation in social media.
[2] The law that prosecutors can use is only Art. 154 of the Revised Penal Code, which doesn’t clearly define fake news, merely setting broad and vague conditions for its application.
[3] Cebu City and Cebu Capitol governments each lost a “fake-news” lawsuit about five years
ago, filed during the pandemic period.[4] Flood of fake-news posts underscores need for an unambiguous law, which must distinguish deliberate disinformation from innocent error in reporting.
WHAT HAPPENED. One Wendelyn Magalso, 39, a vlogger or one who creates and shares video content, based in Oslob, Cebu, was arrested by NBI agents Thursday, March 20, 2025.
A tearful Magalso admitted, in a televised press conference conducted by NBI and in media interviews, that she falsely attributed a statement to President Marcos Jr. Marcos Jr. in one of her posts in digital media.
Last Friday, March 21, a number of vloggers, along with bloggers (who primarily write and share written content) appeared before the House Tri-Committee that has been conducting public hearings on bills “to regulate social media content and combat disinformation.” Some of them reportedly admitted their excesses, including one who apologized, teary-eyed, for having called some legislators “tanga” or dumb/stupid.
EFFORTS TO PASS FAKE-NEWS BILL. Against Oslob vlogger Magalso — in the first prosecution of a suspect amid a deluge of false news in the wake of the March 11 arrest and transfer of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte — authorities are reportedly using Art. #154 of the Revised Penal Code, in relation to the Anti-Cybercrime Law.
The reason is obviously this: There’s yet no law that specifically applies to fake news in the current setting. Such bills have floundered in Congress for the past few years.
This week the House resumed public hearings through its committee of three, as part of a continuing effort to pass a bill specifically punishing fake news and prompted by the tsunami of fake news about the Duterte case.
EARLIER PROSECUTION OF DISINFORMATION CASES. Almost five years ago, two charges of disinformation filed separately by Cebu Capitol and Cebu City Hall were thrown out:
— Capitol lawsuit: Mandaue City prosecutor’s office on September 11, 2020 dismissed a complaint against Rhea Ruth Rossel, a Manila Times reporter, for violation of a Cebu Provincial Board ordinance (PD Ordinance 2020-2) punishing misinformation in the internet and the Revised Penal Code provision against false news.
— Cebu City Hall lawsuit: MTC-7 (Municipal Trial Court in Cities) Judge Yvonne Cabaron Artiaga on September 15, 2020 dismissed two cases against Bambi Beltran, a businesswoman and film artist, for cyber-libel and violation of a special law on mandatory reporting of “notifiable diseases,” both concerning “false and libelous misinformation.”
The two lawsuits failed because of, in the first, wrong choice of the law, and in the second, wrong court — and in both cases, no disinformation was established. For lack of any other, the same law, Art. 154 of the Revised Penal Code, figured prominently, not just in resolving the controversy but on various platforms of public discussion.
Capitol lawyers tried to use a PB ordinance (not yet in force at the time) and a presidential decree on rumor-mongering and spreading false information (already repealed by President Cory Aquino’s Executive Order #65 of 1986). They settled eventually on the Penal Code provision.
Cebu City Hall lawyers picked the wrong court (an MTC instead of a Regional Trial Court). While the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act punishing disinformation “may be the right law,” the MTC said, Beltran’s post “may not be deemed false.”
The MTC considered that the news material was released by Department of Health and “picked up” by Cebu dailies. Beltran used it as basis for her Facebook comment, which the court said was merely a satire. “Any court conscious of its mandate to uphold the Constitution should and must wield it as a shield against any means to silence political and social criticisms,” Judge Artiaga said.
THE LAW/S LEFT FOR PROSECUTORS TO USE. The NBI announced the law it was using as basis to arrest and prosecute Oslob vlogger Magalso. And that’s Art. #154 of the Revised Penal Code.
It’s not known if the Ordinance #2020-2 is still in full force and effect and whether it applies beyond the pandemic period or the Province ordinance has been used at all. As to the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, it may be assumed that as the pandemic, reason for the law’s being, is gone, so is the law’s validity. Anyway, the NBI is not using the PB ordinance against Magalso.
And while Congress still has to pass a fake-news bill for the president to sign into law, the NBI has to rely instead on the Revised Penal Code and the Cyber-crime Law.
FOR ARTICLE 154 TO NAIL THE VLOGGER, prosecutors in preliminary investigation and, eventually, the judge in trial court must find evidence that Magalso’s post was (1) false and (2) “may endanger the public order” or “cause damage to the interest or credit of the state.”
The state may establish that Magalso “manipulated” or changed a March 14 news post of TV 5News Network, which featured a statement from President BBM. To BBM’s quote — condemning “the killing of thousands of fellow Filipinos as solution to crime and drugs” as “not right” and affirming “the rule of law” — Magalso added the line: “Gumawa tayo ng batas na gawing ‘legal’ ang druga sa ating bansa.”
Magalzo’s case differs from the Beltran case: Beltran used a factual DOH report of the pandemic, which the news media published, and she satirized. Magalso added false materal to the TV report, changing the quote to make BBM appear and sound like he was legalizing prohibited drugs. Satire is allowed under freedom of expression. False news is not.
PUBLIC ADMISSION OF FALSEHOOD. The Oslob-based vlogger publicly admitted the falsity in her post. She added the “caption” criticizing the president, she said, so she’d “get noticed and earn money,” lamely explaining that it was “only her husband supporting us.”
Assuming the falsehood will be proved, there’s still the qualification about the untruth: It must be the kind that “may endanger the public order” or “cause damage to the interest or credit of the state.”
How would the prosecutors and the judge see the fakery? In the Manila Times reporter Rossel case, then Mandaue City Asst. Prosecutor Arsenia Naparate, with Chief Prosecutor Mary Francis Daquipit approving, applied the yardstick of “clear and present danger” and the Rossel “falsehood” “didn’t come close to the threshold, the prosecutors said.
Still, the prosecutor and judge handling the Magalso case may view her alteration of the fact differently. Plus the circumstances are different, topped by the fact that the vlogger put words into the mouth of the president.
A lift-out quote from a congressman, Pammy Zamora, hailing the arrest of the Cebu vlogger, reminding them of the risk
VLOGGER’S CASE HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR FAKE-NEWS LAW, one that will define clearly what fake news is, particularly on what will make it punishable.
Some people say Magalso’s case will provide a “sample,” a deterrent to those rampantly practicing disinformation in news platforms.
It could set a legal precedent if it would reach the Supreme Court and draw a clear guideline on what kind of fake news would be unlawful and which would be an exercise in free speech. But the high court can move just as glacially slow in deciding cases as Congress in passing crucial legislation. 