Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa Fights for the Protection of Journalists

Published Dec 3, 2023, 9:00 AM

Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa has spent the past decade advocating for the protection of journalists. Today, we return to our urgent conversation with the trailblazing author and activist.

We begin by unpacking the fragmenting effects of social media (6:08), how the internet gave power to authoritarian regimes around the globe (8:49), and Ressa’s five years uncovering those operations (9:20). Then, we walk through her early years: moving from the Philippines to suburban New Jersey at age ten (14:08), three lessons from childhood (16:52), and her discoveries at Princeton (22:10).

On the back-half, we discuss Ressa’s serendipitous entry to the newsroom (32:18), why she founded Rappler in 2012 (35:12), and her critical reportage on President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war (36:52), which led to her arrest by the Filipino government in 2019 (41:22). Now, she’s charted this fight in her book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator (47:12). To close, we unpack her continuous pursuit of the truth (50:03), her recognition as a 2021 Nobel Laureate (52:37), and an ode to a lifelong friend (56:11).

For questions, comments, or to join our mailing list, drop me a line at sf@talkeasypod.com.

Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm student Forgoso. Welcome to the show today our conversation with journalist, activist, and author Maria Ressa. Maria was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in twenty twenty one for her work at the Rappler, a Filipino news publication as she founded back in twenty twelve. In the intervening decade, Maria has been come the face of the free press in the Philippines as she's worked to expose the abuses of power and growing authoritarianism under former President Rodrigo thu Terte. Since twenty eighteen, the Filipino government has brought twenty three cases against Russa and Rappler. At the time of recording this conversation last year, a conviction could have led to nearly one hundred years in prison, but thankfully, just this past fall, Ressa was acquitted on the last of five tax evasion cases filed against her, and what has since been hailed as a win for press freedom. It's a rare victory in a line of work that's been under assault for quite some time. According to the CPJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists three one hundred and sixty three reporters were deprived of their freedom in twenty twenty two, a twenty percent uptick from twenty twenty one. Across the globe, from Iran and China to Turkey and Belarus. Authoritarian governments have increasingly tried and succeeded to stifle the media, to suppress and then ultimately criminalize the truth. But the attack on reporters extends beyond nasty rhetoric or obstruction or even harassment. According to the CPJ, the first thirty days of the Israel Gods of War is quote the deadliest month for journalists since they began documenting journalists fatalities in nineteen ninety two. I should just read that again. This past month is the deadliest month for journalists and media workers since the CPJA began documenting fatalities in nineteen ninety two. At least sixty one media workers were among the sixteen thousand killed since the war began on October seventh, and those are just the reporters on the ground that have been counted. God knows how many there are or will be discovered in the coming months. For many, including our guest today, this is quite literally a matter of life or death, and so this week I wanted to replay this urgent, timely conversation with Maria. We talk a lot about the splintering effects of social media, her relentless commitment to the truth, her brave commitment to the truth, and of course her book How to stand Up to a Dictator, which, in this moment can I either be read as an elegy for democracy or a clarion call to preserve it. I'll leave that last part up to you. We will be back next Sunday with a new episode, but until then, here is my conversation with journalist, activist and author Maria Ressa. Maria Ressa, it's an honor to stay with you. Thank you for having me. I want to start with the prologue of your excellent new book, How to stand Up to a Dictator, in which you write some days I feel like Sisyphus and Cassandra combined, trying to repeatedly warn the world about how social media has destroyed our shared reality, the place where democracy happens. So to start, are you feeling like those two people today?

Especially today? It's strangely enough, because it's an up and down day. But yes, you know in the book, I really lay out how we saw it coming, how we lived through it. And I think early in twenty sixteen people just thought I was crazy. And these are the journalists, right, They're like, it's not going to happen to us, Maria, we're television stations, you know.

But it did.

And then of course I remember the end of twenty sixteen saying what is in California in one of the tech companies. I said, you know, what is happening to us is coming for you? This is really alarming. And then I started pulling out data and I'm still saying the same thing today and you're listening. So I suppose that's a good thing. But I feel like we have wasted so much time. Hope we're not too late.

How and where have we wasted time?

So our information ecosystem today has an incentive structure that rewards lies over really boring facts, and so you'll have greater distribution if you lie, and you'll have even greater distribution if you lie, and then make people afraid, angry or hate if you do us against them. And then I think since twenty sixteen, this lack of facts, because if you say a lie a million times, it becomes a fact, So people can't tell the difference when you have no facts. And this is the part where I feel like Cassandra and Sisiphus combined. If you have no facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. We can't solve any problem, we cannot have democracy. And then if you think about you know trust, because this is the glue that holds everything together. George Schultz, who was one hundred years old, right, he said that what is the biggest lesson you learned as a diplomat? And he said one thing. He said, when you have trust in the room, everything is possible. Without trust, nothing is possible. That's where we are well.

Not to put you in a Sisapian corner, but Lee, I want to grapple with what you've called in the Guardian as world War three warfare being waged against every individual across these social media platforms. What specifically did you mean by that?

Okay, so follow the thing if we have no facts, right, So, one of the things the public sphere always talks about how this is a free speech issue, how we shouldn't be censoring content. And yet my experience and the data that we gathered because I came under attack, actually showed that free speech was being used to silence free speech information operations. So you say a lie a million times, you pound your target to silence. That was what I had lived through with almost an average of ninety hate messages per hour. So what we lived through was in twenty sixteen when Rodrigo du Terta was elected. Leading up to that, we began to see that anyone who questioned this brutal drug war of do Tereta was pummeled on social media to the point that people started staying quiet. Right, so you pounded the narrative out. There seemed to be an acceptance and a longing for this drug war. And yet what we saw through the data that these were information operations. This was meant to astro turf, to manufacture reality. And we started in twenty sixteen by looking at twenty six fake accounts. Well we didn't know they were fake, it was just they behaved together. It was suspicious because they followed more groups than they had friends. We took everything that they said they were, you know, where they worked, where they grew up, where they went to school, what they did, and then we put it on an Excel sheet twenty six accounts, and they were all following each other, and then we had a reporter go over every single one. Everything that was stated on those twenty six fake accounts was a lie. And then we thought, okay, so this is what you would call a sock puppet network. It's a puppet. It's a sock puppet. And then we thought, all right, let's figure out how many accounts it can influence. So we manually counted that, and wanted to manually count because I don't trust the machine right a baseline, And it took three months to get that. But that sockpuppet network of twenty six fake accounts could influence touch NUTCH at least three million others. So that was the third part of a three part weaponization of the Internet series that really triggered the attacks against us. And that's when I began to think, oh my god, this is going to get significantly worse.

You said earlier that lies spread six times faster than the truth in the intervening six years since you published that series you mentioned from twenty sixteen. Do you think the truth has caught up the lies?

No, absolutely not. So think about it like a virus of lies.

After the last couple of years. Yeah, I'd rather.

Not, I know, but I actually started using a virus because it's epidemiological, yes, the spread of it, right, So most of the time people will look at it through political lenses. But that is only the last of the cascading failure.

Right.

It's these algorithms of distribution choices that were made by the tech companies that were governed by a profit motive, which is to keep you scrolling so that the company can make more money. As they keep you scrolling, your emotions are triggered because that's what keeps you scrolling. Fear, anger, hate, and then you shift your worldview, and because you change your worldviews, you change the way you act in the real world. A perfect example is January sixth, twenty twenty one. The same methodology bottom up social media operations, information operations. Then it comes top down and the timeline is roughly the same as what happened to me, you know, the idea of election fraud and this is worked by the Election Integrity Partnership. It was seeded a year earlier on RT not surprising, then mainstreamed and it didn't come top down from President Trump until a year later, and then violence on Capitol Hill that this country has never seen. I was watching it from the Philippines, and I was like, oh my god. We warned them it was coming. This is Silicon Valley. Since coming home to Roost, I wish it hadn't happened, but I was hoping that this would then trigger a greater response, a faster response.

It sounds like what you're saying is that the truth may very well remain elusive, And while it may remain elusive on the Internet, we try our best on this show to get to the heart of it. So I want to go back a little bit.

Sure.

You're born October second, nineteen sixty three, in a wooden house in the Philippines. The next year, your father passes away in a car accident, leaving you and your mother, who is pregnant at the time, with your sister alone. Come nineteen sixty nine, your mother leaves for the US, as you and your sister move into a home on Times Street in Metro Manila with your paternal grandmother, Rosario. But come November nineteen seventy three, at age ten, while sitting in a classroom at your Catholic all girls' school. Your life changes in an instant, and I thought we'd start here by reading a passage from your book.

Ah, this is why you wanted me to bring the book. Okay. All that ended the day my mother kidnapped my sister and me from school. It seemed like any other day when I entered the classroom, sharp rays of sun streaming through the windows. I put down my school bag and lifted the lid of my wooden desk. Then I heard a voice call my name, mary Anne. Only my family called me that, a contraction of my two names, Maria Anghilita. I turned around and shocked to see my mother with the school principal, sister Grasha, at the front of the classroom. They approached my desk and helped me put everything back into my bag. As we walked out, I looked back at all my friends staring at me. We proceeded to my sister's class room. She was waiting outside with my mother's sister, Mansi Milionado, and another teacher. None. When she saw our mother, Mary Jane ran to hug her. By that time, we were the only ones in the hallway. Mary Jane and Mom were both crying. Then I heard my mother mumble under her breath that she was going to take us to America. I remember looking around the school at that point and instinctively knowing that nothing would ever be the same again. In moments like that, you look for anchors. Mine was the library book in my bag that would be overdue the next day, as we were walking to the gate, I stopped in the middle of the courtyard, pointed to the library and asked my mom if we could return my book. She said, let's do it another day. A car was parked by the sidewalk and we got in. As soon as we got settled, my mom introduced us to the man in the front passenger seat, Mary Ann Mary Jane. She said, this is your new father. Yeah, that was weird to write this down.

Why was that weird?

I mean, it's one of those things that you live through that your family doesn't talk about. That time period, it was sliding doors for me. One day we were in Manila, it was one reality. I spoke Filipino Bagalog, and then the next day, within two weeks, we were on a flight flying over Alaska. The first time we saw snow because we refueled there and then we landed at JFK Airport and drove to what would become our new home, Tom's River, New Jersey. I never went back until I finished college.

Before we get to that college student, I want to understand those values as you came to understand them. When you're at Silver Bay Elementary School. You enter at four feet two inches, the shortest kid in the classroom and the only brown one. But within those early years you learned three valuable lessons. What were those? Oh?

I always go back to those three, and they've gained more meaning over time.

You know.

The first one was I was put into third grade, so I walked into the third grade class. My teacher was Miss Jugland, who, after a few weeks then said, you know, wait, you should really go to grade four. And I didn't want to because I was just starting to get used to my classmates. I was getting used to the class and she said, no, no, no, Maria. You know you have to always make the choice to learn, and you have nothing more to learn in my classroom. That's lesser number one. So through my life I make the choice to learn, and lesson number two is something that stayed with me until today. Embrace your fear. And this was the strangest way that I learned it. You know, immigrant kid coming in. When I go into fourth grade, I'm invited to a pajama party. I asked my mom, I want to go. So what's a pajama party. It's a party. You wear pajamas too, right, Mom nods her head. So, you know, we get in the car and then I wear my pajamas. It's like three or four in the afternoon. And then when we're rounding the cul de sac where I could see where my classmates were, they were playing kickball outside and they were not wearing pajamas and they saw me, and Dad stopped and I went, you know, I looked at my mom. I was like, Mom, they're not wearing pajamas, and Mom, you know mom's also an immigrant. Mom said, oh, I thought that's what it meant. Dad stops the car, and then Sharon, who was the person whose party it was, I came to the door. I opened the door. That's what courage meant to be at that point, right, I'm opening the door and taking my bag and Sharon goes in and I said, I'm sorry. I thought I was supposed to wear pajamas, and I was just about to cry. And then Sharon looks at me and says, you have something to change into and I said yeah. She said okay. She takes the bag and brings me inside the house and I got out of the car. I guess that was it. It's like, you can't duck, you don't hide, you get out of the car, and then you move forward and brace your fear right and you just kind of have to trust that someone will be there and when it's your turn, you had better be there for someone else. That's a lesson from fourth grade at that point.

And then the.

Last one is, actually you could change the title of the book. It's how to stand up to a bully in the end. That's what a dictator is. So there was this girl, let's call her Debbie, that's what I used in the book, who was always being bullied and it was for the strangest reason that I didn't understand. It's because she wore polyester pants. And at one point we were in the orchestra room. I played the violin, she played the fiola, and I just saw her crying in a corner. So I walked outside, but I was like, she's crying, So I walked to the bathroom, got a tissue and then brought it back to her and I asked her, why are you wearing polyester pants? And it turns out this is how we became friends, because it's cheap, and her dad was in the hospital, and so I started kind of hanging out with her and standing up for her. And there was a point later on where the bully who kept pummeling her started to turn on me, and then my friends stood up against him. That's how you stand up to a bully, You stand up to a dictator. Right, You do what's right, and then you hope others will follow.

So you take those three big lessons and bring them with you to high school as you excel academically through extracurriculars. But as you're leaving high school you seem to have a kind of identity crisis. You write in the book. Something I didn't grasp until later was that I was sublimating my negative emotions like anger.

I hate that you read the book by the way, you know, Okay, go ahead, sorry, I'll shut up.

I'm doing exactly what you would do for me if the roles were reversed.

Yes, I hope.

So you're sitting there like, no, I wouldn't read your book.

No, I would, of course read your book.

Here's the rest of your quote. I could never shake the feeling that I was on the outside looking in, trying to understand what was happening so I could fit in. Looking back, now, how do you make sense of that sublimation?

I think I felt the need to prove that I belonged there. You know, that was the first step, and I think that was that devil on my shoulder that kept driving me to excel, to be as good as I can be. I also justified that to myself though, I mean, that's okay, right, you try to do the best that you can. But I learned to be okay with it, to be on the outside looking in, and it turned out to be great training for being a journalist, not to be part of it, but to understand what was going on and then to see how I can take it forward.

But in some ways, that anger that you were sublimating. Ah, yes, I want to hold on that because it would follow you in college. Yeah, when you took a playwriting course studying at Princeton, your boyfriend at the time, because of this, suggested that you read Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child, The Search for True Self. And there's a passage in there that you quote in the book that seems especially formative for you, So I thought maybe we'd read that, all right.

My boyfriend urged me to read Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child The Search for the True Self, from which I gained a key insight that there are successful people who, because of their childhood experiences, learned to suppress their emotions as long as their life is peppered with achievements. And this is a quote, they do well, even excellently, in everything they undertake. They are admired and envied. They are successful whenever they care to be, Miller wrote, But behind all this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness and self alienation, and a sense that their life has no meaning. And I remember the devil on my shoulder, always driving me to do better when I read this. Their access to the emotional world of their own childhood, however, is impaired, characterized by a lack of respect, a compulsion to control and manipulate, and a demand for achievement. I didn't want to be that.

Is that what you thought when you read that back in college?

Absolutely, because at that point, you know, I was still sorting myself out. That's what college is supposed to be, right, But I'm such a book learner, And it was all the other stuff that it's literature, it is playwriting, it's acting, it's the theater. That allowed me to explore all the other parts. This part made me try to figure out, Oh, my gosh, is that me. I don't want to be that. I don't want to be controlling or manipulative, and so how do I curb that? And I think that's what I tried to go through in the next couple of pages. How do you balance yourself the things that you want with doing the right thing for other people?

That passage also seemed to produce in you a challenge that you set for yourself to understand the world and my place in it. You're right, and how to build my confidence while controlling my ego. I wanted to achieve an empty mirror? Yes, what is that empty mirror?

Oh my gosh, I love that. It came from a book I read in school. It's by vander Willem. It's called The Empty Mirror. And here's what it is right, because so many problems, especially today when I look at you know, when you're managing a lot of people, factor in egos, because egos take away the logic of it right. And the empty mirror. It's by Jan Vanderwillim, that's the author. He went into a Buddhist monastery and he said, I want to live my life looking at a mirror, but without seeing my reflection, so I could see the reflection of the world around me. It's like Plato, Smith of the Cave. But the other way, you see the world and take out the ego that can obscure your vision of the world, then you can take the right steps forward. And that stayed with me through the rest of my life. You have to have enough confidence to have a healthy ego right, But if it's too much crossover into arrogance, you fill that mirror and you won't see the world around you. So you have to keep your ego in check.

But I'm curious, do you think journalism was the surest way to that empty mirror? That the work of being a journalist requires one a clarity of vision and two an ability to remove your ego from the equation.

You know, I switched back and forth. At the beginning, during the time when I was reading that it was about art, right, and strangely, art can be very, very self absorbed. But I wanted, as you said, it's clarity and journalism as I got older, and it wasn't that much further away, because I think that was my junior year. By my senior year, it was trying to figure out what is happening in front of you without seeing it through your lenses. So, for example, events in the Philippines, the correspondent in Manila for me was a really tall, white Anglo Saxon Protestant male and he did those types of stories. But I come in and I'm a five foot two Filipino American female. That meant a difference in the way we choose stories. That meant, you know, the way, the tone, the way the diction that we use. I guess what I tried to do, and I wasn't sure. I mean, I was a young when I was a young reporter, I didn't know what the right thing to do was. It's trial and error. It's an iterative process. And television, by the way, is the most unnatural way of being natural, of appearing natural and I kind of thought that precisely because of the empty mirror, right, So I tried to look at what was happening in front of me without the judgment of an ego, and journalism was perfect.

You know, this interest in figuring out what is happening in front of you? Do you think that desire comes from the fact that what was happening in front of you as you left the Philippines for the US was rapidly changing, that the circumstances were ever evolving, and that any natural kid would say, what's happening? Do you think that desire to then turn it into a career comes from these early experiences where what was happening in front of you wasn't exactly clear.

Ah, that's an interesting question, wow, Sam. So let me say, it's kind of like layers upon layers upon layers. It's our lives, it's our experiences and the present moment of the past. What we are experiencing this moment will change the way you look at the memories of the past, and the memories of the past will determine how you evaluate this present moment as we create the future. So your question, I think, is I became comfortable with ambiguity, with not knowing, and I'm okay with not knowing. I'm okay with learning and trying to understand what other people think. I guess that was part of what I took out. I didn't have the cultural signals when we moved to Toms River, New Jersey, and then in nineteen eighty six, when I went back to Manila after thirteen years away, I didn't have the cultural signals. Then I was a kid from Toms River, New Jersey, you know, And so each one of those changed. But is that an impetus for journalism. I think it would have been whether I chose to write continue writing plays, to do theater or music, or I had at that point applied to medical school, I had applied and gotten a corporate job. I just deferred everything to take a full bride to go back to the Philippines, because I knew somehow that was how I was going to close this kind of sliding doors life I had lived.

After the break. More from journalist Maria Ressa. So after college, you take that Fulbright scholarship you mentioned from Princeton in nineteen eighty six and go back to the Philippines, joining the government TV station PTV four. In many ways, it was a homecoming. At the time, your childhood friend Muriel was working at the station. Do you remember that first day walking through the newsroom.

