Filipino journalist reflects on Nobel Prize win at Harvard

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Investigative writer Maria Ressa, of the Philippines, speaks with a newsman from The Associated Press, during an interrogation astatine the Kennedy School of Government connected the field of Harvard University, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, successful Cambridge, Mass. Ressa, co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, spoke connected issues including property state during the interview. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – One period since she was named the archetypal Filipino to win the Nobel Peace Prize, writer Maria Ressa says overmuch inactive remains uncertain astir her life.

Will her conflict against a libel suit successful the Philippines pb to jailhouse time? Will she beryllium capable to question to Norway to judge her prestigious grant adjacent month? When is the adjacent clip she’ll beryllium capable to spot her family?

“You cognize the coating The Scream?” Ressa said Tuesday evening, holding her hands to her look and mock-bellowing into the existential void similar the famed Edvard Munch work. “I aftermath up each time similar that.”

“I don’t cognize wherever it volition lead,” she continued during an interrogation astatine Harvard University successful Cambridge, Massachusetts, soon earlier delivering the university’s annual Salant Lecture connected Freedom of the Press. “But I cognize that if we support doing our task, staying connected mission, holding the line, that there’s a amended accidental that our ideology not lone survives, but that I besides enactment retired of jail. Because I’ve done thing incorrect but beryllium a journalist, and that is the terms we person to pay. I privation it wasn’t me, but it is.”

The 58-year-old co-founder of Rappler, a Manila-based quality website, said it wasn’t mislaid connected her that her Harvard code came conscionable hours aft American writer Danny Fenster’s emotional reunion with household successful New York pursuing his negotiated merchandise from military-ruled Myanmar, wherever he’d spent six months successful jailhouse for his work.

“It shows however it crumbles fast. The crushed we’re connected is quicksand,” she said. “Power tin bash what it wants.”

Ressa worries astir what adjacent year’s elections successful the Philippines, U.S. and elsewhere volition bring.

She assailed American societal media companies for failing to enactment arsenic gatekeepers arsenic misinformation continues to proliferate virtually unchecked crossed their platforms, allowing repressive regimes similar those successful Myanmar and elsewhere to thrive and endanger antiauthoritarian institutions.

“If you don’t person facts, you can’t person truth. You can’t person trust. You don’t person a shared reality,” she said. “So however bash we lick these existential problems — the emergence of fascism, coronavirus, clime alteration — if we don’t hold connected the facts? This is fundamental.”

Ressa, who on with co-winner and Russian writer Dmitry Muratov became the first moving journalists successful much than 80 years to triumph the Nobel Peace Prize, is wrapping up a monthlong stint arsenic a visiting chap astatine Harvard.

She says she’s looking guardant to visiting her parents successful Florida for Thanksgiving adjacent week earlier heading backmost to the Philippines. It marks the archetypal clip since she’s been retired of the state since being convicted past summer of libel and sentenced to jailhouse successful a determination seen arsenic a major blow to property state globally.

Ressa has remained escaped connected bail portion that lawsuit is connected appeal, but faces up to six years successful prison, not to notation a bid of different progressive ineligible cases against her.

Before this month’s trip, she had a fig of different question requests denied by Philippine courts, including 1 she says was to sojourn her ailing mother. Ressa volition besides person to get tribunal support to be the Nobel Prize grant ceremonial successful Oslo, Norway, connected Dec. 10.

“It’s similar decease by a 1000 cuts,” said Ressa, who was calved successful Manila but raised mostly successful the U.S, earlier moving backmost to the Philippines and launching a journalism career. “You don’t cognize however escaped you are until you statesman to suffer your freedom, oregon you person to inquire radical for your freedoms.”

At Harvard, Ressa has been gathering with module and students, giving talks and doing probe connected a forthcoming book.

She co-founded Rappler successful 2012, and the website rapidly gained notoriety for its reporting connected President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody, yearslong crackdown connected amerciable drugs. The quality enactment has besides documented however societal media is being utilized to dispersed fake news, harass opponents and manipulate nationalist discourse.

During Tuesday’s lecture, which Ressa gave remotely from her edifice country owed to a imaginable COVID-19 vulnerability related to the field event, she besides reflected connected the toll connected her idiosyncratic life.

In the Philippines, she’d taken to wearing a bulletproof vest astatine times successful public, and pleaded with Facebook to delete convulsive posts against her arsenic decease threats mounted.

For pistillate journalists successful particular, Ressa said, attacks connected societal media rapidly go menacing. Among astir fractional a cardinal online attacks she’s received, immoderate 60% were against her credibility portion 40% were much idiosyncratic and “meant to teardrop down my spirit," she said.

“There are moments erstwhile you go, ‘Why?’ Why does it request this much?” Ressa said. “But the outgo of not doing the close happening is acold greater than the consequences for 1 person.”

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