Lala Rimando

Multimedia biographer and business journalist

Covering Lopez vs Lopez without becoming part of the war

By

Lala Rimando

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Several headlines pop up in your feed.

“Gabby’s gamble, Piki’s cleanup.”

“Family feud explodes into leadership battle.”

“ABS CBN not a party to Lopez family fight.”

Same family, same ₱2 billion argument, three very different stories.

As readers, it is easy to pick a side based on which headline lands first. As business journalists, we also feel the pull of those headlines. They are sharp, dramatic, and instantly clickable. In the middle of a cousins’ war, the way we choose and frame them can shape how people understand what is really going on.

This opinion piece is not a scorecard of who covered what better. It is a reflection on how stories like this stretch business journalism, and why that should matter to anyone who cares about power, money, and accountability.

The pull of a perfect headline

If you cover business long enough, the headline almost writes itself.

“Bailout or sellout.”

“The bet that broke the empire.”

“Family feud rattles stocks.”

Lines like these capture a mood in a handful of words. They also assign roles. One cousin becomes the reckless gambler, the other the neat cleaner of old mistakes. One company becomes “the sinkhole,” another “the only real business left.”

Other headlines take a different route. Some focus on stock prices and lender concerns, treating the cousins almost as background noise. Others highlight the statement of the network itself, which insists it is not a party to the family quarrel and wants operations kept out of the drama.mb+1

None of these approaches are automatically wrong. They simply choose different entry points: emotion, governance, markets, corporate damage control.

As journalists, we are always balancing punch and precision. But when a family feud spills into courts and markets, those labels do more than sell a story. They can become the short‑hand that decides who the public sees as hero or villain in a governance battle.

In my own Lopez pieces, I have tried to move away from pure soap‑opera titles and toward something less catchy but more honest: debt, discipline, daring; secrecy and the law; who really owns the holding company and why a 29 percent cousin is in charge. That does not make my work better than anyone else’s. It only reflects the kind of framing I want readers to come back to when they are in the mood to understand, not just react.

Listening for the voice behind the story

One habit that helps, whether we are reading or reporting, is to ask a simple question: whose version is this?

In some reports, the language mirrors the legal complaint of one side. Terms like “unresolved audit findings,” “executive payouts,” and “opaque one‑man rule” appear as if they were neutral labels. The cousin who refused the ₱2 billion infusion is framed as the disciplined steward, and his removal as punishment for saying no.

In other reports, a different voice comes through. The network’s board stresses that it is not a party to the case and directly rejects those same allegations. There are no unresolved audit findings, they say, and no secret payouts waiting to be funded. The picture that emerges is of a company trying hard to separate its day‑to‑day operations from a cousins’ quarrel above it.

There are also stories that step back further. They look at the structure of the holding company, explain how a five–two board vote can topple a president, and describe how lenders and stock prices are reacting while the court orders everyone to stand still.newsinfo.

None of these views is complete on its own. In a noisy, emotional moment, ready‑made narratives arrive fast and packaged. One camp may sound very convincing on Monday, and the other just as convincing on Tuesday. I have been in enough corporate fights to know that the most dangerous stories are often the ones that feel perfectly tidy the first time you hear them.

These days, instead of pretending that I see more clearly than everyone else, I try to do something smaller but more honest. If a strong claim comes from a document or a camp, I say so. “According to a court filing by this side.” “In a statement, the board of that company denies this.” If another camp has responded or refused to comment, I say that too. Readers deserve to see the scaffolding, not just the finished wall. I do not always get this balance right, but naming where each piece of the story comes from helps me, and hopefully my readers, stay grounded when the noise gets loud.

The numbers are loud enough

In the Lopez cousins’ story, the numbers are dramatic enough on their own.

ABS CBN before the franchise loss had a stock market value of around ₱10 billion. Today it is worth only about ₱3 billion in the market, carries tens of billions of pesos in liabilities, and is still posting yearly losses. On the other side of the family tree, the power and geothermal arm sits on a large asset base and earns roughly ₱14 billion a year in recurring profits. Rockwell earns a little over ₱4 billion. Power is the giant now, real estate in the middle, and the media arm is the wounded younger sibling.

Most coverage agrees on that direction. Where stories diverge is in how the numbers are used.

Some pieces lift a large cumulative loss figure and glue the word “sinkhole” on the network. Others highlight only the profits of the power business and suggest it is the only real enterprise standing. Another set of stories puts both facts side by side and explains how a ₱2 billion ask looks in that context.

The more useful approach keeps both truths on the page. The network is financially weak and emotionally important. The power arm is financially strong and now carries most of the group’s risk. The cousins are not arguing over imaginary numbers. They are disagreeing on which risk is more dangerous: losing a legacy network, or stretching the holding company again.

If we lay that full picture out, readers can decide for themselves whether a ₱2 billion ask looks reckless, reasonable, or somewhere in between. It also becomes easier to see why one camp keeps repeating “discipline” and “clean up,” while the other leans on words like “legacy” and “‘”took the hits from presidents,” and why both feel, in their own way, that they are protecting the family.