Yeah, it was strange because this was a historical building, right, this is what was taken over under government control. It was censored by the government under Marcos and then when people Power happened in nineteen eighty six, this was overrun. So by the time I got there and I was Muriel Twink is her name. She was one of the anchors, and she picked me up, and you know, I went through and we're going through these dark hallways of the station from the newsroom to the studios, and there's like, first of all, it was overrun with cats. The stench of urine was everywhere, and bulbs were blown out, they weren't replaced. This is like the dark hallways to get to the studio. You get to the studio and it's a working studio, but still you know, it's just decaying. It was decayed. So I walked in and she was anchoring the newscast. First of all, I fell in love with it. It was just like incredible because it was real time and you were live on air, and when breaking news happens, the anchor goes and you're just like everybody moves like an orchestra, right, it moves together, and you're writing the first page of history. I loved it, and so over the next few months, I guess or weeks, I realized her director kept falling asleep, and I said, oh, I don't know really how to direct studio, but I'm awake. I think I could do this, you know. So I asked if I could take over the job, and I did, and that was how I learned the Philippines, and so it was a great education. I thought I would only be doing it for a short while and then I'd come back to the United States. But then one thing led to another, right, CNN came in another position. ABSBN, the largest network today, was given its building back by then President Aquino. They took over the back. They offered me a job as well. So yeah, I wound up never leaving.

What you thought would be three or four months turn into a thirty year career working as the borough chief in Manila for CNN than Jakarta. There's some other jobs in between. But I want to go to January first, twenty twelve when you found the site Rappler. Here's a passage from your mission statement. Rappler stands on three pillars journalism, community, and technology that are bound by the shared values of trust, courage, integrity. It is composed of veteran journalists trained in broadcast, print and web disciplines, working with young, idealistic digital natives eager to report and find solutions to problems. Now, as Rodrigo Dutarte came to power in twenty sixteen, which coincided with the rise of former President.

Trump, Dicerto was Trump before Trump was strump.

You talked about finding solutions to proms in that mission statement. What were the big problems that you and Rappler were reporting on during the start of his presidency in twenty sixteen.

Yeah, my gosh, there's so many. But first let me lay the scene for you, right. You know, by that point I realized that almost all stories that you do as a reporter, if it's investigative journalism, will focus on corruption. Right You follow the money because that's where wrongdoing happens, and that's where accountability happens. So I had by twenty twelve great faith that we could use participatory media to help build institutions bottom up, that we could use our community to patrol our votes, to police our officials. And it actually showed in twenty ten when we did this. This was when I was heading the largest news network in the Philippines. We had twenty thousand citizen journalists whom we had trained, and they were with their cell phones. This would have been twenty ten. Think about it. They were taking photos of like officials doing wrong things and sending it to us, and we were able to hold those officials accountable. Back at the time, when you catch someone doing something wrong, they actually admit that they're doing something wrong and then they do better. Right. So that was the beginning of that. By twenty twelve with Rappler, I wanted to do more. We began with a civic engagement arm that was called move pH So instead of marketing, we used civic engagement and we went to schools, universities saying that, you know, we could do social media for social change, social media for social good. So you see how I drank the kool aid. I believed I was the truest of true believers in the transformative powers of technology, and I was hoping that we could use this for good and we did for a period of time. One of the things we worked on was climate change. Why climate change because in twenty thirteen, the Philippines is the third most disaster prone nation in the world. We had an average of twenty typhoons every year. This project we called Project AGOS, a climate change initiative. If there's information you need, a typhoon is coming in. Everyone hunkers were watching the map of the Philippines, so we see how the typhoon comes in. If people have information, they send it in tweets. At that point, tweets had geotagging so you could get the exact location. And then we had the Office of Civil Defense responding to calls for help in this very public map of the Philippines. It was called Project AGOS, and we built it, gave it to the Philippine government. The Philippine government incorporated it into its disaster response in twenty fifteen, and it continued up until Rodrigo du Terta took office. So there were so many things that you know, the Civic Engagement Arm could help in real world impact. Twenty sixteen happened and Rodrigo du Terte was elected, and then everything changed.

How did it change.

So I think the beginning of the change had nothing to do with the Philippines. The beginning of the change happened here in the United States, in Silicon Valley. By this point in time, ninety seven percent of Filipinos on the Internet were on Facebook. Facebook is Our Internet. In twenty fifteen, Facebook uses instant articles. In twenty fourteen, it brought in news organizations into Facebook, and in twenty fifteen it invited four news organizations from the Philippines. We were slightly later. We jumped in. I put everything inside Facebook just to see, so I have a before and after. It didn't work, and so shortly before our elections, I pulled all our articles out again. And that's when I realized that Facebook was iterating this. They were experimenting. So while they invited news organizations onto the platform, they didn't change the algorithms of amplification right. So here we were knowingly walking into a platform that deprioritized facts that actually had a bias for lies. I didn't know this then, So that was the first change. The second change was Rodrigo du Terte, you know, and I guess he was there. I said before Trump was strump, but he's a populist, and he was a populist who threatened, who over promised, He used violence in word indeed, and he you know, in twenty fifteen, when I interviewed him when he was trying to decide whether he'd run for president, he actually admitted that he killed three people at this interview. This was a clip that was used by American networks. Afterwards, he admitted he killed three people, and he was proud of it. You know, this is a man who, after he won the presidency, gave me an interview and said that his leadership style needs violence because that's how you are going to govern Filipinos. He felt Filipinos needed an iron fist. So what happened in twenty sixteen, that was around the time when we began to do these stories on the killings in this brutal drug war that was his flagship program, and I began to call for an end to impunity of Duterta's drug war and an impunity to Zuckerberg's Facebook.

The result of this reportage was constant online harassment. You mentioned earlier than ninety hate messages per hour. The people sending these messages were, of course emboldened by the president's contempt for the press. He called journalists like you spies, vultures, and low lifes, going so far as to say, just because you're a journalist does not mean you're exams from assassination if you're a son of a bitch. Yes, all of this brings us to what happens on February thirteenth, twenty nineteen. As a Valentine's gift to you, you're arrested for the first time and brought to NBI headquarters. NBI is essentially the FBI in the Philippines, and they strategically plan to arrest you so that they could hold you overnight.

Yeah, but I.

Want to read from the book, which describes what happens that next day as you make bail and begin to talk to the press.

Oh yeah, oh my gosh. That evening I had to go through a medical exam, and a woman who I really didn't know what we were in a group together. She rushed to the NBI office because she knew that the moment of vulnerability is this medical exam. She's a medical doctor, and she said, name me your doctor and then I will be in with you. You know. So that happened so the next day I was supposed to post bail, and even that was a negotiation because the arrest warrant didn't have the number that I needed to post bail. So I stood all night thinking, oh my god. You know, it's not as if there isn't a spotlight on me. I was one of the most prominent journalists. I headed a news organization. Imagine what they would do to somebody who's a young kid in a dark alley.

By the way, almost on que we hear the police sirens of New York City playing in the background.

Funny, okay, where do you want me to start reading?

The next morning, the bail negotiations began early.

The next morning, the bail negotiations began early. It would be the sixth time I had posted bail in about two months. It was the largest amount so far, one hundred thousand passers, or about two thousand US dollars. But I was smiling as I reeled off the details for the press. As I left the courtroom, I was smiling because I was so angry. You see only a hint of that anger when a reporter asked me to react to a statement by Secretary of Justice menar de Guevara, who had said that my arrest was Rattler's own fault. Let me turn it around. I spat, then paused for control. DOJ's secretary Guevara, who was I thought a professional. These are your actions, the ripple effects are what we feel in society. But you don't want to be known as the secretary of injustice. I also have the right to hold you accountable. I am a citizen of this country and you cannot violate my rights. That night, when my government took away my freedom, they drew the line of repression directly to me. It was the moment when my rights were violated, when I went from being a journalist to being a citizen. If they could do this to journalists with some power in the glare of the spotlight, what would they do to vulnerable citizens literally left in the dark. What recourse did a poor person have in a dark alley. For me, it's about two things, abuse of power and the weaponization of the law. I told the assembled reporters it was the first time I had spoken so harshly in public. Every time the government did something draconian, it radicalized me. This isn't just about me, and it's not just about Rappler. The message that the government ascending is very clear, and someone actually told our reporter this last night, be silent or your next. So I'm appealing to you not to be silent, even if and especially if your next. Press freedom is not just about journalists. It is not just about Raptler, It is not just about me. Press freedom is the foundation of the right of every Filipino to have access to the truth. Silence is complicity, because silence is consent. What we're seeing is death by a thousand cuts of our democracy, I continued, and I appeal to you to join me. I've always said that when I look back a decade from now, I want to make sure my voice broke Then, so I repeated the sentence. I want to make sure that I have done all I can. We will not duck, we will not hide, We will hold the line. Oh I'm still angry. You know.

I was listening to you read that passage, being moved once again and inspired by your passion and commitment to this work, to this calling. But I don't think we can talk about the work you do without talking about the very real human consequences of what you do and to do. That I want to go to June of twenty twenty, where the family of journalist Daphne Galicia, who was killed for her reportage, issued this statement. Over the years, we watched the former Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, and his cronies pursue increasingly deranged attacks on Daphne. These included online abuse and harassment campaigns, vexatious tax investigations, false criminal charges that were thrown out of court, and civil and criminal libel suits. Daphne died with five criminal libel charges and forty three civil libel suits pending against her. This targeted harassment, chillingly similar to that persisted against Maria Reza, created the condition for Daphne's murder. The government of the Philippines is creating the possibility of a violent attack against Maria and other journalists. And so I must ask, as you return back home in the coming months, how do you process that specter the worst case scenario in which your life is profoundly at risk.

