MARIA RESSA:
When you live in a world without facts, you can't have truth. You can't have trust. And when you don't have that, your shared reality is torn apart.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH:
That’s journalist Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of the Filipino news site Rappler, who along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
ARCHIVE / ANNOUNCER:
Maria Ressa uses freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines.
ARONSON-RATH:
Maria was the subject of our documentary, A Thousand Cuts, which tells the story of how she was targeted by the government of president Rodrigo Duterte.
FILM CLIP / RESSA:
Anyone on Facebook who questioned the people who were being killed was automatically bashed. We began to look at the accounts attacking all of media. As soon as we released it, we got pounded.
FILM CLIP / RESSA:
I was getting an average of 90 hate messages per hour.
ARONSON-RATH:
Here with me now are Maria, and Ramona Diaz, the director of A Thousand Cuts, to discuss disinformation, the importance of journalism and press freedom, and the future of democracy in the Philippines. I’m Raney Aronson-Rath, and this is The FRONTLINE Dispatch.
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ARONSON-RATH:
Maria, and Ramona, it's wonderful to have you on The FRONTLINE Dispatch.
RESSA:
It's good to be here.
RAMONA DIAZ:
Thanks for having us.
ARONSON-RATH:
OK, Maria, I have to start with you. So it looks like you're able to go to Oslo.
RESSA:
Wahoo! Yes, finally!
ARONSON-RATH:
How did it feel when you learned — first of all — this incredible moment of the Nobel Prize? What was that like for you?
RESSA:
Oh, my gosh. Well, you know, I was live. I was on a webinar that was talking — actually off of A Thousand Cuts. There was the film showing, and then it was three of the independent news organizations in Southeast Asia: one from Malaysia, Indonesia and us in the Philippines. And we were talking about, "How are we going to survive this," right? And all of a sudden, in the middle of the discussion, my phone, my cell phone begins to ring, and I looked at it, and it said, "Norway." I knew they were announcing, so I actually thought, "Oh, wow. How great! They tell everyone who was nominated who won," right?
And so I muted the audio, and then I picked up the phone. And it's funny, because the recording of the audio and the recording of the video were pulled together, because the Nobel Committee had it. And you can see in the video that exact moment when I went from thinking, they're going to tell me who really won. [Laughs] And, and then realizing, "Oh, my God, they're telling me it's — I'm one of two!" And he didn't actually tell me the name of Dmitry, because they hadn't gotten ahold of Dmitry yet.
ARONSON-RATH:
Oh, right. Of course!
RESSA:
Right? And then after he says this, he then says, "And you can't tell anyone —"
ARONSON-RATH:
Aww!
RESSA:
"— until after we officially announce." And so I said, "OK," still kind of in disbelief. I think I sent a Signal message to my co-founders, but I unmuted myself and went back to the discussion and had to wait.
ARONSON-RATH:
Unbelievable. Ramona, thanks for joining us. Of course, you made A Thousand Cuts. Talk to me about this moment for you. Where were you? What were you doing?
DIAZ:
Uh ... [Laughs] I was actually in Manila, because we were starting to shoot another film. So it was the end of a really long week, because the different candidates were filing their certificates of candidacy for the presidential elections in 2022. So we were back and forth filming that. And then, the Vice President just — I think a couple days, or the day before — announced that she was running. And Maria's Nobel came, like right after this big announcement. So it was a double whammy. It was surreal.
ARONSON-RATH:
Maria, of course, this isn't just any prize, right? This has such symbolism and such significance, and that it was given to a journalist. This is what makes me almost emotional, thinking about the significance of saying: "Journalism matters." Can you talk to me about the significance of this? Um, and, and what are you going to say in your speech?
RESSA:
[Laughs] Don't ask yet about the speech. [Laughs] You know, it's all kind of intertwined. Ramona just discussed, you know, that 5 p.m. was the closing of candidates filing for whether they're running for elections. And right before the Nobel announcement, we knew that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — the son of the dictator, whose family was ousted 35 years ago — was running for president. So there was that, and then everything we've gone through in A Thousand Cuts.
The wires all crossed with how this is the first time a journalist has been awarded since 1935, right? And Carl von Ossietzky never got to accept his award, because he was languishing in a Nazi concentration camp. So, it felt like the Nobel Committee is shining this huge glaring light on a moment like that again. And I draw all these parallels to World War II and post-World War II, that there is this rise — it's a global rise — in fascism, a word I don't use lightly.
Two thousand eighteen was the first time I used that, after Madeleine Albright convinced me to use it. We were having a discussion about that. And the more I read about Carl — about the last time a journalist won this — the more I realized that, yes, it could get better, but it could also get much worse. I think this moment is existential, and the accelerant is technology. We are at a point where — just like the conditions that led to World War II — we have no idea what the facts are.
And, you know, living in a world without facts — again, we saw this in A Thousand Cuts — when you live in a world without facts, you can't have truth. You can't have trust. And when you don't have that, your shared reality is torn apart. That's the world we live in today. And that's why journalists for the last decade have come under increasing attacks. How every Press Freedom Index around the world has shown that it is just far more difficult to do our job.
So, look, I feel like I'm the placeholder for every journalist. The world has gotten much worse for us. But I think, more than any one of the institutions, we really have held the line. Right? It's hard to demand answers from power today, when your own communities are wondering whether they should trust you. And that loss of trust, we can go push it right back to how that has been enabled by the technology that delivers the news.
