“I’m going to hold my government accountable.”
A conversation with Maria Ressa, founder of the Rappler — Civil’s newest newsroom
Rappler is a digital news organization in the Philippines that covers everything from politics to sports. It is also a newly announced Civil Newsroom. It was the brainchild of Maria Ressa, an award winning journalist with 33 years of experience including nearly two decades at CNN, where she reported from war zones and hotspots around the world.
Now Maria and her publication find themselves in the crosshairs of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who has targeted her for her tough reporting on his regime’s blood-soaked war on drugs. After a long period of living under government threat, Ressa was indicted in December for evading taxes, a move widely considered to be politically motivated.
At the end of the year, Maria got a pleasant surprise — named TIME’s Person of the Year, with her own cover alongside those of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by Saudi Officials for his criticism of the nation’s ruling elite; the Capital Gazette in Maryland, which was targeted by a gunman who killed five staffers; and two Reuters reporters who have been detained in Myanmar for more than over a year.
Maria was out on bail from that indictment and has to seek permission every time she wants to travel. I met with her on February 1 in New York, just as she was getting ready to head back home.
Then, on February 13th, Maria was arrested again — back in Manila — this time for an article she published in 2012, which the suit claimed contained “defamatory” content. International press freedom organizations have once again decried the allegation as politically motivated.
Rappler is one of nearly 100 new newsrooms that will be joining Civil’s community over the coming weeks. We’ve decided to publish this interview today as a show of solidarity with Maria, and to reiterate how honored we are to soon welcome Rappler to Civil.
For those of you who want to take action today: the Committee to Protect Journalists has organized a legal defense fund for Rappler. If you’d like to contribute, click here.
The following interview was lightly edited for clarity.
Vivian Schiller: About a month ago, you and your publication Rappler were indicted for tax evasion in what was clearly a politically motivated attempt to stop you from reporting on the Duterte government. How are you doing?
Maria Ressa: Strangely enough it’s better today than it was before the actual indictment. If an arrest warrant is issued for you, you’re not told about it. Which meant that I was living with this uncertainty that someone will come in and be able to arrest me without my knowledge. Will they come in in the middle of the night? Will they come into our office? We got it down to a point where there was so much uncertainty, you just pick the path forward and keep going.
VS: So at least now you know what you’re facing — you know what the charges are against you.
MR: Well not only that, but now that I’ve posted bail on the five charges which are now being consolidated because all of them stem from the same one incident. It is definitely just meant to intimidate me, intimidate Rappler. There are still a few more charges at the (Phillipines) Department of Justice, but I think they realize that we’re fighting back, that we have constitutional rights. Even the government can’t prevent me from traveling unless I’m a flight risk. And I’ve already shown I come home to face these charges… so in a strange way the indictment kind of unshackled me. As a person, I’m being attacked. My constitutional rights have been taken away, have been trampled on.
The fact that I’m now facing criminal charges, I think I’m going to hold my government accountable for that as well. They haven’t given due process. I can’t discuss the case because all of it is separate but for sure I feel better today than I ever have. We’ve gone through two and a half years of attacks that started out as anonymous exponential attacks on social media which you don’t want to respond to but yet they have an effect. They definitely make people believe. A lie told a hundred times becomes the truth in today’s world and so this is easier to defend. When the president attacks you and you can respond to president Duterte, I do respond.
VS: It strikes me that if their goal was to intimidate you, that effort has failed miserably.
MR: I don’t like bullies. Our constitution prevents all of these things. The principles of free speech and free expression and free press. All of these have been violated. And one of the things I realized is that if you don’t step up and speak now, you only get weaker over time. And this problem is not just in the Philippines, it’s global.
I realized that if I don’t speak up for my rights — and it’s both personal, company-wide and nationwide — if we don’t speak up to defend these rights now, then it is our fault when they’re moved back. And I think what we’re seeing globally is a rollback.
VS: This is not a phenomenon that is not just happening in the Philippines. This is a global phenomenon. Do you feel a responsibility to stand up not just on behalf of your own news organization but for journalists everywhere?
MR: Yes, absolutely. Philippines is a cautionary tale. It was a tough year, 2016, because that was when we saw the poisoning of the information ecosystem. That was when journalists lost our gatekeeping power to social media platforms. Yet the social media platforms haven’t yet grappled with becoming the gatekeepers. They don’t realize that if you allow a lie to spread faster than facts, that you WILL make democracy weaker. I think 2018, you know, you’ve seen all of the platforms pummeled and I think they’re taking action.
When you allow this kind of speech to incite that violence it’s a hop, skip and a jump to real-world violence. That’s why I’m really worried about this. Not just for our country but globally.
VS: Let’s shift gears and talk about Rappler because despite all of this and in the face of all of this you have built a really extraordinary news organization that is doing not only intrepid journalism, but has a business model that seems to be successful.
MR: We started in 2012 and my end goal in our fifth year [was] that we would hit break even. I was looking at the projections. We did hit positive net income in April of 2016, and we had positive EBITDA in 2016 — which was also the year that we came under attack, because that was when President Duterte won. He became president of the country and then because we exposed the disinformation campaigns — I called it the propaganda war where hate was used against opponents or perceived opponents — we came under attack. and that was the end of 2016.
In 2017 and 2018, we took mission over monetization. And that’s actually a huge problem for a newsroom — good journalism is bad business. Good business is bad journalism.
VS: That’s a depressing thought.
MR: That is the reality of what we’re living with. In 2016, we should have been on an upward trajectory. I was getting ready to design a new platform. But the money I had set aside for that had to go to legal fees. And then when you fight the government, advertisers get scared because they think there’s a problem with [the] brand.
VS: The advertisers were intimidated?
MS Afraid — not intimidated. Just afraid. And I think that’s the environment we’re living in right now.
VS What are your other revenue streams?
MR: Advertising. Programmatic is now bringing in a significant amount. And data intelligence and media consulting for advertising. That one is a b2b.
VS: And now membership, right?
MR: Subscription is much more of a western thing. I don’t want to do that in the Philippines, because the people who need the information the most can’t afford to pay for it.
VS: Let’s talk about Civil. We’re so excited to have Rappler!
MR: We’re excited!
VS: Tell me what prompted you to think about becoming part of the Civil network
MR: This is a world of creative destruction. A lot of things are being destroyed but we must also be creating. That’s the difference for me for 2019. I’ve decided we’re pushing forward with all of these initiatives that we had put on hold. And Civil is definitely on the forefront because blockchain is on the forefront. I like being part of new experiments. The online world will be dramatically different 3 years from now.
And Civil has a lot of the principles. I think this is where it began right — principles! This is also where I think that that social media platforms should be going. You cannot do content moderation based on a checklist. We spent our careers as journalists figuring out these standards and ethics. If your principles are correct, then you’ll be able to make the right call.
VS: What do you hope you might get out of being part of Civil?
MR: A global community. And hopefully we can contribute. I have lots of ideas on what we can do as a global network. Local knowledge — nothing replaces that. But oftentimes, we’re mired in our own local realities and you can’t see how much all of us have in common. I think the two biggest challenges that we’re facing — climate change and trust — these two biggest challenges require global solutions.
VS: So what message would you have for other news organizations around the world who are struggling with sustainability, struggling to fight the good fight, experimenting with novel ways?
MR: Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel. You want to get with good people. Just as you have strengths, you also have weaknesses. It’s a world of collaboration today. The hard part is the bad guys figured that out first.
So that’s the biggest thing. There are lots of people trying to work on the same solution. This is part of why we’re joining Civil. Because I want to be part of the global community.
VS: The last questions is on the fun side: Describe the moment you found out that you were on the cover of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
MR: I found out on Twitter.
VS: You didn’t know in advance?!
MR: No, no. I was having Mexican. We were at the office and a colleague and I stopped to get dinner on the way out. When I was scrolling through Twitter, it just said something about Maria Ressa and a Time cover. And I was like, really? and asked someone to check because it could be fake news! And then the next tweet had all four covers. And it was chilling — Khashoggi, and oh my gosh, The Capital Gazette — they were killed. And then oh my gosh- it’s the one-year anniversary of the Reuters journalists [imprisoned] in Myanmar. And then there was me! I’m the only one who’s alive and who’s free.
I had just been indicted that morning. That was a very surreal day because in the morning I was in court for four hours. I had posted bail four times, and then in the afternoon I was talking to my team about whether we have to worry about security, and what do I have to think about next? And then and then the evening I found out I was Time’s Person of the Year.
I mean, that is a very bizarre day.
VS: I don’t think anybody else in the world could say they’ve had a day like that. Anything else you want to add?
MS: I’m excited. It’s an exciting time.
VS: You are the most optimistic person I know, and with a lot of reasons not to be.
MR: Because we can’t stay in this. This is a mess and it’s not all of our doing, but we saw it coming and I think we need to look for solutions and that’s the reason we’re joining Civil.
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Disclaimer: Maria Ressa is part of the Civil Council.
