Philippine Nobel Peace Prize winner and veteran journalist Maria Ressa has battled multiple legal cases and online abuse in her campaign for press freedom.
The former CNN correspondent co-founded investigative news site Rappler in 2012, bringing together multimedia reporting and social media savvy to offer an edgy take on Philippine current events.
Ressa, 58, has been a vocal critic of former president Rodrigo Duterte and the deadly drug war he launched in 2016, drawing what media advocates describe as a grinding series of criminal charges, probes and online attacks against her and Rappler.
She was named a Time Person of the Year in 2018 for her work on press freedom, but a series of arrests and a conviction for cyber libel further grew her international profile.
In October, Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to “safeguard freedom of expression”.
Rappler has had to fight for survival after Duterte’s government accused it of tax evasion and violating a constitutional ban on foreign ownership.
Days before Duterte stepped down on June 30, Philippine authorities ordered the news organisation to shut down.
Though Duterte’s government said it had nothing to do with any of the cases against Ressa, press freedom advocates disagreed.
Throughout the campaign against her, Ressa, who is also a US citizen, has remained based in the Philippines and continued to speak out against Duterte’s government despite the risks.
“What we have to do as journalists is just hold the line,” she said after the Nobel Prize was announced.
Ressa has been on bail pending her appeal against the 2020 cyber libel conviction. On Friday, Rappler said she and a former colleague had lost the case and were considering their legal options.
It is one of seven cases she is fighting.
The cyber libel law was introduced in 2012, the same year Rappler was founded.
Threats and abuse
Ressa’s position at the head of the Rappler news site meant getting, by her own estimate, up to 90 abusive online messages per hour at one point towards the end of 2016.
The threats came in the months after Duterte took power and launched his narcotics crackdown, which rights groups estimate has killed tens of thousands of people.
Rappler was among the domestic and foreign media outlets that published shocking images of the killings and questioned the crackdown’s legal basis.
International Criminal Court judges have since authorised a full-blown investigation into a possible crime against humanity during the bloody campaign.
It was an entirely new set of dangers for Ressa, who was a veteran of conflict zones before co-founding Rappler.
As CNN’s former bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta, Ressa specialised in terrorism, where she tracked the links between global networks like Al-Qaeda and militants in Southeast Asia.
The Princeton graduate later returned to the Philippines to serve as news chief at the nation’s top broadcaster, ABS-CBN, which also fell foul of the Duterte administration.
Duterte has been succeeded by the son and namesake of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
After last week’s order for Rappler to shut down, Ressa remained characteristically defiant.
“We continue to work, it is business as usual,” Ressa said.
