Clout is not a valid defense. Or news

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

“I did it because everyone else did it.”

Most of us stopped using that line somewhere around fourth grade. It’s playground logic. The kind of thing you say when you’re caught copying someone’s homework and you genuinely can’t think of a better defense.

But here we are. Jack Argota, content creator, told the NBI he shared a fake medical certificate of the President because he saw other personalities posting it. That’s it. That’s the whole logic. He did not check it. He did not look for a source. He just saw the crowd running and ran with them.

One sentence. But it says a lot.

It tells you almost everything you need to know about the gap between content creators and journalists. Journalism – real journalism – is built around slowing down long enough to verify. It’s a discipline. Sometimes a painful one. You get beaten into it by editors who will not let a single unverified claim slide past them. Content creation, at least as it often plays out, is built around keeping up. If everyone’s posting it, maybe you should too. Speed and virality over accuracy. Being seen over being right.

And if you think that is bad on its own, wait until you layer in the transactions.

Take the recent controversy involving Panaderia de Molo, one of Iloilo’s heritage bakery brands. One faction of the family called a “press conference” to air their side of what appears to be a sprawling, messy clan dispute over control of the business. Fine. People call pressers all the time.

Here’s the thing, though. Not a single member of the mainstream or traditional Iloilo press was in that room.

What filled the space instead were content creators and lifestyle pages. And to anyone scrolling Facebook that day, it probably looked like news. Same photos, same talking points, same confident tone. But it was not news. It was a content creation session dressed up as one.

The difference matters more than people realize.

A journalist walking into that room would have eventually gotten around to the part that actually changes the story: intellectual property. Strip away the emotions, the personal history, the family drama – and the core question becomes something far more blunt and legal. Who actually has the right to use the name “Panaderia de Molo”?

That’s not gossip of a brand that is also a commercial identity and potentially a protected asset. And it turns out, one faction of the clan apparently managed to register that name with the Intellectual Property Office. That single detail reframes the whole thing. We no longer have a family feud. It’s a dispute over ownership, legal control, and legitimacy – with real consequences for the public and for anyone doing business under a name people already trust.

But none of that nuance survives in a room built for content. What people got was a synchronized flood of posts that looked like coverage but skipped the basic work: verification, context, the uncomfortable question of what the other side had to say.

This is why influencers, structurally, are so easy to use.

If your livelihood depends on staying invited, on keeping access, on the next free dinner or exclusive preview – then skepticism becomes a business risk. Ask hard questions about the legal filings, the IPO registration, the other family members’ position, and suddenly you’re difficult. Maybe the next invite goes to someone more cooperative. Maybe the free meals stop. That’s the calculus, even if it never gets said out loud.

Most influencers are not bad people. Most of them – including probably whoever showed up to that Panaderia presser – are not acting out of malice but prodded by force of habit. A transactional mindset baked into how the whole ecosystem works: show up, post, stay friendly, keep the relationship alive. Don’t make it weird by asking too many questions.

The problem is not that they are villains. The problem is that they are structurally set up to become conduits. Spoon-fed a narrative, they pass it along – no verification, no legal analysis, often no disclosure about who set the whole thing up – and the audience gets a curated version of events that travels fast and feels like information.

For a journalist, “everyone else is covering this” should function as a warning sign. In a newsroom, provenance is everything. A document without a verified source is not a story – it’s rumor wearing formal clothes. If a reporter ever tried to justify a published story to an editor by saying “I ran it because the guy at the rival paper did,” they would not last long. Certainly not in front of a judge.

That said, it would be dishonest to pretend journalism has clean hands across the board. Some reporters take envelopes. Some moonlight as communications consultants for the politicians they cover. Some let access shape their coverage just as much as any influencer chasing a free meal. It happens. It has always happened. The difference is that these are violations of a standard that exists — breaches you can point to, codes you can cite, editors who, on a good day, will actually do something about it. The profession has guardrails. Not everyone respects them, but they are there. In the influencer world, there is often no guardrail to violate in the first place. The transactional arrangement is not the exception. For many, it’s just the job.

The influencer economy rewards something different from journalism’s stated ideals. Being early. Being visible. Joining the conversation before it moves on. You don’t necessarily get rewarded for being right – you get rewarded for being seen, and for being agreeable to whoever has the budget or the buzz.

Argota’s case and the Panaderia episode are different situations, but the underlying mechanics are the same: copy, paste, post. Whether it’s a fake medical certificate or a one-sided bakery narrative, the playbook does not change much.

A “share” button carries real weight. People don’t always act like it does, but it does. The lie – or even just the half-truth – travels faster than the correction because truth takes time, and time does not trend.

Argota’s trip to the NBI Cybercrime Division should mean something. Maybe it will. Maybe it will make a few people pause before they hit share on the next thing that’s already moving. Or maybe the simpler lesson lands harder: if you don’t do the work of verification yourself, someone will eventually do it for you. And it will not be gentle.

Journalism lives by verifiable facts. The influencer world, too often, lives by whatever is trending – or whoever picked up the tab. At some point, you have to choose which one you actually are. Because the audience you’re misleading does not get to choose for you.