On Jun. 30, the House of Representatives held another meeting to discuss the possible renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise. In case you forgot (the news cycle is bonkers now, I know), they also had a meeting last Jun. 29 where NTC commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba warned that they could send out a cease-and-desist order on the network since the Kapamilya channel was still airing on Channel 43 through the frequency of AMCARA Broadcasting Network. It was also the hearing where congressmen kept using the word usufruct, causing everyone to ask, “What the hell is usufruct?”
The Jun. 30 hearing was more of the same, although eagle-eyed (or…bat-eared?) netizens recently noticed that during his questioning of ABS-CBN executive Aldrin Cerrado, congressman Elpidio Barzaga Jr. openly acknowledged Wikipedia as his source. “Nakalagay dito sa Wikipedia,” he started off his question about Studio 23 and AMCARA networks. “Tama o mali?”
“I think mali po siya. I have to check the information if it’s on because we don’t maintain the Wikipedia of ABS-CBN. Those are probably contributed information,” the executive replied back, shrugging. (If you want to watch this play out, skip to 7:54:36 of the official ABS-CBN livestream.)
Don’t make the rookie error of relying that everything on Wikipedia is a hundred percent factual. Here’s a tip for ya, courtesy of my freshman English class: While the users of Wikipedia do try to make the information on the pages as factual as possible (unless they’re trolling!), the site itself is not a reliable source. It’s user-contributed and user-edited, and while Wiki has a dedicated community, a lot of wrong information can still fall through the cracks. What you can, however, do is check the sources linked at the end and use those instead.
Did I think I was going to have to explain what source cribbing is today? No, but here we are.
Header photo is a screenshot from a Wikipedia page on clowns. The clown photo itself is by Rick Dikeman from English Wikipedia
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