Glory Days of Balita Tabloid Are Gone

Volume 8, Issue No. 4

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail.com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@aol.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . 

Our latest as of Sunday, August 2, 2026 

~ The glory days had run out on the Filipino community's thrice-adjudicated, thrice penalized and once jailed libeler who publishes a supermarket tabloid a judge said was used as bully pulpit to slam adversaries. The monetary cost of that conduct approximates $1.5-million in total. On the human level, the price is the loss of credibility, an essential ingredient in winning trust and respect in any newspaper. 

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TERESITA 'TESS' CUSIPAG, ADJUDICATED LIBELER

Anatomy of a Defamation Suit 

and a $0.5-Million Loss

 By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

"Tale-bearers are as bad as the the tale-makers." 

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

TORONTO - The catastrophe that befell Teresita "Tess" Cusipag and Balita, the tabloid she publishes fortnightly and supposedly edits, is traceable to carelessness, ignorance, incompetence and stupidity.

For all the animus that fueled her long simmering conflict with businesswoman Liwayway Miranda, the unfortunate legal and financial outcome for her had been avoidable.

Unequipped with knowledge and training as a journalist (though she calls herself editor to fill the void by the death in 2013 of husband, journalist Ruben Cusipag), she stepped in a genre of journalism requiring an analytical mind and skills she doesn't possess.

Basically it's all bluster, bravado to a large extent, or "one that suggests an overbearing boldness," the dictionary says, "that comes from arrogance or from being in a position of power."

That was clear from the April 2025 decision of Superior Court Justice R. Lee Akazaki who found her liable for defaming Ms. Miranda and ordered to pay upwards of $350,000 in damages.

Her fate was sealed after a panel of three judges of the Court of Appeal for Ontario upheld the decision released in March this year. (Full story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2026/07/balita-loses-appeal-ordered-to-pay.html).

In his judgement, Justice Akazaki says, and I quote: "Balita misused its position as a popular publication in the Filipino community as a bully pulpit to inflict harm to Ms. Miranda’s reputation." 

Not only that. He took note of Ms. Cusipag's admission in court, and I quote again: "Apart from her evidence that she took over Balita from her husband, Ms. Cusipag did not provide any evidence of any training or background in journalism." 

So, for her to go into serious journalism (as opposed to gossipy writing typical of Balita's entertainment reporting) would be to court disaster, and it did in Ms. Miranda's defamation suit. 

Ms. Cusipag's situation is akin to that of an emperor without clothes where she pretends to be someone she's not. That idiom is "a way of pointing out that someone is not as powerful or impressive as claimed, or of exposing a lie or deception."

Balita is not exactly a no-nonsense periodical. For most of its contents, especially photos, Ms. Cusipag actively solicits from friends, supporters, and probably strangers on Facebook, her steady source of news and what have you.

Its bulk at 80 pages (which makes it a favourite wrapper in supermarkets), is not a guarantee of finding worthwhile information that broadens understanding of current issues in the community and lead to commonsense decisions. 

Instead, we find the same faces on different occasions plastered for no reason other than being in a party marking a birthday, anniversary, christening, visits by politicians, performance by so-called celebrities, debuts in the community stage by social climbers, etcetera, etc.

Boasting of a supposedly robust wherewithal, Ms. Cusipag apparently didn't care much if she lost. She had relied on the say-so of Dominador "Jun" Saludares, a paralegal who was into real estate but eventually became her lawyer after he was called to the Bar sometime later. She was promoting him in Balita in conjunction with a shady group called Elite Crusaders. (Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2020/03/so-called-elite-crusaders-raises-red.html).

Saludares had represented six Filipino temporary workers who escaped from their employers and sought asylum in Canada. To gain status they lied about Ms. Miranda, their recruiter, alleging she was engaged in human trafficking. (Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2019/12/liwayway-miranda-aka-lily-hammer-gets.html).

(More of this story: https://www.minicounsel.ca/scj/2025/2331)

In December 2019, Crown prosecutors dropped all charges against Ms. Miranda for lack of evidence. But by then, the damage has been done on her business and reputation. 

(Full story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/who-in-toronto-is-real-swindler.html).

(Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JSfIOTN0uk)

Ms. Cusipag has apparently not realized the full extent of her loss to Ms. Miranda the moment she entrusted her fate to Saludares. (Related story: https://lawsocietytribunal.ca/document-html/2020-01-saludares-2018-12-17-pdf/ ).

In reality, he was the source of the defamatory words which Ms. Cusipag published in Balita in 2020 and repeated in 2022 to the effect that Ms. Miranda is the "summa cum laude of scammers." The republication in 2022 became the basis for Ms. Miranda's defamation suit.

Justice Akazaki took note of that. He said in his decision, and I quote him: "It turned out that the only source of her information was the paralegal, Mr. Saludares – the same Mr. Saludares who, now a lawyer, represented her and Balita at trial." 

"In addition to reporting Mr. Saludares’ remarks without any attempt to verify them," Justice Akazaki stated, "Ms. Cusipag considered his words as licence to invent her own story." 

Her recent statement on Facebook makes me wonder if she was referring to Saludares who caused her enormous misery. She wrote, and I quote verbatim: "Despite the so many problems that I encountered that were not my fault. People all know that the law cases were not to my wrongdoings but for somebody whom I trusted to help but instead put us in a lot of trouble." 

A Toronto lawyer who advertised in Balita for years appeared to have joined the chorus in attacking Ms. Miranda. In his website, Atty. Henry Moyal sourced the Toronto Star for some information for his "Immigration Newsweek" blog entitled "Why do immigrant workers never learn their lesson?"

The commentary ran for years, until I called his attention last week (Monday, July 27, 2026) on why he had not updated his information inasmuch as the charges against Ms. Miranda had been dismissed by the Ontario Superior Court in April 2025 and upheld by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in March 2026.

Moyal did not respond to my questions. What happened next was the removal of the offending narrative from his website within minutes of receiving my email. There he wrote, and I quote the paragraphs that have been deleted:

"Just when you thought people would be more cautious, again this week, another million dollar scam no doubt was revealed to have occurred by recruitment agency Liwayway "Lily" Miranda and her company A&L Hammer Workforce Management Inc. in the Toronto Star.

"In the current case, Lily Miranda recruited Filipino workers to work at mushroom farms and in particular at Sharon Mushroom farm in Ontario. All workers were promised LMIA ( the labour marker opinion approval from Service Canada) but in fact no LMIA were received and no work permits were issued. There is currently litigation in court. The workers also paid lots of money for these promises but after working illegally for the farm they ended up with no LMIA, no work permit and no status.

"From the reports in the media Sharon Mushroom and Lily Miranda are denying culpability and washing their hands of any wrongdoing. Oh really? Such a notion is laughable and hopefully the presiding judge sees it the same way."

Why Atty. Moyal waded into the controversy is unclear. Since he had been a regular advertiser in Balita (at least during the time I was there as associate editor and columnist), he could have been swayed by what he read in the tabloid and wrote his comments.

But for all those years his commentaries ran in his website, he could have learned from Toronto Star (his original source of information) that Ms. Miranda had been cleared of the charges lodged by Crown prosecutors based on fake testimonies of six Filipino workers.

Meanwhile, Ms. Cusipag asserts in a recent Facebook post that, to quoter her, "the lawsuits payoff was shouldered by me alone. Almost 1.5M." 

The claim is specious as it contradicts the cheques (see collage) issued by one of her sons to plaintiffs in another defamation case. (Copyright 2026. All Rights Reserved).