Maria Ressa - How to Stand Up to a Dictator

S ince the pandemic lockdown began in March 2020, I have been far more emotional than I had ever allowed myself to be. I feel the pent-up anger at the injustice I have no choice but to accept. Thats what six years of government attacks have done.

I may go to jail. For the rest of my lifeor, as my lawyer tells me, for more than a hundred years. On charges that should never even have made it to court. The breakdown of the rule of law is global, but it has become, for me, personal. In less than two years, the Philippine government issued ten arrest warrants against me.

I could also be a target of violence. Would the police, my government be stupid enough to target me? Well, yes. The Philippines Commission on Human Rights estimated that about twenty-seven thousand people were killed in less than three years of ex-president Rodrigo Dutertes brutal drug war, from 2016 to 2018. True? Who knows? That statistic is the first casualty in my countrys battle for truth. In 2018, I began wearing a bulletproof vest on the road.

Online violence is real-world violence. That has been proven by so much research and so many tragic events around the world. I am targeted online every day, along with thousands of other journalists, activists, opposition leaders, and unsuspecting citizens here and around the globe.

Yet when I wake up and look out the window, I am energized. I have hope. I see the possibilitieshow, despite the darkness, this is also a time when we can rebuild our societies, starting with whats right in front of us: our areas of influence.

The world we once knew is decimated. Now we have to decide what we want to create.

M y name is Maria Ressa. I have been a journalist for more than thirty-six years. I was born in the Philippines, was raised and educated in New Jersey, and returned to my native country after college in the late 1980s. I made my career at CNN, creating and running two bureaus in Southeast Asia during the 1990s. It was the glory days of CNN and a heady time for international journalists. From my perch in Southeast Asia, I was an eyewitness to dramatic events that often foreshadowed what would happen around the world: emerging democratic movements in former colonial outposts, the terrifying rise of Islamic terrorism well before 9/11, a new class of democratically elected strongmen who would turn their countries into quasi dictatorships, and the stunning promise and power of social media, which would soon play a pivotal role in tearing down everything I hold dear.

In 2012, I cofounded Rappler, a digital-only news website in the Philippines. My ambition was to create a new standard of investigative journalism in my country, one that would harness the social media platforms to build communities of action for better governance and stronger democracies. At the time, I was the truest of true believers in the power of social media to do good in the world. Using Facebook and other platforms, we were able to crowdsource breaking news, find pivotal sources and tips, harness collective action for climate change and good governance, and help increase voter knowledge and participation in our elections. We were a fast success, but by Rapplers fifth year of existence, we had gone from being lauded for our ideas to being targeted by our governmentall because we continued to do our jobs as journalists: to tell the truth and hold power to account.

At Rappler, we exposed corruption and manipulation not only in government but increasingly in the technology companies that were already dominating our lives. Starting in 2016, we began highlighting impunity on two fronts: President Rodrigo Dutertes drug war and Mark Zuckerbergs Facebook.

Let me tell you why the rest of the world needs to pay attention to what happens in the Philippines: 2021 was the sixth year in a row that Filipinosout of all global citizensspent the most time on the internet and on social media. Despite slow internet speeds, Filipinos uploaded and downloaded the largest number of videos on YouTube in 2013. Four years later, 97 percent of our countrys citizens were on Facebook. When I told that statistic to Mark Zuckerberg in 2017, he was quiet for a beat. Wait, Maria, he finally responded, looking directly at me, where are the other three percent?