Don’t be blinded by blind items. Almost 20 years ago, there was a story that started as a blind item about an actress who didn’t want to share an elevator with another person. That other person turned out to be the owner of the building. The actress was therefore unceremoniously thrown out of the building – so the story went.
It didn’t take long before gossipers began putting names to the characters in this blind item. The actress was said to be Gretchen Barretto, while the building owner was Vivian Yuchengco of the Yuchengco Group of Companies.
For two decades, the public perception of Gretchen Barretto was colored. She was unfairly labeled as some Queen of Sheba who acts as if she is superior to the rest of humanity. In a way, she does. At S&R, she buys her groceries with five bodyguards who follow her as she goes from aisle to aisle. Without uttering a word, she merely points to a particular merchandise and motions with her fingers how many items she needs. That is a true story — witnessed by regular S&R clients.
But that elevator story apparently was just fabrication. Ms. Yuchengco herself came forward recently to say that the elevator incident is not true. ’Tis truly the season to be jolly for Gretchen Barretto. After Vivian Yuchengco cleared her name in that fake elevator story, she was also acquitted in the “missing sabungeros” case.
That Gretchen Barretto urban legend was another one of those blind items that saw print without the (irresponsible) writer doing a thorough fact-check. Blind items have been around since Walter Winchell started his Broadway gossip column in the 1920s. Local showbiz writers picked up this practice, except that many of them do not bother to verify the truth.
Here’s a classic case: After another hero’s welcome for Manny Pacquiao (this must have been in 2013 after his fight with Brandon Rios), a blind item appeared in a broadsheet about how a “singing bird made Pac-Man wait.”
In a snap, I was able to piece everything together. This is what happened: The day Manny Pacquiao arrived after one of his boxing triumphs, GMA did extensive coverage from the airport all the way to the Mall of Asia, where a grand reception was held in his honor.
In one segment, Regine Velasquez and I were assigned to interview Pacquiao. Regine actually arrived ahead of me. When I found out that she was already at the venue, I decided to go to her holding area to say hello. She was already in full makeup, with her hair done, and I distinctly remember that she had already slipped into a flaming red dress that made her skin look even fairer.
We gave the script a once-over and decided to just have fun with the interview. At that point, we were both ready to go. But where was Manny Pacquiao? Oh, he got ambushed by sports reporters who pleaded with the network to prioritize them because they had to file their stories before their respective papers were put to bed.
The showbiz journalists were not aware of the situation (Pacquiao was in another area with the sports writers), and some of them must have assumed that it was Regine who was causing the delay. And so that was how Regine became the subject of a blind item. Poor woman.
But I had been a topic of blind items more times than I could care to count. The one that stung was when I became the subject of a blind item in a now-cancelled late-night showbiz talk show on TV5. It was hosted by Cristy Fermin, Mr. Fu, and IC Mendoza.
The blind item was about a “TV host of a showbiz-oriented program who berated a security guard for no reason at all.” The clue? “May billboard sa EDSA na halos hubad na. (He has a billboard on EDSA with hardly anything on.)” Guilty — but only in fact that I was almost naked in that billboard, which was part of a campaign of a skin clinic.
The story there was that I got trapped inside Robinson’s Galleria after working out at Gold’s Gym, which used to be open until midnight. For some reason, mall security must have adjusted their clock and closed the access to the car park from the gym at 11:30 p.m. How was I going to get to my car?!
And so there was a huge argument between me and the security guard, who offered no solution to my predicament. My only way out was to walk down the car ramp, which, admittedly, was dangerous. He prevented me from doing that, but I did it anyway just to be able to go home.
Another victim of a cruel blind item was a “male model with a French surname … who had a brother who just got married to an award-winning actress.” According to the blind item, the male model went berserk in a telecommunications office — again, “for no reason at all.”
Out of curiosity, I decided to ask around regarding the incident. The manager gave me the background of that blind item. First of all, it was not Luke Jickain who was the primary character in the story, but his mother.
The phone service in the Jickain home had been down for days, and she had been losing a lot of business in the process. Understandably, she was upset. But no — the manager clarified — she did not get into beast mode. Neither did her son, Luke, who was just there to support his mother.
But, really — who would throw a tantrum in public without provocation? Service is truly bad in this country. No wonder customers go on a rampage over bad service. These irate clients often get pictured as the villains by the public when, in truth, it is the fault of the companies.
With the advancement in technology, everyone has become a journalist. But please, know the whole story first before posting any incident of meltdown online, because reputations get ruined that way. This is why we shouldn’t always take blind items seriously — or be quick to judge, because we do not know the background.
To all journalists out there — mainstream or vloggers — forget the saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s not 100 percent true. In some cases, a small flame simply gets ignited, but eventually goes pfft.