I embrace my fear. Look, the goal of all of this is to make us stop doing our jobs because we're afraid. So for me, in my head, it was really simple. I tried to just imagine what the worst case scenario, and I start with that in the prologue, you know, I imagine that, and then I figure out what I would do in each one, embrace it and defang it, and then I keep going because I think that situations like this where the government attacks journey lists, the goal there is that you self censor, that you mute your journalism, or that you stop doing journalism. And I think that our goal is not to stop, not to change, to keep doing excellent journalism, to build our communities, and to hold our government to account our Mark Zucker depending on how you you know where the accountability journalism lies. And then I guess the last part of it is for Rappler, it's actually quite easy because I think of the worst case scenarios and then I work flow it backwards. This is our management team that does this altogether, right, Like, so a shutdown scenario, what would we do? How do we do this? And then we drill it. Of course, we've had some accidents, like because we do this drill every quarter, and there was an instance where we had a new social media employee and he thought it was real. They bust into the office and we're getting shut down, and turned it on live for our five million Facebook followers, and then of course we had to apologize. But that's also when our public realized that we were drilling a worst case scenario. There's no right and wrong way to handle this. But I think about it like how we live with pollution. It's part of the air you breathe, but you don't let it stop you from walking or running or doing anything. You just keep going.

You know, Maria, I asked a question about you, and of course you ended up talking about everyone else, and I got the sense that you've mapped this out in your head, the logistical spocklike approach, but what about your heart.

It's like planning coverage in a war zone. You know there are dangers, but if you plan well, you plan your way in and you plan your way out. The difference here, of course, is that we're not walking into a conflict area. We're living it. I suppose that I live life as a breaking news reporter, and I'm okay with that. I'm okay living with the uncertainty of it. It's the serenity prayer. The things I can control, I can control, and the things I can't I let go of. It's half of the problem with dealing with fear is your own mind, how you manage your own fear. And that's where I embrace your fear really helps. There is so much at stake, not just for the Philippines, not just for Rappler, but for the world. The data is there, and so I guess that's where I get energy from. And the other part is that I know that whether I go to jail or whether these worst case scenarios happen will depend on how I react now what I do today. And I claim that.

You write in your book that you see your life in ten year chunks ranging from age ten when you're uprooted to the United States Tier fifties, which you said were about reinvention and activism, taking a stand on my most deeply held views. And so next year, as you turn sixty O, yes, how do you hope to define that next decade?

Oh wow, it's so funny. I can't plan anything right now because of the legal cases. But in the next year, what I hope to see is our succession planning kicking in a new generation of younger Raptler leaders. Yes, the manangs, the co founders and I will still be there, will help as much as they want or maybe they don't want. Right that our journalism continues to hold power to account, that the mission of journalism remains alive in the Philippines. Beyond that, it's hard. It's hard to plan. You know, my family, my parents are getting olders. I know I have to take care of them. But I don't know what the sixties are going to be about. The fifties was really wow. I could never have thought about what I had gone through, right, and I'm still doing that Edward Monk painting the scream. When I think about the Nobel Prize, I don't think I did anything that was really outstanding. I just held the line, you know. It is what we were supposed to have done. And I actually think what it did is it proved that doing the right thing is the right thing. Oh man, I don't know what the sixties will be, but I am looking forward to it, you know. But it's hard when you ask me, because it depends on the day. It's a roller coaster, real highs and then reel those and I have to be prepared for anything. I don't want to keep living like this, but I will as long as I have to.

When you were awarded that Nobel Peace Prize in twenty twenty one, it was the first time a journalist won the award since nineteen thirty five, which was then given to a German reporter who couldn't even accept the prize because he was in a concentration camp. Yeah, and yet I want to stick on something specific, which is that in the immediate aftermath of winning that award, you tempered your celebration. He wrote in the book. It was a win and vindication for rapplers, a private moment when we cried, laughed and soared together. Still, I'm suspicious of such emotional releases, and I reminded the team that this could also mean things could get worse in this next decade ahead. I wonder, do you think there will come a time after all the fighting you've done and continue to do, that you will grow less suspicious of such emotional releases.

That's a great question. I don't know that mean, Look, the reason why I felt that is when you release, yes, you become complacent and we're not sure what will happen next. I mean, we could be walking into the next decade of fascism, right you can't let your guard down in conditions like today. I mean, frankly, America, get your act together right like because where America goes in this and twenty twenty four will be such a critical year.

So I don't know.

I mean, I'll respond to your question. Part of it is I am very pragmatic, and I'm only one person, and I kind of am ready for anything. But I know that Rappler will be there, and I know that we will continue doing what we're doing. I don't know where the world is going to go. I don't know whether democracy will fall off the cliff. And when we walk into that time of fascism, it can last a decade or more because this is these are the cycles of history, right. We have allowed illiberal leaders to be elect democratically. When did that happen? Hitler? You know, And it's like back to the future. Certainly for the Philippines, it's back to the future. We have Ferdinand Marcos Junior as our president today, so I'm ready. I guess I also could have PTSD, you know, I think about that as well, but I'm not willing to really. I mean, in a way, writing this book was my release because everyone kept asking where do you find courage?

How do you know?

Why are you optimistic? It is all here. It is layer by layer by layer, the present moment of the past, and if we're aware of all those layers, then we can create a better future. So I guess the time when I can actually really release will be when it feels like we value our freedoms, that we accept that the world as we knew it has been destroyed, and that we are going to create a better world.

I think the answer to the question that people keep asking you, which is where do you find the courage? How do you remain optimistic? I think the answer is in people.

Yes.

And as we close, I thought the only way to end this conversation is with words from another reporter, your late friend Muriel Twink, who we talked about earlier.

Yeah, you know, that was a really tough time for me, and I thought, my gosh, if she can do it, then of course I can. So Twink was dying of cancer. This is one of the last columns she wrote.

This is a woman who saw your mother kidnap you from school at age ten. Yes, who was there for you when you came back to the Philippines after college and walked through that smoky news room and it was here at the end, still fighting alongside you. And here's what she wrote.

Oh my God, dear make me cry. This is from Twink. I look at this world, I am struggling to stay in and feel only despair. The despot Filipinos elected to the presidency has infected the populace with a malignance unmatched by the deadliest of cancers. Both suppress your freedoms. By dint of my disease, my movements have been severely curtailed. I will never run, do Assuria Namascara, play tennis, or cover a news event again. My immune system is so compromised that venturing into a crowded room is a roll of the dice. I cannot stand or sit up for long periods, and my double vision makes writing difficult. In short, practicing journalism, the profession I devoted most of my adult life to, is no longer viable. In a much larger context, du Terta has enfeebled our institutions by populating them with minions who share his low regard for human rights, due process, and what words really mean. These institutions that form part of our nation's immune system should have ensured that our freedoms were protected, instead their party to repressing dissent, demonizing the opposition, and preventing scrutiny by a critical press. The Constitution, the last bastion of our democracy and also a key component of the collective immune system, is in the process of being dismantled. When that goes, all protections, all the freedoms it guarantees, go too. So where is the outrage, Where is the resistance? A weary voice in my head says, don't look at me. I'm dying. I should be excused. I've long made peace with my demise. My last will and testament, handwritten amidst many tears, is in the safe I could give up, succumb surrender, but I won't, no matter how many times I read this, I cry because not fighting would ignore the very real option that still exists. The handful of brave, honorable souls putting their lives on the line on the firm belief that the Filipino people can get better, can choose to get better, deserve better. They represent, if not a cure, the lone path to a cure. Too late for my benefit perhaps, but for the next generation. While family and friends, their family and friends keep praying rosaries for my healing, or send chakras and incantations my way, while my husband continues to move me with his sweetness, and my son doesn't run out of silly jokes, magic tricks, and funny Annik notes of his daily exploits, while the very heart of me, that chamber that stores my conscience and conviction, love and dreams, memory and self respect remains unbreached. I will fight, I will too, in twins memory, rest in peace, my friend. I cry every time I read this.

The line that really, the lines that really get me every time, is because not fighting but ignore the very real option that still exists, the handful of brave, honorable souls putting their lives on the firm belief that the Filipino people can get better, can choose to get better, deserve better. They represent, if not a cure, the lone path to a cure. Too late for my benefit perhaps, but for the next generation.

That's why. And you know she fought battles for me online even as she was writing that this particular one, she had sent me a few drafts before she published it, and it took her a while to write it. Because she she had double vision. Yeah, so look, if someone can do that, I'm lucky.

So in these last two minutes of democracy, as you often say, is it her that keeps you moving forward?

I think it's a combination of everything. You know the fact that until the end she was fighting. But you put that together with the young raptlers who are standing up. Literally, when President Duterta tried to bully our young reporter in front of on nationwide television, she stood up, right. I just hope that the younger generation retains some of the trust that has been so broken in our societies. But I know that they will build. They have to. They have to build better than what they're walking into.

You're right in the book democracy is fragile. You have to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution, every story. You must know how dangerous it is to suffer even the tiniest cut. This is why I say to us all, we must hold the line. And I thank you for holding the line as you have for as long as you have, and I wish you a safe trip back home. Sam. Thank you so much, Maria Ressa. It's been an honor.

We did it, Okay, you have done something completely different from anything I would have expected.

Thank you, and that's our show.

If you enjoyed today's episode, you can leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. Do you want to go above and beyond? Share the show on social media? Tag us at talk Easypod. All of this is really the best way for new listeners to find the program. I want to give a special thanks to speak to the teams at HarperCollins and iHeartMedia. I also want to thank our guest, Maria Ressa. Her new book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator is now available in paperback. To learn more about her and her work, visit our website at talk easypod dot com. If you want to hear more conversations with other great writers, I check out Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky and Zadi Smith to hear those and more Pushkin podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy or vinyl record with fran Leibowitz, you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is chu Nick Subravo. Our associate producer is Kitlyn Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Kitlyn Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christoshenoy. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Garret gaberzek Ian Jones and Ethan Sinica. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Schnars, Kerrie Brody, Eric Sander, Jordan McMillan, Kira Posey, Tara Machado, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to another episode of Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with Willem Dafell. Until then, stay safe and so long.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, activists, and 
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