šŸ‡µšŸ‡­ Congrats, Maria Ressa!

And all journalists in the Philippines working against the odds

October 09, 2021

Hello friends!

Anyone else felt just a little elated to see that news alert for Maria Ressa last night? It was like a, ā€˜finally! Something has gone right!ā€™ moment.

Iā€™ve put together a few links that have interested me over the years and a couple of fresh reports from Rappler, proudly basking in the news. As they should!

See you next week,

Erin Cook

Maria Ressa is a name familiar to readers of Dari Mulut ke Mulut and press freedom watchers across the world, but her naming as a Nobel peace prize winner pushes her into the stratosphere. She shares the accolade with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov in an acknowledgement of the hard work they, and their colleagues across the world, do in reporting in authoritarian countries trying to shut them down. 

Ressaā€™s best known to me as the Rappler boss and previous CNN correspondent in Indonesia and her ordeal of legal woes from the Duterte government has appeared here often. Iā€™ve compiled some of the best Iā€™ve seen about her below. Spend your weekend with Maria Ressa!

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PBS documentary A Thousand Cuts from filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz was released last year. Itā€™s a stunning look at Duterteā€™s second war, this time on media, as well as misinformation and propaganda. 

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I really enjoyed this conversation between Ressa and Donald Greenlees of Asialink which explores similar themes and links them to the rest of the world. I thought this was an interesting line that shows that while Duterte isnā€™t so much an aberration historically in the region, the new context is a game-changer:

And because I am under attack on social media I can tell you that the things we lived through during the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, the kinds of attacks there that we went through, is nothing compared to the digital attacks when we tried to hold the Duterte administration accountable for the war on drugs and for its propaganda war.

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This loooong profile in the New York Times came out towards the end of Ressaā€™s busy and troubling 2019 when she spent a lot of time in and out of the courts. Itā€™s a great personal profile but also has some interesting specifics on the Ressa-Duterte war. I still think itā€™s the most comprehensive thing Iā€™ve ever read about her.

The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines released their happiest Maria Ressa statement ever, Iā€™m sure, to celebrate. "This prize is not only a recognition of their work but of the importance of freedom of the press and of expression in their countries and throughout the world," NUJP said. Hear, hear. Leni Robredo, who this week put her hand up for the presidential election, also encouraged the news.

I read her 2003 book Seeds of Terror detailing the Islamic militancy in the region earlier in the year. Thatā€™s well before my time so it was amazing to see how some of these now-widely-known-facts were initially reported at the time. (Iā€™ve also been working my way through Betraying the Nobel which is so fascinating, on the other end of things.)

For those of us who saw Ressa's dogged earlier years as an international reporter for CNN, this is hardly surprising. She was CNN's Manila bureau chief, later Jakarta bureau chief. She covered Asia with an intensity, integrity and courage that foreshadowed her stature today. It is not an overstatement to say there was no dictator, no terrorist, no coup plotter she was afraid to upset. She got the story, even if it made powerful, dangerous men angry.

Perhaps her diminutive size (she is 5' 2") caused them to underestimate her -- a phenomenon I've experienced. Perhaps that's why Duterte thought he could easily brush her off.

When he first came to power, he thought Rappler could be helpful. A pioneer in social media manipulation, Duterte spoke to Rappler to reach the Facebook crowds. But then Rappler started reporting on Duterte's vicious "war on drugs," a campaign that human rights groups confirm has killed thousands of people without any semblance of due process. (For a horrifying look at how Duterte weaponized the social media mobs to hound her, click on this investigation.)

Rappler, which grew out of a Facebook page launched in 2012 and has become one of the Philippinesā€™ most credible independent news services, has been targeted by President Rodrigo Duterte since his election in 2016. His 2017 state of the union speech alleged that Rappler was in foreign ownership, which would be contrary to the constitution. He also said it peddled ā€œfake newsā€.

Government investigations followed and, by 2018, Ressa and Rappler were inundated with charges of cybercrime, tax evasion and as much intimidation as the Duterte government could muster.

But public sentiment might be different. Jonathan de Santos, NUJPā€™s chairperson, says Ressaā€™s win may not spur much change on the ground since Duterteā€™s satisfaction rating stayed above 70% in recent local pollsā€”higher than previous Philippine leaders. He also has a history of verbally lashing out at international bodies that raise questions about his governance, like the International Criminal Court and the United Nations, so his allies are expected to do the same.

The Duterte government has previously claimed that cases filed against Ressa and Rappler are not related to press freedom, and de Santos believes it will continue to do so. But a Nobel Prize can help highlight how bad the situation is on the ground.

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