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In an April 23, 2020 story, Philippine National Agency (PNA) cited a survey report by Gallup International Association (GIA) stating that 80% of the Filipinos are satisfied with the Philippine government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The same article also stated that 88% of the Filipino respondents in the survey said that they are afraid that someone in their family may actually catch the virus.

Moreover, an alarming percentage of 86% of the respondents answered that they are “willing to sacrifice their human rights if it helps to prevent the spread of the virus.”

PNA is a state media organization under the Philippine Communications Operations Office, the lead communications arm of the Office of the President of the Philippines.

The media organization’s story accurately mentioned the data presented during the third wave of GIA’s global coronavirus attitude tracker survey fieldwork.

A lot of Filipino netizens have questioned the credibility of the survey provided that it only had 867 respondents. For us to know more about their methodology, I included the necessary information provided by GIA in their survey report below.



Source: Gallup International Center for Public and Political Studies (Bulgaria)

The 867 Filipino respondents came from unspecified urban areas in the Philippines. Both online and telephone data collection (CATI) surveying methods were used to gather the data.

What the PNA did not mention in their story that can be found in the survey that they cited was that 34% of the respondents said they lost their jobs. Forty-six percent of which also answered that they “lost [a] serious part of [their] income.”

If you are interested in knowing about the contents of the full report, you may see them in Gallup Bulgaria and Gallup Pakistan. I will let the experts on quantitative research methods scrutinize the data results.

More pressing information about Gallup Bulgaria has been disturbing the European Union.

Bulgarians question GIA

GIA mentions in a disclaimer on its website that it is not “not related to Gallup Inc., headquartered in Washington D.C., which is no longer a member of Gallup International Association.”

Gallup, Inc., an 85-year-old analytics company, is one of the leading polling agencies in the United States. Its public opinion polls are often cited by the world’s leading news organizations such as CNN, USA Today, and NPR, among others.

The American company, commonly known as Gallup, is also recognized by the European Commission – the executive branch of the European Union (EU).

Indeed, Gallup is not related to GIA. The latter is a company that has a legal address in Switzerland.

Interesting information that I found was from a 2017 article published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) stating that Gallup sued GIA for “using its name without authorization.” The same article also referred to the latter as a Bulgarian polling company.

The WSJ piece declared that GIA accurately predicted the election win of the presidential candidacy of pro-Russia candidate Rumen Radev as well. Furthermore, it revealed that the company was behind the public opinion poll allegedly reporting that Bulgarian citizens would choose Russia, rather than the North Atlantic Treating Organization (NATO), as their defender if the country was attacked.

The former Bulgarian ambassador to Russia Ilian Vassilev was quoted in the story saying, “this wrapped-in-secrecy poll had no details on methodology nor funding sources. Russian media strategists and their Bulgarian proxies used the Western name [Gallup] to fool people about its credibility and spread their message.”

Likewise, Bulgarian tech entrepreneur and data analyst Vassil Velichkov remarked on GIA, telling that, “it’s the old KGB tricks adapted for the social-media age.”

Fake Gallup?

The European External Action Service, EU’s diplomatic and defense arm, established the EUvsDisinfo project to “forecast, address, and respond to the Russian Federation’s ongoing disinformation campaigns affecting the European Union.”

The project alerted the public about the pro-Russia data that the company had been reporting even before the WSJ story was published. Russia Today (RT), a Russian state media organization, cited the data coming from GIA in 2017 as if it came from the American Gallup company. This may have potentially misinformed RT’s readers.

The project expressed imparted that, “when a polling result can serve to underscore the pro-Kremlin narrative that some nations in Russia’s ‘near abroad’ might actually feel comfortable about Russian protection, why not add some credibility to it?”

In an investigation by EUvsDisinfo, the project sharply expressed that, “a part of RT’s audience even thinks that there is nothing wrong with such bias and disinformation since these outlets are at least ‘honest about lying.’”

Are Philippine state media organizations being honest about their lies, too?

Probably an expression of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “independent foreign policy” is his pivot to Russia by desiring stronger military ties with the country.

As early as three months into his presidency, Duterte already expressed his openness in establishing stronger alliances with Russia and China.

With the discourses revolving around GIA allegedly being a tool of the Russian Federation in their contemporary disinformation campaigns, was the data cited by the PNA even credible?

Are disinformation campaigns also extended in the Philippines through state media? What has the Duterte regime have to do with this?

If our taxes are really used to misinform the Filipino masses, the Commander-in-Chief must be held accountable.

AUTHOR: Jecon Dreisbach is a researcher, educator, and journalist. The author would like to personally emphasize that his views are his own and do not reflect those of his employer or any of his affiliations.