Maria Ressa is a journalist from the Philippines who has been awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021. Along with journalist Maria Ressa a Russian Editor named Dmitry Muratov also received the award.
Maria Ressa is a 58 years old Filipino-American journalist and author. She has worked as a lead investigative reporter in Southeast Asia for CNN and currently she is the CEO and the co-founder of the website ‘Rappler’. In an interview with ‘The Hindu’ she mentioned the struggles in her way.
When she was asked what she thinks about the Nobel Peace Committee intentions after sending this award to a journalist after 1935, she answered:
That it is that kind of moment, you know, that it is an existential moment, where, what happened after 1935, you had the Second World War. And I use that analogy all the time, because I always say that our information ecosystem, it's like an atom bomb exploded. And we need to come together globally and find a solution, much like the world did after Second World War, they created the U.N., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, right, these values, because I got to say, I keep asking for “tech values”, beyond making money, and [for tech companies] to take the role of being the gatekeeper to the public sphere seriously. I will also say: this prize is for all journalists. I feel like I'm the placeholder for every journalist around the world who has found it so hard to just do their jobs. And I keep hoping that this creative destruction will lead us to a place that is better than where we are.
Next she was asked about the threats on the journalist, Both Philippines and India are on the list of Top 10 countries where journalists have been killed or targeted. For journalists, the growing threat is coming from democratically elected, populist, and increasingly authoritarian regimes worldwide. What do you think led to the rise of populism?
She answered, “Technology! were always there, if you see that Hitler and others were elected democratically, but I go back to the past decade where journalists lost our gatekeeping powers technology. And, globally I would say the first time we saw different realities being put out was in Ukraine, for example, by Russian military led information systems or in the [Indian election campaign] in 2014. We saw that the use of social media leads to an erosion of trust in [mainstream media]. When citizens are being manipulated by parties on social media, they begin to distrust everything. This year an Oxford University research ‘Project on Computational Propaganda’ found that these “cheap armies on social media” are rolling back democracy in 81 countries around the world.
The hard part is that it manipulates our biology. As human beings, we have a lot more in common than we realise because the very same platforms are using algorithmic manipulation in order to change what we think, to change how we feel. According to one biologist who studied this behaviour, our greatest crisis comes from “palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technology”. The technology is God-like because social media has become a behaviour modification system. And with a lack of accountability, and the potential to make significant amounts of money, it is a business model that takes our data and uses it to manipulate us.”
Then, she was asked about her journey of fighting the strongman leader President Duterte which lead up to her arrest in 2019.
“In the Philippines, President Duterte was democratically elected, but like many of these digital authoritarians, once he was President, he then took the levers of power and changed it from within. We have seen at least 19 journalists killed during his administration, 63 lawyers, over 400 human rights activists, and then he had this very bloody drug war. Our first battle for truth was, just to collate how many people had died, because the police would give one figure and then they would roll it back. In 2012, we set up Rappler with 20 young employees. One of the things that had begun to alarm was that how anyone who questioned the drug war was just pounded on social media. So the first thing we exposed was [the government’s] information operations, we showed our people the data of how they were being manipulated online. I wrote a series called “Weaponizing the Internet”, on how Social media algorithms impact a person. Then we looked at manufactured reality and how just 26 fake accounts could reach up to three million users via social media.
I have to say, I didn't expect to get arrested. I didn't expect 10 arrest warrants in less than two years. But we just kept doing what we were doing. The four of us, the co-founders of Rappler, have this pact that only one of us is allowed to be afraid at one time, and then we rotate that” Ressa said.
At last she gave some suggestions for the new generation joining the path.
She said, “The first thing is that journalists, news organisations must move from the age when we were competing against each other. We're on the same side. When it's a battle for facts, we are on the same side, and especially on social media. In a battle for facts, collaboration is the way forward. This is an amazing time to be a journalist, because the mission has never been as important as it is today.”
Complete interview: