FALSE: Lucy Torres confirms her senatorial candidacy

At a glance:

• Claim: Leyte 4th District Representative Lucy Torres-Gomez has confirmed her official candidacy for the 2022 senatorial election, according to a video uploaded on February 2.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: Torres-Gomez has not made an announcement yet as of February 9. She said in a post on her official Facebook account on February 5 that she was not ruling out running for senator in the future, but she was still focusing on her job as congresswoman.
• Why we fact-checked this: The video containing this claim had over 87,000 views on YouTube as of writing.

Complete details:

YouTube channel Showbiz Fanaticz uploaded a video on February 2 that falsely said Leyte 4th District Representative Lucy Torres-Gomez had confirmed her official candidacy for senator in the 2022 national elections.

The video was titled, “BREAKING NEWS: LUCY TORRES KUMPIRMADONG KAKANDIDATO sa PAGKASENADOR sa 2022| DELIMA AT RISA LAGLAG!!” (Breaking news: Lucy Torres confirmed to run for senator in 2022. [Leila] De Lima and Risa [Hontiveros] displaced!)

The video said Torres-Gomez herself confirmed the news.

This is false. Torres-Gomez denied the viral report of Showbiz Fanaticz in a post on her official Facebook page on Friday, February 5.

“I am not closing any doors, but right now I really am just focusing on my work as Representative of the 4th District of Leyte,” Torres-Gomez said.

There are also no official reports regarding Torres-Gomez’s senatorial candidacy as of Tuesday, February 9.

The false video had over 87,000 views on YouTube. It was spotted via social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.

YouTube channel Showbiz Fanaticz has had a record of uploading videos containing false information. In January, it uploaded a video falsely claiming that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte had officially declared her candidacy for the 2022 presidential election. – Owenh Toledo/Rappler.com

This article was written by a volunteer of Rappler’s fact-checking mentorship program, a 5-week exclusive and hands-on training on detecting, investigating, and verifying online misinformation and disinformation.

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.

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