{"id":2467,"date":"2021-12-03T17:51:50","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T16:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/12\/03\/maria-ressa-is-a-hero-the-intercept\/"},"modified":"2021-12-03T17:51:50","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T16:51:50","slug":"maria-ressa-is-a-hero-the-intercept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/12\/03\/maria-ressa-is-a-hero-the-intercept\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Ressa Is a Hero &#8211; The Intercept"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p><span data-reactid=\"97\">\u00a9 First Look Institute<\/span><br \/><span data-reactid=\"99\">A division of First Look Institute<\/span><br \/>How Filipino journalist Maria Ressa took on Rodrigo Duterte and Facebook and won the Nobel Peace Prize.<br \/>Maria Ressa, journalist and CEO of the online news site Rappler, is interviewed during a protest calling for press freedom on Jan. 19, 2018, in Metro Manila, Philippines.<br \/> Photo: Jes Aznar\/Getty Images<br \/><u>For much of<\/u> her life, journalist Maria Ressa struggled to determine who she was and where she really came from. Born in the Philippines and raised in the United States, she didn\u2019t feel entirely at home in either.<br \/>Growing up in Toms River, New Jersey, she \u201cnever felt completely American,\u201d she said in an interview. But after graduating from Princeton University and returning to the Philippines on a fellowship, she \u201crealized that I\u2019m not really Filipino. That\u2019s when I realized how American I was.\u201d<br \/>\u201cWhen I\u2019m with Americans, I feel Filipino,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and when I\u2019m with Filipinos, I feel American.\u201d<br \/>Once she became a journalist &#8212; serving as CNN\u2019s bureau chief in both Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, and later leading the Philippines\u2019s largest and oldest broadcast news outlet before founding Rappler, an online news organization based in Manila &#8212; Ressa came to terms with her dual background. She realized that her roots in both the United States and the Philippines helped her understand and report on a wide range of people and cultures. \u201cI just decided that this was the best of both worlds and that it was good training for being a journalist.\u201d<br \/>Ressa\u2019s dual background has served her well over the last five years\u00a0as she has confronted both the autocratic president of the Philippines and the American social media behemoth Facebook. Her ability to understand both the Philippines and the United States has helped her survive the greatest crisis of her life. Her courage earned her the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. She and her co-winner, Russian editor Dmitry Muratov, are the first working journalists to win the award since 1935, when German journalist Carl von Ossietzky won it while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.<br \/><u>Beginning in 2016,<\/u> Ressa and her reporting team at Rappler exposed the brutal drug war waged by then-newly elected Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. In response, Duterte, a right-wing demagogue, launched an unrelenting war against Ressa, combining trumped-up criminal charges and frivolous civil cases against her with an aggressive government disinformation campaign that sought to discredit her. Ressa says that Duterte\u2019s efforts to destroy her were enabled by Facebook, which failed to curb Duterte\u2019s use of the social media platform to spread lies about her.<br \/>Ressa and Rappler began documenting Duterte\u2019s murderous drug war as soon as he became president June 30, 2016. \u201cThe killings began within hours of [Duterte\u2019s] oath of office,\u201d Ressa recalled. \u201cIt was alarming.\u201d Initially, Rappler\u2019s reporters were counting about eight dead each night but later discovered that the true numbers were much higher, as many as 33 a night.<br \/>Ressa and Rappler led the\u00a0Philippine media in reporting on the drug war killings, but they quickly discovered that Duterte and his government were aggressively using Facebook to whip up lies and hate against them. And Facebook was letting it happen.<br \/>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just [Duterte] or the government or the drug war,\u201d recalled Ressa. \u201cIt was also Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, which was essentially our internet.\u201d Duterte was combining the drug war with disinformation operations. \u201cIf a Filipino asked about these bodies being dropped, they were crushed by [Facebook] accounts that would attack to silence them. Then they went after the journalists, and then they went after the opposition politicians, and then they went after human rights defenders. We saw it in our data.\u201d<br \/>The power of the government\u2019s information operations became clear to Ressa in September 2016, when Duterte declared a state of emergency following a bombing in Davao City in the southern Philippines, where he had previously been mayor. Suddenly, a story that Rappler had published months earlier about the arrest of a man with a bomb became the outlet\u2019s most read story.