MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – The Presidential Legislative Liaison Office (PLLO) singled out Rappler for its report on Commission on Audit (COA) findings that it overpaid its consultants, calling the article “fake news.”

“We at the PLLO find it unfortunate that a recent Rappler news article published online that reported on the hiring by the PLLO of alleged overpaid consultants are (sic) sadly misleading and appears to be pregnant with malice, failing to take into account PLLO’s side of the story,” it said in a statement on Wednesday, April 24.

“We lament that Rappler ’s story is tantamount to spreading FAKE NEWS,” it added.

However, Rappler was not the only news outlet to have written about the COA report. Other sites, like the Inquirer, GMA News Online, Manila Standard, and Malaya Business Insight also wrote about the findings.

Below is the list of stories on the same COA report written by other news outlets:

• Inquirer: COA hits uneconomical hirings in 2 agencies under Office of the President
• GMA News Online – PLLO spent millions on overpaid consultants in 2017 —COA
• Malaya – PLLO questioned on overpaid consultants
• Manila Standard – ‘PLLO spent too much on consultants’

Others copied from Rappler?

PLLO Undersecretary Gerard Salapantan told Rappler on Tuesday that Rappler was singled out because PLLO staff thought Rappler was the first to publish a story on the COA report. 

“Because you were the first to report it, as far as we know,” he said in a phone call.

Salapitan said the PLLO thought that other news reports on the COA audit that were published after the Rappler story were just “copied” from the news site.

“We thought the others just copied from your report,” Salapitan said.

Rappler was not the first to publish the story. GMA News Online ran the report at 3:45 pm on Sunday, April 22, while Rappler’s story was released over an hour later.

The sequence of publishing stories also does not have any bearing on the truthfulness or accuracy of a report.

As with all its other official documents, COA posted a copy of the PLLO audit report  for year 2017 in its official website, for public scrutiny. 

Followed COA recommendations

PLLO also asked why Rappler did not seek its side on the COA report. However, Rappler’s report cited the PLLO explanation that the state auditing agency said still failed to convince it. Also, earlier on Tuesday, Rappler texted PLLO Secretary Adelino Sitoy for his response, but as of writing, Sitoy is yet to reply.

Other news sites that wrote about the report also did not include any response from the PLLO before publishing their article about the COA report.

The PLLO in its statement on Tuesday gave assurances that it had followed the COA’s recommendations on its hiring of consultants.

“It bears emphasis that PLLO has complied with all of COA’s recommendations in the subject AOM and had already effected the proper and needed adjustments in its consultancy services,” reads the statement.

The agency said it has laid out “clear and defined terms of engagement and delierables” of its consultants and is reviewing its rates for their services.

The PLLO also justified its hiring of additional consultants, saying there was an “increased number of coordinative activities.” 

“Given this backdrop, the PLLO was constrained to hire additional manpower with qualifications commensurate to their respective tasks to supplement the human resource requirement of the PLLO on endeavours beyond the optimum in-house capacity of its existing staff,” said the Malacañang agency.

COA had earlier questioned PLLO’s hiring of 10 consultants in 2017, allegedly despite not having any expertise or special work. The consultants earned P30,000 to P60,000 monthly, leading the government to shell out P4.1 million for them.

The auditing agency said 9 of the 10 had no curriculum vitae but were still hired. It also said not one submitted any report as proof of their output or accomplishment for the year. – Rappler.com