The Vhong Navarro controversy was so "controversial" it lured millions of Filipinos to read every "Deniece-Cedric-Vhong" news and bits they can hold to, overshadowing what might be one of the most historical report of the year -- the signing of the Mindanao peace pact.
According to a news article on Inquirer:
After four days, the Inquirer’s Jan. 25 banner story about the historic signing of the final annex of a proposed peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has been retweeted 65 times, shared on Facebook 1,071 times and recommended on the same social media platform 3,300 times.
The Jan. 29 news report, however, quoting the National Bureau of Investigation as asserting that TV personality Vhong Navarro couldn’t have raped Deniece Cornejo based on CCTV footage, has by afternoon of that Friday already amassed some 1575 retweets, 36,500 shares and 11,000 recommendations on Facebook.
The same lopsided story is all over media, whether social or traditional. The bulk of TV news has been devoted to Navarro and Cornejo, while the momentous development of a possible peace agreement in Mindanao after over three decades of fighting has become a second-string story.
That skewed sense of what is truly important in this country could only get worse, with Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas now the latest politician to rush to Navarro’s defense after Senators Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada.