Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm student Forgoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show today our conversation with journalist, activist, and author
Speaker 1: Maria Ressa. Maria was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one for her work at the Rappler, a
Speaker 1: Filipino news publication as she founded back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: In the intervening decade, Maria has been come the face
Speaker 1: of the free press in the Philippines as she's worked
Speaker 1: to expose the abuses of power and growing authoritarianism under
Speaker 1: former President Rodrigo thu Terte. Since twenty eighteen, the Filipino
Speaker 1: government has brought twenty three cases against Russa and Rappler.
Speaker 1: At the time of recording this conversation last year, a
Speaker 1: conviction could have led to nearly one hundred years in prison,
Speaker 1: but thankfully, just this past fall, Ressa was acquitted on
Speaker 1: the last of five tax evasion cases filed against her,
Speaker 1: and what has since been hailed as a win for
Speaker 1: press freedom. It's a rare victory in a line of
Speaker 1: work that's been under assault for quite some time. According
Speaker 1: to the CPJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists three one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty three reporters were deprived of their freedom
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, a twenty percent uptick from twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Across the globe, from Iran and China to
Speaker 1: Turkey and Belarus. Authoritarian governments have increasingly tried and succeeded
Speaker 1: to stifle the media, to suppress and then ultimately criminalize
Speaker 1: the truth. But the attack on reporters extends beyond nasty
Speaker 1: rhetoric or obstruction or even harassment. According to the CPJ,
Speaker 1: the first thirty days of the Israel Gods of War
Speaker 1: is quote the deadliest month for journalists since they began
Speaker 1: documenting journalists fatalities in nineteen ninety two. I should just
Speaker 1: read that again. This past month is the deadliest month
Speaker 1: for journalists and media workers since the CPJA began documenting
Speaker 1: fatalities in nineteen ninety two. At least sixty one media
Speaker 1: workers were among the sixteen thousand killed since the war
Speaker 1: began on October seventh, and those are just the reporters
Speaker 1: on the ground that have been counted. God knows how
Speaker 1: many there are or will be discovered in the coming months.
Speaker 1: For many, including our guest today, this is quite literally
Speaker 1: a matter of life or death, and so this week
Speaker 1: I wanted to replay this urgent, timely conversation with Maria.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about the splintering effects of social media,
Speaker 1: her relentless commitment to the truth, her brave commitment to
Speaker 1: the truth, and of course her book How to stand
Speaker 1: Up to a Dictator, which, in this moment can I
Speaker 1: either be read as an elegy for democracy or a
Speaker 1: clarion call to preserve it. I'll leave that last part
Speaker 1: up to you. We will be back next Sunday with
Speaker 1: a new episode, but until then, here is my conversation
Speaker 1: with journalist, activist and author Maria Ressa. Maria Ressa, it's
Speaker 1: an honor to stay with you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I want to start with the prologue of your excellent
Speaker 1: new book, How to stand Up to a Dictator, in
Speaker 1: which you write some days I feel like Sisyphus and
Speaker 1: Cassandra combined, trying to repeatedly warn the world about how
Speaker 1: social media has destroyed our shared reality, the place where
Speaker 1: democracy happens. So to start, are you feeling like those
Speaker 1: two people today?
Speaker 2: Especially today? It's strangely enough, because it's an up and
Speaker 2: down day. But yes, you know in the book, I
Speaker 2: really lay out how we saw it coming, how we
Speaker 2: lived through it. And I think early in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: people just thought I was crazy. And these are the journalists, right,
Speaker 2: They're like, it's not going to happen to us, Maria,
Speaker 2: we're television stations, you know.
Speaker 1: But it did.
Speaker 2: And then of course I remember the end of twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen saying what is in California in one of the
Speaker 2: tech companies. I said, you know, what is happening to
Speaker 2: us is coming for you? This is really alarming. And
Speaker 2: then I started pulling out data and I'm still saying
Speaker 2: the same thing today and you're listening. So I suppose
Speaker 2: that's a good thing. But I feel like we have
Speaker 2: wasted so much time. Hope we're not too late.
Speaker 1: How and where have we wasted time?
Speaker 2: So our information ecosystem today has an incentive structure that
Speaker 2: rewards lies over really boring facts, and so you'll have
Speaker 2: greater distribution if you lie, and you'll have even greater
Speaker 2: distribution if you lie, and then make people afraid, angry
Speaker 2: or hate if you do us against them. And then
Speaker 2: I think since twenty sixteen, this lack of facts, because
Speaker 2: if you say a lie a million times, it becomes
Speaker 2: a fact, So people can't tell the difference when you
Speaker 2: have no facts. And this is the part where I
Speaker 2: feel like Cassandra and Sisiphus combined. If you have no facts,
Speaker 2: you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust.
Speaker 2: Without these three, we have no shared reality. We can't
Speaker 2: solve any problem, we cannot have democracy. And then if
Speaker 2: you think about you know trust, because this is the
Speaker 2: glue that holds everything together. George Schultz, who was one
Speaker 2: hundred years old, right, he said that what is the
Speaker 2: biggest lesson you learned as a diplomat? And he said
Speaker 2: one thing. He said, when you have trust in the room,
Speaker 2: everything is possible. Without trust, nothing is possible. That's where
Speaker 2: we are well.
Speaker 1: Not to put you in a Sisapian corner, but Lee,
Speaker 1: I want to grapple with what you've called in the
Speaker 1: Guardian as world War three warfare being waged against every
Speaker 1: individual across these social media platforms. What specifically did you
Speaker 1: mean by that?
Speaker 2: Okay, so follow the thing if we have no facts, right, So,
Speaker 2: one of the things the public sphere always talks about
Speaker 2: how this is a free speech issue, how we shouldn't
Speaker 2: be censoring content. And yet my experience and the data
Speaker 2: that we gathered because I came under attack, actually showed
Speaker 2: that free speech was being used to silence free speech
Speaker 2: information operations. So you say a lie a million times,
Speaker 2: you pound your target to silence. That was what I
Speaker 2: had lived through with almost an average of ninety hate
Speaker 2: messages per hour. So what we lived through was in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen when Rodrigo du Terta was elected. Leading up
Speaker 2: to that, we began to see that anyone who questioned
Speaker 2: this brutal drug war of do Tereta was pummeled on
Speaker 2: social media to the point that people started staying quiet. Right,
Speaker 2: so you pounded the narrative out. There seemed to be
Speaker 2: an acceptance and a longing for this drug war. And
Speaker 2: yet what we saw through the data that these were
Speaker 2: information operations. This was meant to astro turf, to manufacture reality.
Speaker 2: And we started in twenty sixteen by looking at twenty
Speaker 2: six fake accounts. Well we didn't know they were fake,
Speaker 2: it was just they behaved together. It was suspicious because
Speaker 2: they followed more groups than they had friends. We took
Speaker 2: everything that they said they were, you know, where they worked,
Speaker 2: where they grew up, where they went to school, what
Speaker 2: they did, and then we put it on an Excel
Speaker 2: sheet twenty six accounts, and they were all following each other,
Speaker 2: and then we had a reporter go over every single one.
Speaker 2: Everything that was stated on those twenty six fake accounts
Speaker 2: was a lie. And then we thought, okay, so this
Speaker 2: is what you would call a sock puppet network. It's
Speaker 2: a puppet. It's a sock puppet. And then we thought,
Speaker 2: all right, let's figure out how many accounts it can influence.
Speaker 2: So we manually counted that, and wanted to manually count
Speaker 2: because I don't trust the machine right a baseline, And
Speaker 2: it took three months to get that. But that sockpuppet
Speaker 2: network of twenty six fake accounts could influence touch NUTCH
Speaker 2: at least three million others. So that was the third
Speaker 2: part of a three part weaponization of the Internet series
Speaker 2: that really triggered the attacks against us. And that's when
Speaker 2: I began to think, oh my god, this is going
Speaker 2: to get significantly worse.
Speaker 1: You said earlier that lies spread six times faster than
Speaker 1: the truth in the intervening six years since you published
Speaker 1: that series you mentioned from twenty sixteen. Do you think
Speaker 1: the truth has caught up the lies?
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. So think about it like a virus
Speaker 2: of lies.
Speaker 1: After the last couple of years. Yeah, I'd rather.
Speaker 2: Not, I know, but I actually started using a virus
Speaker 2: because it's epidemiological, yes, the spread of it, right, So
Speaker 2: most of the time people will look at it through
Speaker 2: political lenses. But that is only the last of the
Speaker 2: cascading failure.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's these algorithms of distribution choices that were made by
Speaker 2: the tech companies that were governed by a profit motive,
Speaker 2: which is to keep you scrolling so that the company
Speaker 2: can make more money. As they keep you scrolling, your
Speaker 2: emotions are triggered because that's what keeps you scrolling. Fear, anger, hate,
Speaker 2: and then you shift your worldview, and because you change
Speaker 2: your worldviews, you change the way you act in the
Speaker 2: real world. A perfect example is January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: The same methodology bottom up social media operations, information operations.
Speaker 2: Then it comes top down and the timeline is roughly
Speaker 2: the same as what happened to me, you know, the
Speaker 2: idea of election fraud and this is worked by the
Speaker 2: Election Integrity Partnership. It was seeded a year earlier on
Speaker 2: RT not surprising, then mainstreamed and it didn't come top
Speaker 2: down from President Trump until a year later, and then
Speaker 2: violence on Capitol Hill that this country has never seen.
Speaker 2: I was watching it from the Philippines, and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god. We warned them it was coming. This
Speaker 2: is Silicon Valley. Since coming home to Roost, I wish
Speaker 2: it hadn't happened, but I was hoping that this would
Speaker 2: then trigger a greater response, a faster response.
Speaker 1: It sounds like what you're saying is that the truth
Speaker 1: may very well remain elusive, And while it may remain
Speaker 1: elusive on the Internet, we try our best on this
Speaker 1: show to get to the heart of it. So I
Speaker 1: want to go back a little bit.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: You're born October second, nineteen sixty three, in a wooden
Speaker 1: house in the Philippines. The next year, your father passes
Speaker 1: away in a car accident, leaving you and your mother,
Speaker 1: who is pregnant at the time, with your sister alone.
Speaker 1: Come nineteen sixty nine, your mother leaves for the US,
Speaker 1: as you and your sister move into a home on
Speaker 1: Times Street in Metro Manila with your paternal grandmother, Rosario.
Speaker 1: But come November nineteen seventy three, at age ten, while
Speaker 1: sitting in a classroom at your Catholic all girls' school.
Speaker 1: Your life changes in an instant, and I thought we'd
Speaker 1: start here by reading a passage from your book.
Speaker 2: Ah, this is why you wanted me to bring the book. Okay.
Speaker 2: All that ended the day my mother kidnapped my sister
Speaker 2: and me from school. It seemed like any other day
Speaker 2: when I entered the classroom, sharp rays of sun streaming
Speaker 2: through the windows. I put down my school bag and
Speaker 2: lifted the lid of my wooden desk. Then I heard
Speaker 2: a voice call my name, mary Anne. Only my family
Speaker 2: called me that, a contraction of my two names, Maria Anghilita.
Speaker 2: I turned around and shocked to see my mother with
Speaker 2: the school principal, sister Grasha, at the front of the classroom.
Speaker 2: They approached my desk and helped me put everything back
Speaker 2: into my bag. As we walked out, I looked back
Speaker 2: at all my friends staring at me. We proceeded to
Speaker 2: my sister's class room. She was waiting outside with my
Speaker 2: mother's sister, Mansi Milionado, and another teacher. None. When she
Speaker 2: saw our mother, Mary Jane ran to hug her. By
Speaker 2: that time, we were the only ones in the hallway.
Speaker 2: Mary Jane and Mom were both crying. Then I heard
Speaker 2: my mother mumble under her breath that she was going
Speaker 2: to take us to America. I remember looking around the
Speaker 2: school at that point and instinctively knowing that nothing would
Speaker 2: ever be the same again. In moments like that, you
Speaker 2: look for anchors. Mine was the library book in my
Speaker 2: bag that would be overdue the next day, as we
Speaker 2: were walking to the gate, I stopped in the middle
Speaker 2: of the courtyard, pointed to the library and asked my
Speaker 2: mom if we could return my book. She said, let's
Speaker 2: do it another day. A car was parked by the
Speaker 2: sidewalk and we got in. As soon as we got settled,
Speaker 2: my mom introduced us to the man in the front
Speaker 2: passenger seat, Mary Ann Mary Jane. She said, this is
Speaker 2: your new father. Yeah, that was weird to write this down.
Speaker 1: Why was that weird?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of those things that you live
Speaker 2: through that your family doesn't talk about. That time period,
Speaker 2: it was sliding doors for me. One day we were
Speaker 2: in Manila, it was one reality. I spoke Filipino Bagalog,
Speaker 2: and then the next day, within two weeks, we were
Speaker 2: on a flight flying over Alaska. The first time we
Speaker 2: saw snow because we refueled there and then we landed
Speaker 2: at JFK Airport and drove to what would become our
Speaker 2: new home, Tom's River, New Jersey. I never went back
Speaker 2: until I finished college.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that college student, I want to
Speaker 1: understand those values as you came to understand them. When
Speaker 1: you're at Silver Bay Elementary School. You enter at four
Speaker 1: feet two inches, the shortest kid in the classroom and
Speaker 1: the only brown one. But within those early years you
Speaker 1: learned three valuable lessons. What were those? Oh?
Speaker 2: I always go back to those three, and they've gained
Speaker 2: more meaning over time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The first one was I was put into third grade,
Speaker 2: so I walked into the third grade class. My teacher
Speaker 2: was Miss Jugland, who, after a few weeks then said,
Speaker 2: you know, wait, you should really go to grade four.
Speaker 2: And I didn't want to because I was just starting
Speaker 2: to get used to my classmates. I was getting used
Speaker 2: to the class and she said, no, no, no, Maria.
Speaker 2: You know you have to always make the choice to learn,
Speaker 2: and you have nothing more to learn in my classroom.
Speaker 2: That's lesser number one. So through my life I make
Speaker 2: the choice to learn, and lesson number two is something
Speaker 2: that stayed with me until today. Embrace your fear. And
Speaker 2: this was the strangest way that I learned it. You know,
Speaker 2: immigrant kid coming in. When I go into fourth grade,
Speaker 2: I'm invited to a pajama party. I asked my mom,
Speaker 2: I want to go. So what's a pajama party. It's
Speaker 2: a party. You wear pajamas too, right, Mom nods her head. So,
Speaker 2: you know, we get in the car and then I
Speaker 2: wear my pajamas. It's like three or four in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: And then when we're rounding the cul de sac where
Speaker 2: I could see where my classmates were, they were playing
Speaker 2: kickball outside and they were not wearing pajamas and they
Speaker 2: saw me, and Dad stopped and I went, you know,
Speaker 2: I looked at my mom. I was like, Mom, they're
Speaker 2: not wearing pajamas, and Mom, you know mom's also an immigrant.
Speaker 2: Mom said, oh, I thought that's what it meant. Dad
Speaker 2: stops the car, and then Sharon, who was the person
Speaker 2: whose party it was, I came to the door. I
Speaker 2: opened the door. That's what courage meant to be at
Speaker 2: that point, right, I'm opening the door and taking my
Speaker 2: bag and Sharon goes in and I said, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I thought I was supposed to wear pajamas, and I
Speaker 2: was just about to cry. And then Sharon looks at
Speaker 2: me and says, you have something to change into and
Speaker 2: I said yeah. She said okay. She takes the bag
Speaker 2: and brings me inside the house and I got out
Speaker 2: of the car. I guess that was it. It's like,
Speaker 2: you can't duck, you don't hide, you get out of
Speaker 2: the car, and then you move forward and brace your
Speaker 2: fear right and you just kind of have to trust
Speaker 2: that someone will be there and when it's your turn,
Speaker 2: you had better be there for someone else. That's a
Speaker 2: lesson from fourth grade at that point.
Speaker 1: And then the.
Speaker 2: Last one is, actually you could change the title of
Speaker 2: the book. It's how to stand up to a bully
Speaker 2: in the end. That's what a dictator is. So there
Speaker 2: was this girl, let's call her Debbie, that's what I
Speaker 2: used in the book, who was always being bullied and
Speaker 2: it was for the strangest reason that I didn't understand.
Speaker 2: It's because she wore polyester pants. And at one point
Speaker 2: we were in the orchestra room. I played the violin,
Speaker 2: she played the fiola, and I just saw her crying
Speaker 2: in a corner. So I walked outside, but I was like,
Speaker 2: she's crying, So I walked to the bathroom, got a
Speaker 2: tissue and then brought it back to her and I
Speaker 2: asked her, why are you wearing polyester pants? And it
Speaker 2: turns out this is how we became friends, because it's cheap,
Speaker 2: and her dad was in the hospital, and so I
Speaker 2: started kind of hanging out with her and standing up
Speaker 2: for her. And there was a point later on where
Speaker 2: the bully who kept pummeling her started to turn on me,
Speaker 2: and then my friends stood up against him. That's how
Speaker 2: you stand up to a bully, You stand up to
Speaker 2: a dictator. Right, You do what's right, and then you
Speaker 2: hope others will follow.
Speaker 1: So you take those three big lessons and bring them
Speaker 1: with you to high school as you excel academically through extracurriculars.
Speaker 1: But as you're leaving high school you seem to have
Speaker 1: a kind of identity crisis. You write in the book.
Speaker 1: Something I didn't grasp until later was that I was
Speaker 1: sublimating my negative emotions like anger.
Speaker 2: I hate that you read the book by the way,
Speaker 2: you know, Okay, go ahead, sorry, I'll shut up.
Speaker 1: I'm doing exactly what you would do for me if
Speaker 1: the roles were reversed.
Speaker 2: Yes, I hope.
Speaker 1: So you're sitting there like, no, I wouldn't read your book.
Speaker 2: No, I would, of course read your book.
Speaker 1: Here's the rest of your quote. I could never shake
Speaker 1: the feeling that I was on the outside looking in,
Speaker 1: trying to understand what was happening so I could fit in.
Speaker 1: Looking back, now, how do you make sense of that sublimation?
Speaker 2: I think I felt the need to prove that I
Speaker 2: belonged there. You know, that was the first step, and
Speaker 2: I think that was that devil on my shoulder that
Speaker 2: kept driving me to excel, to be as good as
Speaker 2: I can be. I also justified that to myself though,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's okay, right, you try to do the
Speaker 2: best that you can. But I learned to be okay
Speaker 2: with it, to be on the outside looking in, and
Speaker 2: it turned out to be great training for being a journalist,
Speaker 2: not to be part of it, but to understand what
Speaker 2: was going on and then to see how I can
Speaker 2: take it forward.
Speaker 1: But in some ways, that anger that you were sublimating. Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: I want to hold on that because it would follow
Speaker 1: you in college. Yeah, when you took a playwriting course
Speaker 1: studying at Princeton, your boyfriend at the time, because of this,
Speaker 1: suggested that you read Alice Miller's The Drama of the
Speaker 1: Gifted Child, The Search for True Self. And there's a
Speaker 1: passage in there that you quote in the book that
Speaker 1: seems especially formative for you, So I thought maybe we'd
Speaker 1: read that, all right.
Speaker 2: My boyfriend urged me to read Alice Miller's The Drama
Speaker 2: of the Gifted Child The Search for the True Self,
Speaker 2: from which I gained a key insight that there are
Speaker 2: successful people who, because of their childhood experiences, learned to
Speaker 2: suppress their emotions as long as their life is peppered
Speaker 2: with achievements. And this is a quote, they do well,
Speaker 2: even excellently, in everything they undertake. They are admired and envied.
Speaker 2: They are successful whenever they care to be, Miller wrote,
Speaker 2: But behind all this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness
Speaker 2: and self alienation, and a sense that their life has
Speaker 2: no meaning. And I remember the devil on my shoulder,
Speaker 2: always driving me to do better when I read this.
Speaker 2: Their access to the emotional world of their own childhood, however,
Speaker 2: is impaired, characterized by a lack of respect, a compulsion
Speaker 2: to control and manipulate, and a demand for achievement. I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be that.
Speaker 1: Is that what you thought when you read that back
Speaker 1: in college?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, because at that point, you know, I was still
Speaker 2: sorting myself out. That's what college is supposed to be, right,
Speaker 2: But I'm such a book learner, And it was all
Speaker 2: the other stuff that it's literature, it is playwriting, it's acting,
Speaker 2: it's the theater. That allowed me to explore all the
Speaker 2: other parts. This part made me try to figure out, Oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, is that me. I don't want to be that.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be controlling or manipulative, and so
Speaker 2: how do I curb that? And I think that's what
Speaker 2: I tried to go through in the next couple of pages.
Speaker 2: How do you balance yourself the things that you want
Speaker 2: with doing the right thing for other people?
Speaker 1: That passage also seemed to produce in you a challenge
Speaker 1: that you set for yourself to understand the world and
Speaker 1: my place in it. You're right, and how to build
Speaker 1: my confidence while controlling my ego. I wanted to achieve
Speaker 1: an empty mirror? Yes, what is that empty mirror?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I love that. It came from a
Speaker 2: book I read in school. It's by vander Willem. It's
Speaker 2: called The Empty Mirror. And here's what it is right,
Speaker 2: because so many problems, especially today when I look at
Speaker 2: you know, when you're managing a lot of people, factor
Speaker 2: in egos, because egos take away the logic of it right.
Speaker 2: And the empty mirror. It's by Jan Vanderwillim, that's the author.
Speaker 2: He went into a Buddhist monastery and he said, I
Speaker 2: want to live my life looking at a mirror, but
Speaker 2: without seeing my reflection, so I could see the reflection
Speaker 2: of the world around me. It's like Plato, Smith of
Speaker 2: the Cave. But the other way, you see the world
Speaker 2: and take out the ego that can obscure your vision
Speaker 2: of the world, then you can take the right steps forward.
Speaker 2: And that stayed with me through the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: You have to have enough confidence to have a healthy
Speaker 2: ego right, But if it's too much crossover into arrogance,
Speaker 2: you fill that mirror and you won't see the world
Speaker 2: around you. So you have to keep your ego in check.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, do you think journalism was the surest
Speaker 1: way to that empty mirror? That the work of being
Speaker 1: a journalist requires one a clarity of vision and two
Speaker 1: an ability to remove your ego from the equation.
Speaker 2: You know, I switched back and forth. At the beginning,
Speaker 2: during the time when I was reading that it was
Speaker 2: about art, right, and strangely, art can be very, very
Speaker 2: self absorbed. But I wanted, as you said, it's clarity
Speaker 2: and journalism as I got older, and it wasn't that
Speaker 2: much further away, because I think that was my junior year.
Speaker 2: By my senior year, it was trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what is happening in front of you without seeing it
Speaker 2: through your lenses. So, for example, events in the Philippines,
Speaker 2: the correspondent in Manila for me was a really tall,
Speaker 2: white Anglo Saxon Protestant male and he did those types
Speaker 2: of stories. But I come in and I'm a five
Speaker 2: foot two Filipino American female. That meant a difference in
Speaker 2: the way we choose stories. That meant, you know, the way,
Speaker 2: the tone, the way the diction that we use. I
Speaker 2: guess what I tried to do, and I wasn't sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was a young when I was a
Speaker 2: young reporter, I didn't know what the right thing to
Speaker 2: do was. It's trial and error. It's an iterative process.
Speaker 2: And television, by the way, is the most unnatural way
Speaker 2: of being natural, of appearing natural and I kind of
Speaker 2: thought that precisely because of the empty mirror, right, So
Speaker 2: I tried to look at what was happening in front
Speaker 2: of me without the judgment of an ego, and journalism
Speaker 2: was perfect.
Speaker 1: You know, this interest in figuring out what is happening
Speaker 1: in front of you? Do you think that desire comes
Speaker 1: from the fact that what was happening in front of
Speaker 1: you as you left the Philippines for the US was
Speaker 1: rapidly changing, that the circumstances were ever evolving, and that
Speaker 1: any natural kid would say, what's happening? Do you think
Speaker 1: that desire to then turn it into a career comes
Speaker 1: from these early experiences where what was happening in front
Speaker 1: of you wasn't exactly clear.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's an interesting question, wow, Sam. So let me say,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like layers upon layers upon layers. It's
Speaker 2: our lives, it's our experiences and the present moment of
Speaker 2: the past. What we are experiencing this moment will change
Speaker 2: the way you look at the memories of the past,
Speaker 2: and the memories of the past will determine how you
Speaker 2: evaluate this present moment as we create the future. So
Speaker 2: your question, I think, is I became comfortable with ambiguity,
Speaker 2: with not knowing, and I'm okay with not knowing. I'm
Speaker 2: okay with learning and trying to understand what other people think.
Speaker 2: I guess that was part of what I took out.
Speaker 2: I didn't have the cultural signals when we moved to
Speaker 2: Toms River, New Jersey, and then in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: when I went back to Manila after thirteen years away,
Speaker 2: I didn't have the cultural signals. Then I was a
Speaker 2: kid from Toms River, New Jersey, you know, And so
Speaker 2: each one of those changed. But is that an impetus
Speaker 2: for journalism. I think it would have been whether I
Speaker 2: chose to write continue writing plays, to do theater or music,
Speaker 2: or I had at that point applied to medical school,
Speaker 2: I had applied and gotten a corporate job. I just
Speaker 2: deferred everything to take a full bride to go back
Speaker 2: to the Philippines, because I knew somehow that was how
Speaker 2: I was going to close this kind of sliding doors
Speaker 2: life I had lived.
Speaker 1: After the break. More from journalist Maria Ressa. So after college,
Speaker 1: you take that Fulbright scholarship you mentioned from Princeton in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six and go back to the Philippines, joining
Speaker 1: the government TV station PTV four. In many ways, it
Speaker 1: was a homecoming. At the time, your childhood friend Muriel
Speaker 1: was working at the station. Do you remember that first
Speaker 1: day walking through the newsroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was strange because this was a historical building, right,
Speaker 2: this is what was taken over under government control. It
Speaker 2: was censored by the government under Marcos and then when
Speaker 2: people Power happened in nineteen eighty six, this was overrun.
Speaker 2: So by the time I got there and I was
Speaker 2: Muriel Twink is her name. She was one of the anchors,
Speaker 2: and she picked me up, and you know, I went
Speaker 2: through and we're going through these dark hallways of the
Speaker 2: station from the newsroom to the studios, and there's like,
Speaker 2: first of all, it was overrun with cats. The stench
Speaker 2: of urine was everywhere, and bulbs were blown out, they
Speaker 2: weren't replaced. This is like the dark hallways to get
Speaker 2: to the studio. You get to the studio and it's
Speaker 2: a working studio, but still you know, it's just decaying.
Speaker 2: It was decayed. So I walked in and she was
Speaker 2: anchoring the newscast. First of all, I fell in love
Speaker 2: with it. It was just like incredible because it was
Speaker 2: real time and you were live on air, and when
Speaker 2: breaking news happens, the anchor goes and you're just like
Speaker 2: everybody moves like an orchestra, right, it moves together, and
Speaker 2: you're writing the first page of history. I loved it,
Speaker 2: and so over the next few months, I guess or weeks,
Speaker 2: I realized her director kept falling asleep, and I said, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know really how to direct studio, but I'm awake.
Speaker 2: I think I could do this, you know. So I
Speaker 2: asked if I could take over the job, and I did,
Speaker 2: and that was how I learned the Philippines, and so
Speaker 2: it was a great education. I thought I would only
Speaker 2: be doing it for a short while and then I'd
Speaker 2: come back to the United States. But then one thing
Speaker 2: led to another, right, CNN came in another position. ABSBN,
Speaker 2: the largest network today, was given its building back by
Speaker 2: then President Aquino. They took over the back. They offered
Speaker 2: me a job as well. So yeah, I wound up
Speaker 2: never leaving.
Speaker 1: What you thought would be three or four months turn
Speaker 1: into a thirty year career working as the borough chief
Speaker 1: in Manila for CNN than Jakarta. There's some other jobs
Speaker 1: in between. But I want to go to January first,
Speaker 1: twenty twelve when you found the site Rappler. Here's a
Speaker 1: passage from your mission statement. Rappler stands on three pillars journalism, community,
Speaker 1: and technology that are bound by the shared values of trust, courage, integrity.
Speaker 1: It is composed of veteran journalists trained in broadcast, print
Speaker 1: and web disciplines, working with young, idealistic digital natives eager
Speaker 1: to report and find solutions to problems. Now, as Rodrigo
Speaker 1: Dutarte came to power in twenty sixteen, which coincided with
Speaker 1: the rise of former President.
Speaker 2: Trump, Dicerto was Trump before Trump was strump.
Speaker 1: You talked about finding solutions to proms in that mission statement.
Speaker 1: What were the big problems that you and Rappler were
Speaker 1: reporting on during the start of his presidency in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my gosh, there's so many. But first let me
Speaker 2: lay the scene for you, right. You know, by that
Speaker 2: point I realized that almost all stories that you do
Speaker 2: as a reporter, if it's investigative journalism, will focus on corruption.
Speaker 2: Right You follow the money because that's where wrongdoing happens,
Speaker 2: and that's where accountability happens. So I had by twenty
Speaker 2: twelve great faith that we could use participatory media to
Speaker 2: help build institutions bottom up, that we could use our
Speaker 2: community to patrol our votes, to police our officials. And
Speaker 2: it actually showed in twenty ten when we did this.
Speaker 2: This was when I was heading the largest news network
Speaker 2: in the Philippines. We had twenty thousand citizen journalists whom
Speaker 2: we had trained, and they were with their cell phones.
Speaker 2: This would have been twenty ten. Think about it. They
Speaker 2: were taking photos of like officials doing wrong things and
Speaker 2: sending it to us, and we were able to hold
Speaker 2: those officials accountable. Back at the time, when you catch
Speaker 2: someone doing something wrong, they actually admit that they're doing
Speaker 2: something wrong and then they do better. Right. So that
Speaker 2: was the beginning of that. By twenty twelve with Rappler,
Speaker 2: I wanted to do more. We began with a civic
Speaker 2: engagement arm that was called move pH So instead of marketing,
Speaker 2: we used civic engagement and we went to schools, universities
Speaker 2: saying that, you know, we could do social media for
Speaker 2: social change, social media for social good. So you see
Speaker 2: how I drank the kool aid. I believed I was
Speaker 2: the truest of true believers in the transformative powers of technology,
Speaker 2: and I was hoping that we could use this for
Speaker 2: good and we did for a period of time. One
Speaker 2: of the things we worked on was climate change. Why
Speaker 2: climate change because in twenty thirteen, the Philippines is the
Speaker 2: third most disaster prone nation in the world. We had
Speaker 2: an average of twenty typhoons every year. This project we
Speaker 2: called Project AGOS, a climate change initiative. If there's information
Speaker 2: you need, a typhoon is coming in. Everyone hunkers were
Speaker 2: watching the map of the Philippines, so we see how
Speaker 2: the typhoon comes in. If people have information, they send
Speaker 2: it in tweets. At that point, tweets had geotagging so
Speaker 2: you could get the exact location. And then we had
Speaker 2: the Office of Civil Defense responding to calls for help
Speaker 2: in this very public map of the Philippines. It was
Speaker 2: called Project AGOS, and we built it, gave it to
Speaker 2: the Philippine government. The Philippine government incorporated it into its
Speaker 2: disaster response in twenty fifteen, and it continued up until
Speaker 2: Rodrigo du Terta took office. So there were so many
Speaker 2: things that you know, the Civic Engagement Arm could help
Speaker 2: in real world impact. Twenty sixteen happened and Rodrigo du
Speaker 2: Terte was elected, and then everything changed.
Speaker 1: How did it change.
Speaker 2: So I think the beginning of the change had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the Philippines. The beginning of the change
Speaker 2: happened here in the United States, in Silicon Valley. By
Speaker 2: this point in time, ninety seven percent of Filipinos on
Speaker 2: the Internet were on Facebook. Facebook is Our Internet. In
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, Facebook uses instant articles. In twenty fourteen, it
Speaker 2: brought in news organizations into Facebook, and in twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: it invited four news organizations from the Philippines. We were
Speaker 2: slightly later. We jumped in. I put everything inside Facebook
Speaker 2: just to see, so I have a before and after.
Speaker 2: It didn't work, and so shortly before our elections, I
Speaker 2: pulled all our articles out again. And that's when I
Speaker 2: realized that Facebook was iterating this. They were experimenting. So
Speaker 2: while they invited news organizations onto the platform, they didn't
Speaker 2: change the algorithms of amplification right. So here we were
Speaker 2: knowingly walking into a platform that deprioritized facts that actually
Speaker 2: had a bias for lies. I didn't know this then,
Speaker 2: So that was the first change. The second change was
Speaker 2: Rodrigo du Terte, you know, and I guess he was there.
Speaker 2: I said before Trump was strump, but he's a populist,
Speaker 2: and he was a populist who threatened, who over promised,
Speaker 2: He used violence in word indeed, and he you know,
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, when I interviewed him when he was
Speaker 2: trying to decide whether he'd run for president, he actually
Speaker 2: admitted that he killed three people at this interview. This
Speaker 2: was a clip that was used by American networks. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: he admitted he killed three people, and he was proud
Speaker 2: of it. You know, this is a man who, after
Speaker 2: he won the presidency, gave me an interview and said
Speaker 2: that his leadership style needs violence because that's how you
Speaker 2: are going to govern Filipinos. He felt Filipinos needed an
Speaker 2: iron fist. So what happened in twenty sixteen, that was
Speaker 2: around the time when we began to do these stories
Speaker 2: on the killings in this brutal drug war that was
Speaker 2: his flagship program, and I began to call for an
Speaker 2: end to impunity of Duterta's drug war and an impunity
Speaker 2: to Zuckerberg's Facebook.
