Maria Ressa interview: You can’t negotiate peace if you don’t agree on the facts

Q/ You are the first Filipino to win a Nobel Peace Prize. What does this mean for your country? Usually, a journalist winning such an honour would indicate that something is wrong in the country.

A/ Well, for us, it’s been a very tough few years since 2016 (when Rodrigo Duterte became president). [I’ve] had ten arrest warrants in less than two years. I’ve fought cases; we’ve fought getting shut down.... It was incredible to realise that we weren’t alone, and for that I profusely thank the Nobel committee. I think one of the things it accomplished in the Philippines was that it united Filipino journalists.

Beyond that, this was an acknowledgement globally for all journalists [of] how difficult it has been to do our jobs. The last time a journalist had been given the Nobel Peace Prize was in 1936 (the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1936), and he languished in a Nazi concentration camp. The Nobel committee looked at the world and I think they’re saying we’re at the precipice of something like 1936. What happened after that? World War II. And after World War II, the world came together to create a new world, to prevent the worst of human nature from ruling us.

[After the Nobel Prize announcement] what the [Duterte] government did was radio silence, I guess stunned silence. [Three days later,] we had a strange statement that kind of goes against your question. The government said, “We congratulate Maria Ressa, the first Filipino to win the Nobel Prize. It proves press freedom exists in the Philippines.”

Q/ You said in an interview that you are idealistic. Most journalists are, when they start out. What are the challenges you have had to go through to hold on to your ideals?

A/ Conquering your fear.... When I was heading ABS-CBN, I had a direct line to the president. Because you want to make sure you’re fair. In this case, the idea of negotiating with the government didn’t really appeal to me because we work too hard at Rappler.

[But] I didn’t realise that the government would go so far. When there were just cases being filed, I thought they were just trying to intimidate us. I’m too old, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and so we continued. When they arrested me, they did it to ensure I was detained overnight; they arrested me just before the court closed. That’s when I realised I have evidence of how this government will abuse its power in order to intimidate. And I came out of that night stronger. I’m lucky compared with others, I’m a high-profile journalist. The government wanted to make me an example: “If we can do this to her, what can we do to you?” And that’s exactly the kind of Mafioso mentality that the government has exuded. Imagine if you’re a journalist in the provinces walking home at night. Do you get the warnings that I’ve gotten? At least not for 19 journalists who were killed under this administration.

When I was convicted last year in a cyber libel crime—[for] a story that was published in 2012, before the law that we allegedly violated existed—[I said that] we’re bending the law to the point it’s broken. So, first weaponisation of social media, then weaponisation of the law.

Having said that, is the Philippines now Russia? I remember when I was still with CNN and I would visit Russia and [see] the kind of duality of what the facts are. I used to think, this is great, we’re not Russia. Sorry Russia, sorry Dmitry [Muratov]. It wasn’t as tough, but now it is. But I think the difference is that we have a chance to regain our democracy. We’ve held the line and now we’re at the tail end; we have elections in May next year. And I hope we’re able to have elections and Filipinos choose well. The biggest problem, of course, is that [the] integrity of elections will depend on whether we have integrity of facts. And with social media platforms, that is impossible—unless they change it.

Q/ In India, five years ago, there were 10.3 lakh journalists; today it has come down to 2.3 lakh. Around 70 per cent either lost their jobs or left the industry. What do you say to that section of disillusioned journalists?

A/ This is a disruption of our industry. Part of the reason journalists have been laid off globally is that news organisations have lost their advertising revenue stream. And where did they flock to? They flocked to the technology platforms that have enabled the attacks against journalists. And yet, as the Nobel committee pointed out, you need journalists to get the facts, especially in conflict areas, especially when authoritarian governments... need to be curbed. I go crazy when people call journalists content creators, because we’re not! It isn’t easy to be a good journalist. It isn’t easy to go up to somebody who has all the power in your world and demand answers. That takes courage. And that is the commodity that no one can really pay for.

Q/ How has your confrontation with Facebook influenced you as a journalist?

A/ I think Pandora’s Box has opened. Technology will be part of our lives, we can’t go backwards. And that’s why I think more journalists have to embrace technology. And technology [companies] have to embrace the fact that they are now the new gatekeepers. And they cannot treat lies the same way they treat facts. The data points of lies and facts are identical, and you can say that the lies have preferential treatment in the algorithmic distribution. Because lies, laced with anger and hate, spread faster and further than facts. So the world’s largest distribution platforms for news are biased against facts and journalists.

Our future, both of journalism and these tech platforms, are intertwined. We’re building a tech platform now for Rappler because, for our elections, we want our people to have a place where they can have fact-based, evidence-based discussions. Because it is in the listening that you get compromises, which is what a democracy is all about. I think the time of surveillance capitalism, where these platforms made a lot of money, is going to end. And I hope that they end it. In [their] self-interest, they can’t live in a world where democracy doesn’t exist anymore. Who would want to do that?

Q/ You said the media lost its gatekeeping powers to technology. How do you take back control and regain the trust of people?

A/ The hard part for journalists is that that’s not within our control anymore. In this new world, you tell a lie a million times, it’s a fact. In the old world, you tell a lie ten times, journalists can catch up, facts can catch up.

If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truths. Without truth, you can’t have trust. The incentive schemes of the internet and social media don’t encourage facts and journalism. They encourage information operations. Oxford University’s computational propaganda research project said, at the beginning of the year, that there are at least 81 countries where cheap armies on social media are rolling back democracy. Meaning, they are insidiously manipulating their people. In which democracy is that okay?

These tech platforms tell us, “Well, if you don’t like it, mute it or block it.” Can you imagine a journalist saying that? If you don’t like a fact, ignore it, but the rest of the world can still see it. This is why our public sphere is so broken. The idea behind a tech platform is that we can all have our own realities. It’s like we’re living in the Matrix, or in our own illusions. You can’t negotiate peace if you don’t agree on the facts, if you don’t agree on your shared reality.

Q/ So how do you deal with this cyber bullying? What’s the worst personal attack you have faced in your career?

A/ I can’t even quantify them anymore. The International Center for Journalists, University of Sheffield and UNESCO, working with Rappler, analysed almost half a million social media attacks against me. They found that 60 per cent of those were meant to tear down my credibility, and 40 per cent were meant to tear down my spirit. [They] haven’t torn down my spirit.

Q/ But how do you deal with it?

A/ You understand the data. This is what gives me power to cut through it. I know what they’re after, I know why they’re doing it. I used to be sensitive about my dry skin, because I have eczema, atopic dermatitis. And what the propaganda machine did was to take photos and put deep cracks in my face. They took my head and put it on top of male genitals and called me “scrotum face”. I am no longer sensitive about it. Or maybe I’m just an optimist and I look for the upside, because there is always an upside. It’s not going to work [on] me.

Q/ In your speech at Harvard last year, you said the assault on facts around the world has shifted journalism’s role to one of advocacy. This goes against the traditional understanding of the role of journalists. Why is this shift necessary?

A/ It’s because of technology. The technology that delivers our news is not neutral. Marshall McLuhan said, ‘The medium is the message’. Television could be more emotive, but at least we all saw the same screen. We weren’t being manipulated by the messages in the way social media now allows. In that sense, social media has become this behaviour modification system and every user is Pavlov’s dog. They’re A/B testing to see whether or not it works. And what’s their goal? To keep us scrolling. Your biology is being used against you. It’s mildly addictive. You have increased levels of dopamine and oxytocin. And beyond that, everything you put on any digital platform is gathered by machine learning to create a model of you that knows you better than you know yourself. The new propaganda is far more insidious than radio, than Joseph Goebbels was; that was the last time a journalist won this Nobel Prize.

Our biggest crisis is our Palaeolithic emotions, how our biology is being manipulated; medieval institutions, which are just starting to get it; and Godlike technology, which is being exercised by human beings without Godlike wisdom.

Q/ You were born in the Philippines and were raised in New Jersey in the US. How has that shaped you as a journalist?

A/ I’m used to being on the outside. When I’m in America, I feel most Filipino [and vice versa]. You realise that there is more than one way of looking at the world, and that these kinds of judgments that a dictator or a fascist tries to [make], this ‘us’ against ‘them’, are actually the worst of leadership. We need to come together. Look at the coronavirus. The best leader unites, explains, [and] brings out the best in human nature instead of dividing and using violence and fear. When people are afraid, it’s almost like every man for himself, and that means democracy splinters and there is no pushback against this growing power. I continue to hope. I believe in the goodness of human nature; isn’t that insane? I haven’t given up, I know we can get through this.

Q/ You said that while writing How to Stand Up to a Dictator, you went through a lot of emotions. Can you touch upon that?

A/ I grew up at a time when journalists weren’t the story. We now live in a time where social media pushes out authenticity and the journalists growing up in this generation have different incentives. What I hope stays is the standards and ethics, and the mission of journalism. The form may change, but I hope the substance stays the same. When I was writing this book, I went back over all of that. My career went from dictating your story on a public payphone to going live every hour, on the hour. And I knew the impact of technology, but I didn’t really realise it until the internet. And what I worry about the internet is the commoditisation of news. Because when news is commoditised, when you reduce something that takes so long to do—you can take eight months to do an investigative report that will hold power to account because you need to be absolutely certain or you’ll be sued—to page views. And you’re going up against the latest entertainment story of the night. The story is devalued, meaning is devalued.

Q/ You have written two books on terrorism. Do you think there’ll come a time when there is a united fight against terrorism?

A/ That’s tough to answer. I was in Delhi when the Indian Airlines flight was hijacked in 1999. Omar Sheikh was flown to Afghanistan and released (one of the three terrorists India released in exchange for passengers on the hijacked flight). [Later] he’s in Pakistan, and I was in New Delhi when he called me. [This was] right around the time that The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl [was beheaded]. Atlanta (CNN headquarters) wouldn’t let me go to meet him (Sheikh). Later, after Daniel was kidnapped, I realised that my desk saved me because I was going to go meet Omar Sheikh.

In the past, terrorism was used as a form of asymmetrical warfare. And it used to be for state to state. Then it wasn’t that anymore. I think 9/11 was a big signal for how it’s no longer nation to nation fighting. It comes out of a lot of things—injustice, when a state abuses its power. Certainly that’s happened here in the Philippines and in Indonesia.

I don’t think that’s ever going to go away, unless we have great governments who will provide for the people. If anything, we’re getting worse. But here’s the last twist: Today, it is the government exploiting these tactics of asymmetrical warfare against its citizens. And it is doing it insidiously. And now, [we are] finding these information operations; I call them the new terrorists.