MANILA, Philippines — Every month, the state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA) committed around 200 mistakes during the past administration.

Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar disclosed this when confronted during plenary debates at the Senate Monday about the recent blunders of the PNA.

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While interpellating on the proposed 2019 budget of the PCOO, Senator Joel Villanueva enumerated the errors committed by the PNA like when it mistakenly named Senator Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian as “Winston.”

READ: PNA embroils website in latest blunder, messes up headlines

“This is not to humiliate our friends from PCOO,” Villanueva said.

But the senator went on anyway and asked how the PNA determines if the information is real or fake before posting it on its website.

“According to Sec. Andanar, yes, the mistakes that you pointed out were honest mistakes and that they have already done some reforms and they had even disciplined and charged even some employees in the process,” said Sen. JV Ejercito, who was defending the PCOO’s budget on the floor.

“And likewise he said, during the past administration, there are about 200 mistakes every month committed by the PNA.”

“But the difference is that the PNA now has more followers because they have already opened up their site and there are more followers right now. (Its) social media also has improved that’s why all the mistakes are noticed,” Ejercito said.

READ: Despite blunders, PNA now has more readers—Andanar

Also during the past administration, Ejercito said the social media of the PNA had zero following.

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“We’re not trying to single out the PCOO of this administration. I’m just surprised you were saying there’s zero followers in the past admin? Zero followers?” asked Villanueva, who headed the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) during the Aquino administration.

But Ejercito reiterated Andanar’s claim that the PNA had no social media presence during the past administration.

“I’m also surprised but according to them, in the past administration, there was really zero presence in social media in PNA…” he said.

The PCOO nevertheless promised to “minimize” the lapses as they already started introducing reforms to improve the PNA. /jpv

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