Maria Ressa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and co-founder of Rappler.com, discusses her long career in journalism, from the People Power Revolution that drove Ferdinand Marcos from power to the rise of demagogic populism that brought his son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., back to the presidency. In this searching conversation, Ressa explains the repression of free journalism in the Philippines, the rise of misinformation and fake news, the complicity of massive online platforms like Facebook, and the ghastly toll of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. Ressa sat down with the Better Tomorrow Speaker Series for this interview while she was in Honolulu for the East-West Center’s International Media Conference. Interviewer: Robert Perkinson
Journalist Maria Ressa is co-founder of Rappler.com and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in the Philippines, Maria grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Princeton University. She got her start in journalism during the People Power Revolution of 1986 and reported for CNN from 1987 to 2005, serving as bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta. She is the author of two books on terrorism in Southeast Asia and How to Stand up to a Dictator (2022). For her resilience in the face of repression, Maria was named one of Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year and one of the Most Influential Women of the Century. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize and the Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. Rappler’s work on truth and democracy is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, A Thousand Cuts (2020).