Loaded words and missing words

Words like “gamble,” “cleanup,” “bailout,” and “broke the empire” stick in the mind. They compress decades of decisions into a neat morality play. One big bet. One villain. One hero.

Corporate history almost never works that way.

The Benpres years were not one drunk night in a casino. They were a long period when many conglomerates, encouraged by the liberalization and privatization drive of the Fidel V. Ramos era 1990s, borrowed heavily to build telecoms, water systems, toll roads, airlines, and power projects. The 1997 Asian financial crisis, regulators, and politics all shaped how those bets turned out. Saying one expansion “broke” an empire may feel satisfying. It also risks erasing the context that genuine governance watchers need to learn from.

There are also softer words that rarely trend but matter just as much. “Family constitution.” “Related party policy.” “Capital allocation.” “Insider trading risk.” These terms are not sexy. They do not fit well in memes. Yet they are what determine whether a family fight over ₱2 billion is settled over dinner, in a boardroom, or in a courtroom.

Some reports are already bringing these into view. They explain how the by‑laws let a majority change the president. They quote legal arguments about when a director in a listed company can share deal details with a wider family board without triggering securities rules. They show that what sounds like secrecy to cousins may look like compliance to corporate lawyers.

One of the goals of my Lopez pieces is to pull these less glamorous terms into the spotlight. I want to show that an argument about who knew what, when, in the power deals is not just drama. It is a live test of how securities law, family expectations, and political risk collide. That is not an attack on any colleague. It is simply a choice to show the plumbing, not only the fireworks.

Living with landmines

It is tempting, in a story like this, to publish every dramatic claim that lands on our phones. Huge, precise bonus figures tied to unnamed executives. Allegations about audits, payouts, and employee pension funds being dragged into “burning houses.” Strong language in pleadings that has not yet been tested in court.

Online news cycles are fast. One side drops a filing or a statement late in the afternoon. The other side may need a day or two to clear a legal response. We cannot always wait for a perfectly balanced set of quotes before we post.

What we can do is be more transparent about where things stand at the moment of publication. We can say when a serious claim is an allegation from one camp and what documents it rests on. We can say if the other side has been asked for comment and has not yet responded at the time of posting. When that response does arrive, we can give it enough space to be noticed, not just a line at the bottom.

This is not a perfect system. There will be stories we wish we had framed differently or pushed harder on. I have had my share of those. The goal is not to pretend that we always get it right, but to build a record that, when someone without a horse in this race looks back months from now, still feels reasonably fair.

Who is loudest, not who is right

In this season of Lopez versus Lopez, it is also worth admitting that one side is simply louder at the moment. The phrases that have travelled farthest – “bad bets broke the empire,” “acts like a king,” “burning house,” “Piki must go” – all come from one branch of the family or its allies. The other branch and the network itself have answered mainly through formal statements and legal filings that are less dramatic but just as important.

That imbalance in airtime does not mean one camp is right and the other is wrong. It does mean that business journalists have to be extra careful not to let the loudest phrases become our default labels. The more a line is repeated on social media and talk shows, the more we should ask where it came from, what it omits, and what records can confirm or challenge it.

For governance watchers and family members of business groups, this is a useful reminder. In any high‑stakes dispute, the side that moves faster with catchy narratives will often win the first round of public opinion. The slower work of reading documents and checking numbers is what keeps the story honest over time.

Why this should matter beyond our small circle

All of this may sound like shop talk among reporters, but the effects travel beyond our chats and timelines.

When business coverage cuts corners in a case like the Lopez cousins’ war, it is not only the family that feels it. Lenders read these stories when they decide how much risk they want to take. Regulators read them as they weigh how hard to push. Employees, suppliers, and small investors read them when they decide whether to stay, go, or speak up. Narratives can gently press on credit, on politics, and on the courage of people who want to build or rebuild independent media.

The flip side is encouraging. When business reporting slows down just enough to read filings, check numbers, and explain structures in plain language, it gives readers tools. It helps governance watchers see patterns such as a missing rulebook for the family, an over‑dependence on one kind of asset, or blind spots in oversight. Those lessons outlive any single headline.

That is the lane I hope my Lopez stories are starting to carve out. Not above the fray in a moral sense, but slightly aside from the daily boxing of egos and public‑relations muscle. Grounded in things that can be checked. Written in a way that is still enjoyable to read and worth returning to when the next family or corporate storm rolls in.

The cousins’ fight will move on. There will be more hearings and new headlines, more leaks dressed up as ready‑made scripts. The open question for all of us who cover business is whether our work on this story will age like a telenovela recap or like a case study that still teaches something useful ten years from now.

I know which one I would like to reread.

MY STORIES ON THE LOPEZ COUSINS’ WAR (2026):

RELATED MERALCO STORIES (2008-2009):

RECENT COVERAGE OF THE LOPEZ COUSINS’ WAR (Q1 2026)

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