<br \/>\u201cWe fell right into one of their information operations. I caught it in real time,\u201d Ressa recalled. \u201cThe president declared a state of emergency, and the justification for what they did was a 6-month-old story we did on an arrest of a man with a bomb. That story became\u00a0No. 1 when it shouldn\u2019t have been. They were already shaping the narrative, and that to me was alarming.\u201d<br \/>Maria Ressa delivers\u00a0a speech during\u00a0a protest at the 11th World Scout Jamboree Memorial Rotonda in Quezon City, Philippines, on Jan. 19, 2018.<br \/> Photo: Bernice Beltran\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<br \/>Duterte quickly saw the benefits of his disinformation campaign and became ever more open and aggressive in weaponizing Facebook; when Rappler began to report on his information warfare strategy, the attacks against Ressa intensified.<br \/>Ressa expected that the social media company would be concerned enough to stop him. As a purely online news organization seeking to couple journalism with technology, Rappler had worked closely with Facebook, and she initially considered the company an ally.<br \/>\u201cWe had been working with them since the beginning of Rappler,\u201d she said. \u201cWe started Rappler on Facebook, and the growth of Facebook in the Philippines was partly fueled by Rappler. The whole idea was social media for social good. I drank the Kool-Aid.\u201d<br \/>But when Ressa met with Facebook officials in Singapore in 2016 to talk about Duterte\u2019s worsening disinformation campaign, the company took no action, she told The Intercept. She told Facebook that Rappler was planning a three-part series on Duterte\u2019s use of Facebook for malign purposes, and it\u00a0still did nothing.\u00a0The company\u00a0wouldn\u2019t even give Ressa a comment to be used in the series.<br \/>\u201cWhen I brought the data to Facebook in Singapore, I expected them to fix it and then come back to me and give me a statement so I could write my story,\u201d Ressa said. \u201cI never got a statement, and I was really naive in thinking that they could fix it. It goes against the business model. Fixing this requires stopping this kind of engagement metric that literally prioritizes the spread of lies laced with anger and hate over facts. Fixing that would mean they would make less money.\u201d<br \/>Rappler\u2019s three-part series revealing the Duterte government\u2019s use of social media to target its enemies prompted \u201can average of 90 hate messages per hour\u201d against the outlet and Ressa, she recalls. The goal of the attacks was \u201cto pound you into silence.\u201d<br \/>\u201cWe believe in press freedom and support news organizations and journalists around the world as they continue their important work,\u201d a spokesperson for Meta Platforms Inc., the new corporate name for Facebook, said in a statement. \u201cWe continue to invest heavily to remove harmful content and bad actors from our platform in the Philippines, and consult with a range of stakeholders on the ground to better understand the risks, and the steps we need to take to keep our community safe.\u201d The company maintains \u201can open channel of communication with Maria and her team at Rappler,\u201d the spokesperson added.<br \/>Demonstrators\u00a0with slogans against &#8220;red-tagging&#8221; \u2014 a\u00a0sometimes deadly tactic utilized by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in which individuals perceived to be critical of the government are labeled as &#8220;communists&#8221; or &#8220;terrorists&#8221; \u2014 on their hats and placards take part in a\u00a0protest\u00a0to commemorate Human Rights Day near the presidential palace in Manila, Philippines, on Dec. 10, 2020.<br \/> Photo: Maria Tan\/AFP via Getty Images<br \/>Facebook\u2019s refusal to take action against Duterte left Ressa in an awkward relationship with the company, since Rappler still serves as one of Facebook\u2019s fact-checking partners in the Philippines. But by 2018, she had begun to publicly criticize Facebook. \u201cWhen somebody has great power, sometimes all it takes is civil society to come back and say, \u2018You are being harmful to society. You are killing democracy. This is something that needs to stop.\u2019\u201d<br \/>By 2018, Duterte\u2019s government had brought 11 legal cases against Ressa, both criminal and civil, and tried to revoke Rappler\u2019s operating license. But Ressa and her organization refused to back down, and by 2019, the government began issuing warrants for her arrest. The first came February 13 that year. \u201cMy Valentine\u2019s Day gift was a night in detention,\u201d she recalls. Between 2019 and 2021, the government issued 10 arrest warrants against Ressa, and she had to post bail for each one. \u201cThese cases are ridiculous,\u201d she said. \u201cWhich fantasy world are we living in?