On May 10, five days after the arrest of its founder, the Peanut Gallery Media Network published what it called the episode it had spent five months preparing. Titled “The Scandal That Should Finally END Martin Romualdez,” the video was anchored by CJ Hirro and presented as the exposé that Romualdez allegedly tried to suppress. It has since accumulated over 322,000 views, which should generate YT income for PGMN in the ballpark of P15,000, still a long shot to a P350M valuation. But it is worth examining just because the content tells its own story about what PGMN is and is not.
The title itself — “The Scandal That Should Finally END Martin Romualdez” — is already a verdict rendered before any bombshell is dropped. Accountability journalism does not declare outcomes in its headlines. It reports evidence and allows conclusions to follow. That content is advocacy. And there is nothing wrong with advocacy provided it is honestly labeled as such.
Then there is the matter of CJ Hirro herself, its host. The video’s description refers to her in the third person – “the name of the one journalist who has chosen not to cower to his intimidation.” That is self-hagiography. No credible news organization practices or allows it. When the reporter becomes the hero of the story, the investigation becomes subordinated to the reporter’s persona. Hirro may be arguably courageous, but that is not the point. A journalist’s credibility rests on the subordination of the journalist’s ego to the integrity of their reporting.
The script is prosecutorial throughout. When a reporter announces that she is coming for a subject, she has already told you that the investigation is not a search for truth but a prosecution in search of conviction.
The indiscriminate use of clips from legitimate broadcast news organizations also raises copyright concerns. It tried to manufacture an appearance of corroboration but failed miserably.
Set all of this aside. By PGMN’s own account, the video was already complete and ready for release weeks before the arrest of Franco Mabanta on May 5. PGMN chose not to release it. The NBI’s account is that its release was contingent on payment. If that account is accurate, then what PGMN produced was not journalism, but socmed content held back as leverage.
None of this requires a finding that the underlying allegations about Romualdez’s conduct as House Speaker are false. Congressional budget conduct is a legitimate subject of public inquiry. The Commission on Audit has examined it. The Ombudsman has examined it. There is a documented public record available to any journalist willing to work through primary documents, named sources, and verifiable data. That work, done rigorously and published without conditions in the public interest, would be journalism.
What PGMN produced was not something journalists would call “earth-shaking”.
UP journalism professor Danilo Arao described Mabanta as a political operative rather than a journalist. The press freedom claim PGMN has advanced since the arrest depends on the public accepting that PGMN was functioning as a press organization. Press freedom is not a general license for content production. It is a specific protection for the institutional practice of journalism in the public interest.
The criminal case against Mabanta will be decided on evidence and in court. But the question of whether PGMN is legitimate press does not require a verdict. The video and the circumstances surrounding it have already answered that question on their own.
