Over the past few weeks, Universal Entertainment’s name had been dragged to the mud stemming from a couple of Reuters reports alleging the former engaging in multimillion-dollar payoffs made by the casino company to former Philippine Amusement & Gaming Corporation. consultant Rodolfo Soriano.
Predictably, Universal called out Reuters on those reports, even going so far as hinting on a possible fight in court in the future. “Reuters’ reporting is full of malice and our company firmly objects to this,” the statement said. “We believe that Reuters should be fully held to account legally for the damage brought about through their biased reporting, and we are exploring the possibility of taking legal actions against them.”
In addition to basically questioning Reuters’ journalistic credibility, Universal also suggested that had Reuters engaged in fair and appropriate reporting, they could have “easily avoided” all the “mis-recognition of facts and biases” that were contained in the two reports.
Although you could see how and why Universal decided to air their ire towards Reuters, it probably wouldn’t mean much in the bigger scheme of things, especially since those reports have already set into motion a host of bigger problems Universal has to answer for to defend their name and reputation.
The Philippine government, particularly the Senate and the House of Representatives, have already filed numerous resolutions seeking to perform their own probe on the alleged bribery scandal that has taken a lot of steam out of Univesal’s sails. Universal has bigger problems to worry about than suing Reuters right now. For another time, maybe. But for now, the casino company needs to refocus their attention to answering all the questions that are about to come their way.
If what they’re saying is true, they should have no problem defending themselves. But if there’s any truth to the Reuters reports, then Universal could end up dealing with problems much bigger than libel lawsuits.
