Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa wears a bracelet her high school teacher gave her that’s inscribed with a quote from William Shakespeare: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”
Petite in stature, Ressa’s courage to stand against autocracy and social media platforms that spread misinformation is immense.
Ressa, 58, delivered the opening keynote address Tuesday at the 2022 East-West Center International Media Conference at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, where she encouraged fellow journalists to unite in their battle for truth and democracy in a world where “lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts.”
“It takes courage to stand up, and we must,” Ressa said.
Nearly 300 journalists from 35 countries are in Hawaii for the three-day conference. This year’s theme is “Connecting in a Zero-Trust World.”
“This conference really is central to our mission of the East-West Center and our vision and our priorities,” said East-West Center President Suzanne Vares-Lum in her welcoming remarks.
Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her courage in protecting freedom of expression and exposing abuse of power. She is the first-ever Filipino and first working journalist in more than 80 years to win the honor.
In 2012 she co-founded and is chief executive officer of Rappler, a news website that has reported extensively on the thousands of extrajudicial killings in President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody anti-drug crackdown, which has drawn international condemnation.
Ressa was convicted of libel and has remained free on bail while the case is on appeal.
Born in Manila, Ressa immigrated with her family to Toms River, N.J., in 1973, a year after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. declared martial law. She graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in English and certificates in theater and dance.
Ressa returned to the Philippines under a Fulbright fellowship in 1986, where she began her career as a journalist, working at various news organizations that included ABS-CBN and CNN.
During her speech Tuesday, Ressa announced that the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission had reaffirmed its previous order to revoke the certificates of incorporation of Rappler Inc. and Rappler Holdings Corp. The commission revoked Rappler’s license over what it ruled was a breach of the ban on foreign ownership and control of media outlets.
“We’re not shutting down,” Ressa said. “Well, I’m not supposed to say that.”
“We are entitled to appeal this decision and will do so, especially since the proceedings were highly irregular,” she added. “We will adapt, adjust, survive and thrive.”
Ressa urged journalists and society to band together to build “a person-to-person defense of democracy.”
Ansgar Graw, director of the Singaporean-based Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung foundation’s Media Programme Asia, a co-host of the conference, expressed the same sentiment, telling attendees, “Our democracy is under attack.”
“Journalists are dearly needed in a world full of crises. We must be the messengers of facts and fair interpreters and analysts,” he said.
During a discussion on “Building Trust in Newsrooms and on Social Media,” panelist Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, addressed digital media manipulation.
“We are devolving into a society that seeks information and not the curation and cultivation of facts,” she said.
She urged journalists to work together to amplify facts at a time when autocrats and authoritarians are trying to shut down journalists as a consequence of freedom of speech.
“We are stronger together than any of our organizations are alone,” Donovan said.
“We have a right to truth,” she added. “We have to demand more from these platform companies and have to demand it as a global human right. I see Maria as the forefront of that fight. We all have to do it together, and we have to stand together and be loud about it.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
