On @srsasot’s twisted arguments and the importance of Wikipedia in public relations

After the last round, I thought Sass Rogando Sasot would have enough maturity and humility to see the flaws in her reasoning, but she’s dishing out more twisted arguments about this, which I think need to be addressed.

(Read the following to know what this is about: Duterte’s own staff seem to be undermining his administration and Response to Sass Rogando Sasot: Duterte has supporters who are not blind beholden emos. To read Sasot’s comments, go to her FB page For the Motherland – Sass Rogando Sasot)

Just to recap, why did I say that Sasot lacks common sense? Because she reacted to a comment about monitoring Wikipedia by saying it costs a lot of money to do international PR. Wikipedia is free. So what money is she talking about?

(Sass, to say you are book-smart but lack common sense is not ad hominem. It’s a fact. Acknowledge that this is one of your weaknesses, so you can correct it.)

Sasot’s ego was apparently hurt when her statement was rebutted, so she did what she usually does—she ran to Google to dig out some random news article, academic paper, or factoid to justify her position.

This is a typical reaction of people who sit in front of computers all day trawling the internet, instead of learning the facts of life out there in the real world by doing real, practical things.

Sass, that Microsoft incident you dug out from the web is a case of poor execution on Wikipedia. It doesn’t mean monitoring Wikipedia isn’t important.

People who know how to do reputation management properly understand the dynamics of Wikipedia and know how to do it at arm’s length and in a balanced way so no guidelines are violated. Recall what I said in my first comment regarding Duterte’s Wikipedia page: “The page contains none of Duterte’s accomplishments to balance out the negative stuff.”

My point was to add in Duterte’s accomplishments, because the current page as it stood was mostly made up of the negative storylines of the yellows (i.e. Duterte is a fentanyl addict, Davao is a rape/crime capital, Duterte is a mass murderer, Leila de Lima is a hero being persecuted by Duterte). Obviously the yellows have a team working on that page.

Many big companies and public figures (including Noynoy Aquino when he was President) keep a close eye on their Wikipedia pages and have a hand in updating them, within the rules and guidelines of the site. You can’t totally eliminate negative info, of course, but you can balance it out.

Why is Wikipedia important? Although it’s understood that Wikipedia is editable and may contain wrong info at times, communications professionals know it is still very important because, for many people around the world, it is still the first destination they go to when they’re trying to find out about something. Wikipedia is almost always one of the top search results when you search anything on a search engine. Many people actually don’t go any further than Wikipedia, because they’re too lazy or don’t have time. That’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, which must be accepted.

If Andanar doesn’t know this, and if he doesn’t even know how Duterte’s Wikipedia page can be managed at arm’s length within the guidelines of Wikipedia, we should REALLY be worried about his capability to do his job, because this is so basic. It’s like Step One in the rule book when your job involves handling comms for a product or a person.

I really don’t understand how Andanar can have time to make pointless little “art films” about drugs with Brillante Mendoza, but fail to see what’s happening to Duterte’s Wikipedia page.

Andanar has an excuse for everything. He can’t manage Duterte’s international rep because there’s no budget. He can’t do anything about Duterte’s Wikipedia page because, per Sasot, he’s not supposed to (dead wrong, as explained above). He can’t improve PTV 4 because he needs to sell IBC 13 first. (Meanwhile, Mocha Uson has virtually built a government news channel with just one free Facebook page.)

Sass, don’t make this about you. You were not part of the original discussion in the first place. Let Andanar speak for himself. The points that were raised in this discussion are very valid, and while we may not agree on how these issues can be resolved, I think we agree that SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ASAP. We don’t want to hear any more excuses from Andanar, we want solutions.

As a final point, I would like to make an appeal to people who are close to Duterte who might get to read this: Please talk to the old man and make him understand that defending him = defending the Philippines. OFWs and businessmen are facing a lot of pressure right now because no effective action is being taken to counter the black propaganda that the Liberal Party is spreading abroad. There are ways to communicate with international audiences directly using social media which do not cost a lot of money, as explained previously. This should be explored.

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