\u201d<br \/>Duterte was trying to create a \u201cmeta-narrative\u201d that journalists were criminals, Ressa observed. \u201cI wasn\u2019t the only one, but I was a primary target, largely because I think I was a cautionary tale: If this can happen to Maria, then this can happen to you.\u201d<br \/>Ressa\u2019s legal battle still isn\u2019t over, even after winning the Nobel. Seven of the legal cases against her are still pending, and Ressa must seek government approval whenever she travels overseas. Last year, she was denied permission to travel to the United States to visit her mother, who was ill. \u201cWhat I risk is that I could go to jail for the rest of my life,\u201d Ressa told me. \u201cThe weaponization of the law is a war of attrition.\u201d<br \/>Now the solicitor general of the Philippines is seeking to block her from traveling to Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel on December 10, a move that Ressa is appealing in court.<br \/><u>Facebook\u2019s behavior in<\/u> the Philippines is just one example of a global phenomenon, Ressa says. The social media behemoth has enabled what she calls \u201cdigital authoritarians\u201d to flourish all around the world, including former President Donald Trump in the United States, Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n in Hungary, President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, and President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.<br \/>\u201cThere has been great harm done globally,\u201d Ressa says.<br \/>Ressa calls for governmental action to force Facebook and other companies to curb disinformation. She still hopes that Facebook and other companies will do so on their own first, but she says she has been disappointed that Facebook\u2019s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, seems to be digging in his heels in the face of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-facebook-files-11631713039\">recent leak<\/a> of thousands of internal documents revealing that Facebook has known about the harm it has been causing around the world and has done little or nothing to stop it.<br \/>\u201cWhy would these platforms want to kill democracy?\u201d Ressa asks. \u201cWhy would they want to encourage human behavior that is the worst of what we can be? That\u2019s what they are doing. I know the Philippines very well. I\u2019ve watched it torn apart and radicalized. I\u2019ve watched our institutions collapse, and Facebook, YouTube\u00a0\u2014 this is how it all began.\u201d<br \/>Ressa says she was stunned when she received a phone call telling her that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize just before it was publicly announced October 8. \u201cI was on a webinar. We were in the middle of a discussion when I saw my cellphone, and it just said Norway. I muted [the webinar], and I picked up the phone. The video was still on, and you can see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/video\/2021\/oct\/08\/moment-maria-ressa-learns-of-nobel-peace-prize-win-during-zoom-call-video\">the moment<\/a> when I was listening and I realized they were telling me I was getting the prize, and you can see the disbelief.\u201d<br \/>Asked whether she will talk about Facebook in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Ressa is succinct: \u201cInevitably.\u201d<br \/><em>\u00a0James Risen is the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, which has provided financial assistance for Maria Ressa\u2019s legal defense in the Philippines. The fund and The Intercept are both part of First Look Institute.<\/em><br \/><a class=\"Post-contact-link Post-contact-link--name\" href=\"\/staff\/jimrisen\/\" data-reactid=\"250\">James Risen<\/a><a class=\"Post-contact-link\" href=\"\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection#d8b2b1b5f6aab1abbdb698beb1aaabacb4b7b7b3f6b7aabf\" data-reactid=\"251\"><span class=\"Icon Icon--Envelope icon-TI_Envelope\" data-reactid=\"252\"><\/span><!-- react-text: 253 --><span class=\"__cf_email__\" data-cfemail=\"f9939094d78b908a9c97b9\">[email&#160;protected]<\/span>\u200bfirstlook.org<!-- \/react-text --><\/a><br \/>The bill aims to transform America\u2019s approach to climate, forestry, and agriculture.<br \/>Parents of school shooting victims and civil rights groups disagree over threat assessment, a controversial model designed by the Secret Service.<br \/>The Supreme Court appears poised to overturn a half-century of reproductive rights in a decision that could put other legal protections in jeopardy.<br \/>\u00a9 First Look Institute. All rights reserved<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/12\/02\/maria-ressa-facebook-philippines-duterte\/\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a9 First Look InstituteA division of First Look InstituteHow Filipino journalist Maria Ressa took on Rodrigo Duterte and Facebook and won the Nobel Peace Prize.Maria Ressa, journalist and CEO of the online news site Rappler, is interviewed during a protest calling for press freedom on Jan. 19, 2018, in Metro Manila, Philippines. Photo: Jes Aznar\/Getty [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}