Speaker 1: The result of this reportage was constant online harassment. You
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier than ninety hate messages per hour. The people
Speaker 1: sending these messages were, of course emboldened by the president's
Speaker 1: contempt for the press. He called journalists like you spies, vultures,
Speaker 1: and low lifes, going so far as to say, just
Speaker 1: because you're a journalist does not mean you're exams from
Speaker 1: assassination if you're a son of a bitch. Yes, all
Speaker 1: of this brings us to what happens on February thirteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. As a Valentine's gift to you, you're arrested
Speaker 1: for the first time and brought to NBI headquarters. NBI
Speaker 1: is essentially the FBI in the Philippines, and they strategically
Speaker 1: plan to arrest you so that they could hold you overnight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1: Want to read from the book, which describes what happens
Speaker 1: that next day as you make bail and begin to
Speaker 1: talk to the press.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh my gosh. That evening I had to
Speaker 2: go through a medical exam, and a woman who I
Speaker 2: really didn't know what we were in a group together.
Speaker 2: She rushed to the NBI office because she knew that
Speaker 2: the moment of vulnerability is this medical exam. She's a
Speaker 2: medical doctor, and she said, name me your doctor and
Speaker 2: then I will be in with you. You know. So
Speaker 2: that happened so the next day I was supposed to
Speaker 2: post bail, and even that was a negotiation because the
Speaker 2: arrest warrant didn't have the number that I needed to
Speaker 2: post bail. So I stood all night thinking, oh my god.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not as if there isn't a spotlight
Speaker 2: on me. I was one of the most prominent journalists.
Speaker 2: I headed a news organization. Imagine what they would do
Speaker 2: to somebody who's a young kid in a dark alley.
Speaker 1: By the way, almost on que we hear the police
Speaker 1: sirens of New York City playing in the background.
Speaker 2: Funny, okay, where do you want me to start reading?
Speaker 1: The next morning, the bail negotiations began early.
Speaker 2: The next morning, the bail negotiations began early. It would
Speaker 2: be the sixth time I had posted bail in about
Speaker 2: two months. It was the largest amount so far, one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand passers, or about two thousand US dollars. But
Speaker 2: I was smiling as I reeled off the details for
Speaker 2: the press. As I left the courtroom, I was smiling
Speaker 2: because I was so angry. You see only a hint
Speaker 2: of that anger when a reporter asked me to react
Speaker 2: to a statement by Secretary of Justice menar de Guevara,
Speaker 2: who had said that my arrest was Rattler's own fault.
Speaker 2: Let me turn it around. I spat, then paused for control.
Speaker 2: DOJ's secretary Guevara, who was I thought a professional. These
Speaker 2: are your actions, the ripple effects are what we feel
Speaker 2: in society. But you don't want to be known as
Speaker 2: the secretary of injustice. I also have the right to
Speaker 2: hold you accountable. I am a citizen of this country
Speaker 2: and you cannot violate my rights. That night, when my
Speaker 2: government took away my freedom, they drew the line of
Speaker 2: repression directly to me. It was the moment when my
Speaker 2: rights were violated, when I went from being a journalist
Speaker 2: to being a citizen. If they could do this to
Speaker 2: journalists with some power in the glare of the spotlight,
Speaker 2: what would they do to vulnerable citizens literally left in
Speaker 2: the dark. What recourse did a poor person have in
Speaker 2: a dark alley. For me, it's about two things, abuse
Speaker 2: of power and the weaponization of the law. I told
Speaker 2: the assembled reporters it was the first time I had
Speaker 2: spoken so harshly in public. Every time the government did
Speaker 2: something draconian, it radicalized me. This isn't just about me,
Speaker 2: and it's not just about Rappler. The message that the
Speaker 2: government ascending is very clear, and someone actually told our
Speaker 2: reporter this last night, be silent or your next. So
Speaker 2: I'm appealing to you not to be silent, even if
Speaker 2: and especially if your next. Press freedom is not just
Speaker 2: about journalists. It is not just about Raptler, It is
Speaker 2: not just about me. Press freedom is the foundation of
Speaker 2: the right of every Filipino to have access to the truth.
Speaker 2: Silence is complicity, because silence is consent. What we're seeing
Speaker 2: is death by a thousand cuts of our democracy, I continued,
Speaker 2: and I appeal to you to join me. I've always
Speaker 2: said that when I look back a decade from now,
Speaker 2: I want to make sure my voice broke Then, so
Speaker 2: I repeated the sentence. I want to make sure that
Speaker 2: I have done all I can. We will not duck,
Speaker 2: we will not hide, We will hold the line. Oh
Speaker 2: I'm still angry. You know.
Speaker 1: I was listening to you read that passage, being moved
Speaker 1: once again and inspired by your passion and commitment to
Speaker 1: this work, to this calling. But I don't think we
Speaker 1: can talk about the work you do without talking about
Speaker 1: the very real human consequences of what you do and
Speaker 1: to do. That I want to go to June of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, where the family of journalist Daphne Galicia, who
Speaker 1: was killed for her reportage, issued this statement. Over the years,
Speaker 1: we watched the former Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat,
Speaker 1: and his cronies pursue increasingly deranged attacks on Daphne. These
Speaker 1: included online abuse and harassment campaigns, vexatious tax investigations, false
Speaker 1: criminal charges that were thrown out of court, and civil
Speaker 1: and criminal libel suits. Daphne died with five criminal libel
Speaker 1: charges and forty three civil libel suits pending against her.
Speaker 1: This targeted harassment, chillingly similar to that persisted against Maria Reza,
Speaker 1: created the condition for Daphne's murder. The government of the
Speaker 1: Philippines is creating the possibility of a violent attack against
Speaker 1: Maria and other journalists. And so I must ask, as
Speaker 1: you return back home in the coming months, how do
Speaker 1: you process that specter the worst case scenario in which
Speaker 1: your life is profoundly at risk.
Speaker 2: I embrace my fear. Look, the goal of all of
Speaker 2: this is to make us stop doing our jobs because
Speaker 2: we're afraid. So for me, in my head, it was
Speaker 2: really simple. I tried to just imagine what the worst
Speaker 2: case scenario, and I start with that in the prologue,
Speaker 2: you know, I imagine that, and then I figure out
Speaker 2: what I would do in each one, embrace it and
Speaker 2: defang it, and then I keep going because I think
Speaker 2: that situations like this where the government attacks journey lists,
Speaker 2: the goal there is that you self censor, that you
Speaker 2: mute your journalism, or that you stop doing journalism. And
Speaker 2: I think that our goal is not to stop, not
Speaker 2: to change, to keep doing excellent journalism, to build our communities,
Speaker 2: and to hold our government to account our Mark Zucker
Speaker 2: depending on how you you know where the accountability journalism lies.
Speaker 2: And then I guess the last part of it is
Speaker 2: for Rappler, it's actually quite easy because I think of
Speaker 2: the worst case scenarios and then I work flow it backwards.
