ABS-CBN behind smear campaign?

IT’S NOW very clear that the hate campaign against Willie Revillame started when Dr. Maria Lourdes “Honey” Carandang wrote to the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) saying the TV host exploited 6-year-old Jan-Jan on his show.

And who is Carandang?

A child psychologist and retired professor, she is the mother of Ricky Carandang, former anchor of ABS-CBN and now part of Malacanang’s Communications Group.

Honey Carandang, according to Revillame’s lawyer Leonard de Vera, is a paid consultant and lecturer of ABS-CBN, Revillame’s former network.
ABS-CBN has a running tiff with the popular TV host who’s now with TV5.

If you still don’t see the connection you were probably only born yesterday.


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A child psychologist I interviewed said Carandang had no basis for saying the child was “abused” by Revillame.

The child psychologist didn’t want to be named because he might be accused of unethical conduct for criticizing a fellow professional.
Carandang, he said, didn’t interview Jan-Jan personally after the supposed incident, so how could she conclude the boy was abused?


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The furor, which got worse after the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) got into the picture, divided the public into anti-Willie and pro-Willie camps.

Several big sponsors have withdrawn their commercials from Revillame’s show.

However, TV5 is backing up the controversial TV host saying he had been unfairly tagged as a child abuser.

TV5 management said the YouTube video of the boy’s performance was “much abridged and spliced.”

This columnist agrees: YouTube highlighted the boy crying the whole time.

But if you asked the people who watched that episode, they will tell you the reason Jan-Jan cried was when he saw Bonel Balingit, who nearly stands 7 feet tall, whom the boy mistook for a “kapre” (a giant in Philippine folklore).

In other public shows, boys and girls are made to mimic adults with nobody raising a whimper, so why the fuss over Jan-Jan performing a macho dance?

If Revillame’s “Willing Willie” show did wrong in having Jan-Jan dance before the camera, so did the other noontime shows in other channels that featured little girls in bathing suits.

Let’s also ban those billboards showing little girls in dressed like adults because that’s also child exploitation.

The bottom line is why single out Willie Revillame and his show when everybody’s guilty of child abuse, if indeed Jan-Jan was exploited?