Team DailyPedia
MANILA, Philippines. GMA News reporter Raffy Tima made a Facebook post on July 1 that has sparked a controversy after he reportedly blamed President Rodrigo Duterte’s convoy for causing heavy traffic on EDSA.
In his viral post, Tima wrote: “EDSA Northbound at 9:35AM. Change has come? Not really. Traffic got held up for the presidential convoy from Ortigas en route to Camp Crame.”
Duterte’s camp was apparently on their way to attend the Philippine National Police (PNP) turnover ceremony at Camp Crame at the time the photo was captured.
Several Duterte supporters criticized Tima for his controversial post and accused him of taking things personally against the tough-talking mayor. Last month, Tima’s post about Duterte’s catcalling of his wife Mariz Umali during a press conference was widely discussed on social media.
Meanwhile, a certain Harold Roldie M. Gomez came to Tima’s defense saying the journalist simply reported the situation.
“What raffy tima is trying to say here is this, post photos of a clear light traffic edsa, people would then just react that wow! No heavy traffic at all, that’s change, but before most of us gets misinformed and bashed him with posting incorrect information, he captioned it that way saying that change is yet to come, and the light free flowing traffic is due to traffic was hold to give way to the presidential convoy. He didn’t said that he’s disappointed with the presidential protocol or agitated that change is yet to come, he just reported what is needed to report, it’s not even an opinion or column piece. We should not put words into his mouth. That’s how you caption photos, try to read photo captions of newspapers and digital formats. God!” Gomez commented.
