No, this video does not show the arrest of the star of a Filipino TV show critical of the police -- it’s clickbait using footage from an unrelated news report

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 25, 2019 at 09:30
3 min read
By AFP Philippines

An online report which has been shared on Facebook contains footage which it claims shows the arrest of the star of a hit Filipino show that is critical of the police. The claim is false; the video is actually a news report about the arrest of two women.

The online report contains a video which it claims shows Coco Martin, the lead actor who plays a cop on the primetime TV program “Ang Probinsyano” (called “Brothers” on Netflix) being arrested by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

Screenshot of website

“Ang Probinsiyano” was criticized by the leadership of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in November 2018, according to local media reports here, for supposedly giving a “bad impression” of cops as it also portrays the police chief as a villain.

The PNP also reportedly issued a memorandum ordering police personnel to withdraw their support for their program by not providing equipment, such as police cars and firearms, to help with filming.

The misleading online report has been shared on Facebook here. Below is a screenshot of the Facebook post dated June 14:

Screenshot of Facebook post

The text in the screengrab, when translated to English, says: THE ACTOR OF THE TV PROGRAM "THE MAN FROM THE PROVINCE" COCO MARTIN WAS ONE OF THOSE ARRESTED BY PDEA

PDEA is the lead government agency which investigates offenses related to the use and sale of illegal drugs.

A reverse image search using Bing traced the photo of the man in the upper right portion of the post to this article on PEP.ph, a local entertainment site.

The article is about Martin’s program and its guests. Below is a screenshot of the report:

Screenshot of website

The actual online report contains a video, which when clicked plays only for 12 seconds. An ad prompt like the one below then appears:

Screenshot of ad prompt

AFP extracted the hyperlink of the video, which leads to this news report by local broadcast organization GMA News uploaded on April 3, 2019.

The news report is about the arrest of two women suspected of selling Methamphetamine HCL or what is more commonly known as shabu in the Philippines.

Below is a screengrab of the original news report:

Screengrab of news report

The spokesman of PDEA said Martin has not been arrested for any drug-related offense.

“Checked our reports. Negative so far,” PDEA spokesman Derrick Arnold Carreon said in a text message to AFP on June 19.

The misleading online report can also be seen here.

It has been shared 217 times on different Facebook accounts.

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