Speaker 2: This is our management team that does this altogether, right, Like,
Speaker 2: so a shutdown scenario, what would we do? How do
Speaker 2: we do this? And then we drill it. Of course,
Speaker 2: we've had some accidents, like because we do this drill
Speaker 2: every quarter, and there was an instance where we had
Speaker 2: a new social media employee and he thought it was real.
Speaker 2: They bust into the office and we're getting shut down,
Speaker 2: and turned it on live for our five million Facebook followers,
Speaker 2: and then of course we had to apologize. But that's
Speaker 2: also when our public realized that we were drilling a
Speaker 2: worst case scenario. There's no right and wrong way to
Speaker 2: handle this. But I think about it like how we
Speaker 2: live with pollution. It's part of the air you breathe,
Speaker 2: but you don't let it stop you from walking or
Speaker 2: running or doing anything. You just keep going.
Speaker 1: You know, Maria, I asked a question about you, and
Speaker 1: of course you ended up talking about everyone else, and
Speaker 1: I got the sense that you've mapped this out in
Speaker 1: your head, the logistical spocklike approach, but what about your heart.
Speaker 2: It's like planning coverage in a war zone. You know
Speaker 2: there are dangers, but if you plan well, you plan
Speaker 2: your way in and you plan your way out. The
Speaker 2: difference here, of course, is that we're not walking into
Speaker 2: a conflict area. We're living it. I suppose that I
Speaker 2: live life as a breaking news reporter, and I'm okay
Speaker 2: with that. I'm okay living with the uncertainty of it.
Speaker 2: It's the serenity prayer. The things I can control, I
Speaker 2: can control, and the things I can't I let go of.
Speaker 2: It's half of the problem with dealing with fear is
Speaker 2: your own mind, how you manage your own fear. And
Speaker 2: that's where I embrace your fear really helps. There is
Speaker 2: so much at stake, not just for the Philippines, not
Speaker 2: just for Rappler, but for the world. The data is there,
Speaker 2: and so I guess that's where I get energy from.
Speaker 2: And the other part is that I know that whether
Speaker 2: I go to jail or whether these worst case scenarios
Speaker 2: happen will depend on how I react now what I
Speaker 2: do today. And I claim that.
Speaker 1: You write in your book that you see your life
Speaker 1: in ten year chunks ranging from age ten when you're
Speaker 1: uprooted to the United States Tier fifties, which you said
Speaker 1: were about reinvention and activism, taking a stand on my
Speaker 1: most deeply held views. And so next year, as you
Speaker 1: turn sixty O, yes, how do you hope to define
Speaker 1: that next decade?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's so funny. I can't plan anything right
Speaker 2: now because of the legal cases. But in the next year,
Speaker 2: what I hope to see is our succession planning kicking
Speaker 2: in a new generation of younger Raptler leaders. Yes, the manangs,
Speaker 2: the co founders and I will still be there, will
Speaker 2: help as much as they want or maybe they don't want.
Speaker 2: Right that our journalism continues to hold power to account,
Speaker 2: that the mission of journalism remains alive in the Philippines.
Speaker 2: Beyond that, it's hard. It's hard to plan. You know,
Speaker 2: my family, my parents are getting olders. I know I
Speaker 2: have to take care of them. But I don't know
Speaker 2: what the sixties are going to be about. The fifties
Speaker 2: was really wow. I could never have thought about what
Speaker 2: I had gone through, right, and I'm still doing that
Speaker 2: Edward Monk painting the scream. When I think about the
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize, I don't think I did anything that was
Speaker 2: really outstanding. I just held the line, you know. It
Speaker 2: is what we were supposed to have done. And I
Speaker 2: actually think what it did is it proved that doing
Speaker 2: the right thing is the right thing. Oh man, I
Speaker 2: don't know what the sixties will be, but I am
Speaker 2: looking forward to it, you know. But it's hard when
Speaker 2: you ask me, because it depends on the day. It's
Speaker 2: a roller coaster, real highs and then reel those and
Speaker 2: I have to be prepared for anything. I don't want
Speaker 2: to keep living like this, but I will as long
Speaker 2: as I have to.
Speaker 1: When you were awarded that Nobel Peace Prize in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, it was the first time a journalist won
Speaker 1: the award since nineteen thirty five, which was then given
Speaker 1: to a German reporter who couldn't even accept the prize
Speaker 1: because he was in a concentration camp. Yeah, and yet
Speaker 1: I want to stick on something specific, which is that
Speaker 1: in the immediate aftermath of winning that award, you tempered
Speaker 1: your celebration. He wrote in the book. It was a
Speaker 1: win and vindication for rapplers, a private moment when we cried,
Speaker 1: laughed and soared together. Still, I'm suspicious of such emotional releases,
Speaker 1: and I reminded the team that this could also mean
Speaker 1: things could get worse in this next decade ahead. I wonder,
Speaker 1: do you think there will come a time after all
Speaker 1: the fighting you've done and continue to do, that you
Speaker 1: will grow less suspicious of such emotional releases.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I don't know that mean, Look,
Speaker 2: the reason why I felt that is when you release, yes,
Speaker 2: you become complacent and we're not sure what will happen next.
Speaker 2: I mean, we could be walking into the next decade
Speaker 2: of fascism, right you can't let your guard down in
Speaker 2: conditions like today. I mean, frankly, America, get your act
Speaker 2: together right like because where America goes in this and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four will be such a critical year.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll respond to your question. Part of it
Speaker 2: is I am very pragmatic, and I'm only one person,
Speaker 2: and I kind of am ready for anything. But I
Speaker 2: know that Rappler will be there, and I know that
Speaker 2: we will continue doing what we're doing. I don't know
Speaker 2: where the world is going to go. I don't know
Speaker 2: whether democracy will fall off the cliff. And when we
Speaker 2: walk into that time of fascism, it can last a
Speaker 2: decade or more because this is these are the cycles
Speaker 2: of history, right. We have allowed illiberal leaders to be
Speaker 2: elect democratically. When did that happen? Hitler? You know, And
Speaker 2: it's like back to the future. Certainly for the Philippines,
Speaker 2: it's back to the future. We have Ferdinand Marcos Junior
Speaker 2: as our president today, so I'm ready. I guess I
Speaker 2: also could have PTSD, you know, I think about that
Speaker 2: as well, but I'm not willing to really. I mean,
Speaker 2: in a way, writing this book was my release because
Speaker 2: everyone kept asking where do you find courage?
Speaker 1: How do you know?
Speaker 2: Why are you optimistic? It is all here. It is
Speaker 2: layer by layer by layer, the present moment of the past,
Speaker 2: and if we're aware of all those layers, then we
Speaker 2: can create a better future. So I guess the time
Speaker 2: when I can actually really release will be when it
Speaker 2: feels like we value our freedoms, that we accept that
Speaker 2: the world as we knew it has been destroyed, and
Speaker 2: that we are going to create a better world.
Speaker 1: I think the answer to the question that people keep
Speaker 1: asking you, which is where do you find the courage?
