Rappler's investigation reveals a political consulting firm behind a network of news sites, blurring the line between journalism and public relations.
It's a question most of us never think to ask when a headline scrolls past our feed. We should start. On one side was journalism.
Flawed, slow, sometimes infuriating, but bound by rules: verify before publishing, disclose who you are, serve the public before any client. On the other side was public relations. A legitimate craft with its own honest purpose: to advocate, to persuade, to sell. These two professions have always eyed each other across that wall, borrowed each other’s tools, and occasionally poached each other’s people.
But everyone knew which side they were standing on. More importantly, so did you, the reader. Rappler’s latest investigation is about what happens when that wall quietly disappears, and PR doesn’t just borrow journalism’s tools, but wears its entire face.. At first glance, it looks like any digital news operation, with a website, uniform branding, a dozen regional pages, 13 million followers across at least 36 Facebook pages.
But follow the money, and the picture changes. From August 2020 to April 2026, 31 Pilipinas Today-named pages spent at least P138 million on political ads on Facebook, making it Meta’s top political ad spender in the country, outspending even the biggest-spending candidate of the 2025 elections. Trace the wider network of shared advertisers, and the figure climbs to P189 million across more than 40,000 ad campaigns. So who’s footing the bill?
Behind the newsroom facade, as Rappler has found, is a political consulting firm linked to a group previously flagged for alleged troll operations in Guam. Naturally, the analysis of posts from this “news” site also found that around 25% carried the hallmarks of PR content for public officials. This includes government projects presented with politicians front and center, soft feel-good content, and even a candidate’s ballot number slipped into a “news” post at the height of campaign season.
There’s a name for this, apparently: “pink slime journalism. ” These are operations that mimic legitimate news outlets while pushing partisan or corporate agendas, without disclosing who funds them or answering to any editorial standard. When PR successfully passes as journalism, you lose the one thing the news format was supposed to guarantee: the ability to know whether what you’re reading serves you or a client. Investigations like this take months of data work, document digging, and door-knocking.
They exist because readers like you sustain them. If you believe in the fundamental difference between news and propaganda and why it should stay that way, support the journalism that keeps drawing that line. Don Kevin Hapal is Rappler’s Head of Data and Innovation. He started at Rappler as a digital communications specialist, then went on to lead Rappler’s Balikbayan section for overseas Filipinos.
He was introduced to data journalism while writing and researching about social media, disinformation, and propaganda.
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