Speaker 1: How do you remain optimistic? I think the answer is
Speaker 1: in people.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And as we close, I thought the only way to
Speaker 1: end this conversation is with words from another reporter, your
Speaker 1: late friend Muriel Twink, who we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that was a really tough time for me,
Speaker 2: and I thought, my gosh, if she can do it,
Speaker 2: then of course I can. So Twink was dying of cancer.
Speaker 2: This is one of the last columns she wrote.
Speaker 1: This is a woman who saw your mother kidnap you
Speaker 1: from school at age ten. Yes, who was there for
Speaker 1: you when you came back to the Philippines after college
Speaker 1: and walked through that smoky news room and it was
Speaker 1: here at the end, still fighting alongside you. And here's
Speaker 1: what she wrote.
Speaker 2: Oh my God, dear make me cry. This is from Twink.
Speaker 2: I look at this world, I am struggling to stay
Speaker 2: in and feel only despair. The despot Filipinos elected to
Speaker 2: the presidency has infected the populace with a malignance unmatched
Speaker 2: by the deadliest of cancers. Both suppress your freedoms. By
Speaker 2: dint of my disease, my movements have been severely curtailed.
Speaker 2: I will never run, do Assuria Namascara, play tennis, or
Speaker 2: cover a news event again. My immune system is so
Speaker 2: compromised that venturing into a crowded room is a roll
Speaker 2: of the dice. I cannot stand or sit up for
Speaker 2: long periods, and my double vision makes writing difficult. In short,
Speaker 2: practicing journalism, the profession I devoted most of my adult
Speaker 2: life to, is no longer viable. In a much larger context,
Speaker 2: du Terta has enfeebled our institutions by populating them with
Speaker 2: minions who share his low regard for human rights, due process,
Speaker 2: and what words really mean. These institutions that form part
Speaker 2: of our nation's immune system should have ensured that our
Speaker 2: freedoms were protected, instead their party to repressing dissent, demonizing
Speaker 2: the opposition, and preventing scrutiny by a critical press. The Constitution,
Speaker 2: the last bastion of our democracy and also a key
Speaker 2: component of the collective immune system, is in the process
Speaker 2: of being dismantled. When that goes, all protections, all the
Speaker 2: freedoms it guarantees, go too. So where is the outrage,
Speaker 2: Where is the resistance? A weary voice in my head says,
Speaker 2: don't look at me. I'm dying. I should be excused.
Speaker 2: I've long made peace with my demise. My last will
Speaker 2: and testament, handwritten amidst many tears, is in the safe
Speaker 2: I could give up, succumb surrender, but I won't, no
Speaker 2: matter how many times I read this, I cry because
Speaker 2: not fighting would ignore the very real option that still exists.
Speaker 2: The handful of brave, honorable souls putting their lives on
Speaker 2: the line on the firm belief that the Filipino people
Speaker 2: can get better, can choose to get better, deserve better.
Speaker 2: They represent, if not a cure, the lone path to
Speaker 2: a cure. Too late for my benefit perhaps, but for
Speaker 2: the next generation. While family and friends, their family and
Speaker 2: friends keep praying rosaries for my healing, or send chakras
Speaker 2: and incantations my way, while my husband continues to move
Speaker 2: me with his sweetness, and my son doesn't run out
Speaker 2: of silly jokes, magic tricks, and funny Annik notes of
Speaker 2: his daily exploits, while the very heart of me, that
Speaker 2: chamber that stores my conscience and conviction, love and dreams,
Speaker 2: memory and self respect remains unbreached. I will fight, I
Speaker 2: will too, in twins memory, rest in peace, my friend.
Speaker 2: I cry every time I read this.
Speaker 1: The line that really, the lines that really get me
Speaker 1: every time, is because not fighting but ignore the very
Speaker 1: real option that still exists, the handful of brave, honorable
Speaker 1: souls putting their lives on the firm belief that the
Speaker 1: Filipino people can get better, can choose to get better,
Speaker 1: deserve better. They represent, if not a cure, the lone
Speaker 1: path to a cure. Too late for my benefit perhaps,
Speaker 1: but for the next generation.
Speaker 2: That's why. And you know she fought battles for me
Speaker 2: online even as she was writing that this particular one,
Speaker 2: she had sent me a few drafts before she published it,
Speaker 2: and it took her a while to write it. Because
Speaker 2: she she had double vision. Yeah, so look, if someone
Speaker 2: can do that, I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: So in these last two minutes of democracy, as you
Speaker 1: often say, is it her that keeps you moving forward?
Speaker 2: I think it's a combination of everything. You know the
Speaker 2: fact that until the end she was fighting. But you
Speaker 2: put that together with the young raptlers who are standing up. Literally,
Speaker 2: when President Duterta tried to bully our young reporter in
Speaker 2: front of on nationwide television, she stood up, right. I
Speaker 2: just hope that the younger generation retains some of the
Speaker 2: trust that has been so broken in our societies. But
Speaker 2: I know that they will build. They have to. They
Speaker 2: have to build better than what they're walking into.
Speaker 1: You're right in the book democracy is fragile. You have
Speaker 1: to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution,
Speaker 1: every story. You must know how dangerous it is to
Speaker 1: suffer even the tiniest cut. This is why I say
Speaker 1: to us all, we must hold the line. And I
Speaker 1: thank you for holding the line as you have for
Speaker 1: as long as you have, and I wish you a
Speaker 1: safe trip back home. Sam. Thank you so much, Maria Ressa.
Speaker 1: It's been an honor.
Speaker 2: We did it, Okay, you have done something completely different
Speaker 2: from anything I would have expected.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and that's our show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's episode, you can leave us five
Speaker 1: stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. Do
Speaker 1: you want to go above and beyond? Share the show
Speaker 1: on social media? Tag us at talk Easypod. All of
Speaker 1: this is really the best way for new listeners to
Speaker 1: find the program. I want to give a special thanks
Speaker 1: to speak to the teams at HarperCollins and iHeartMedia. I
Speaker 1: also want to thank our guest, Maria Ressa. Her new book,
Speaker 1: How to Stand Up to a Dictator is now available
Speaker 1: in paperback. To learn more about her and her work,
Speaker 1: visit our website at talk easypod dot com. If you
Speaker 1: want to hear more conversations with other great writers, I
Speaker 1: check out Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky and Zadi Smith to
Speaker 1: hear those and more Pushkin podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow
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Speaker 1: Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is chu Nick Subravo. Our associate producer is Kitlyn Dryden.
Speaker 1: Today's talk was edited by Kitlyn Dryden and mixed by
Speaker 1: Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations
Speaker 1: are by Christoshenoy. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Garret
Speaker 1: gaberzek Ian Jones and Ethan Sinica. I also want to
Speaker 1: thank our team at Pushkin, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Schnars,
Speaker 1: Kerrie Brody, Eric Sander, Jordan McMillan, Kira Posey, Tara Machado,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to another episode
Speaker 1: of Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week
Speaker 1: with Willem Dafell. Until then, stay safe and so long.