ARONSON-RATH:
Maria, that's so important. And thank you, you know, just journalist to journalist. That means a great deal. And when you told me the story of the last journalist who was awarded this, I almost broke down in tears, because I didn't know about him. And many journalists I've told since did not. So the fact that you're sharing his story, and also the important brave work he did during the Holocaust and World War II, is deeply meaningful — to not just me, but will be to the millions of people who now learn about him again.
Ramona, I want to talk to you a bit about A Thousand Cuts, but if you would — before A Thousand Cuts became A Thousand Cuts — can you talk to me about the moment you started filming with Maria? And what happened?
DIAZ:
As you know, Raney, my process is always a process of exploration. And I'm really happy that stakeholders in my films allow me to do that. I'm very lucky in that manner. What first attracted me was the drug war. And then realized that I couldn't do that. [Laughs] Everyone was doing the drug war. And — we've had this conversation before — I'm not a journalist. So I can't do breaking news. I don't know how to do that.
But I knew I needed to tell the story of the Philippines at that time under Duterte. And then, just by looking around, talking to a lot of people, and just by observing, right? Of course, Maria Ressa's voice, like, emerges. But she was already talking about for two years, like, algorithms, and how democracies were getting up-ended, because of the weaponization of social media. And that was connected to the drug war, and impunity, and all that. That's how I then pivoted. And then, as the story unfolded, obviously, she became the center of gravity of the film. I mean, the stories always tell you where to go.
ARONSON-RATH:
Right. But what happens when you start to film Maria? The action is almost immediate. Talk about that.
DIAZ:
I remember, it was just such timing. I had met her in 2018, and we sort of said, "Yeah, yeah. We're gonna film this." We didn't know what “this” was yet, Maria? I didn't really know. And then when I got back to Manila in 2019, I get back the day before she is arrested. Right?
RESSA:
[Laughs]
DIAZ:
And I didn't have a crew yet. And she texted me, she goes, uh, "If you have time, you may want to come to headquarters, because I'm getting arrested." I'm like, "Yes, I have time. I think this is what I'm here for." So I went, and I think I forced my way in, and suddenly I was with her in detention with her team. I just said, "I'm with Rappler." [Laughs] And they said, "Yeah, she's with us." And I started filming on my iPhone. Right?
ARONSON-RATH:
Oh, right.
DIAZ:
What do you do? I didn't have my crew.
ARONSON-RATH:
I remember that. Right.
DIAZ:
Yeah. So I started filming my iPhone, and then that was it, right? Then you're in the stream of the story, when the gravity of the film centers on one participant.
ARONSON-RATH:
So, Maria, you're the participant.
RESSA:
[Laughs]
DIAZ:
[Laughs]
ARONSON-RATH:
I've also gotten to know you, and you know, when you're looking at a documentary film, when you're watching — that's one thing. But you're the person in the middle of it. Talk to me about what it's been like for you, just managing that, and what the latest is.
RESSA:
Um. Oh, gosh. So, I think it's a shift from being a journalist, a reporter, to when you head a new organization. You're in that same boat, where, you know, you talk — it's more meta, and you are asked questions about the processes of news and the organization. And when I came back to the Philippines, and I was heading ABS-CBN, I would go to Senate hearings, right? To explain it. So you get used to speaking about the process.
And then under the Duterte administration, when the government began to attack Rappler first, and then me second, and then I realized, "Oh, gosh," when I got arrested, that, "I'm gonna have to first be a citizen and fight for my rights, and then be a journalist." Because you're both! Right?
I was appalled that, as a tactic of intimidation, that the officers had come to the office at 5 p.m., right? And just to make sure that — in their minds, then — that I would have to spend the night in detention. And that was done to make me feel their power. And, if anything, what it made me realize is just how petty power was going to be, and how abusive of those lines they were.
So what changed for me then was — a determination? Right? I didn't have to ask anyone else whether they did anything wrong. I know I did nothing wrong. I knew that I was just doing my job. And the fact that the government would go to these lengths, would bend the law to the point that it's broken, with the goal of making me voluntarily give up my rights. And I think Ramona captured this, you know?
That's when I realized that, "No way am I going to give up, and give you what you are trying to bully me into doing," right? And so I just kept doing my job. When I realized that, I was like, "All right, well, that's your goal. Well, here's my goal." And my goal, actually, as a mission of journalism? My gosh, Raney. The mission has never been as important as it is today. And I realize that as well.
And so the more cases they piled on — they are, [Laughs] you know, my lawyers? I gotta say, Amal Clooney took six months to go through every single document that was there. And you know, they have it down. They're ludicrous charges, they shouldn't have made it to court. But they did. And that is the world I live in. So, I kind of accepted that. And I just grew more determined to keep it away from our reporters. Right?
So it was actually really good. The more they attacked me, the more my team could do their jobs. And the more that I realized also, because we shine the light as reporters on different things, I knew that I needed to be crystal clear in exactly what was happening. And I needed to pull together the violence outside, with what we were seeing — starting in 2016 — the violence online. These are not separate worlds. These feed into each other. And the weaponization of the law came right after the weaponization of social media.
[MIDROLL BREAK]
ARONSON-RATH:
We’ll be right back, with more from our conversation with Maria Ressa and Ramona Diaz.
ARONSON-RATH:
Well, Maria, I actually first got to know about you, and how you articulated this — you were in the Facebook Dilemma on FRONTLINE. And what we noticed at that time was how our worlds had also collided: what was happening in the Philippines —
RESSA:
Yeah.
ARONSON-RATH:
— what was happening in Myanmar, was happening in smaller pockets at that time in America, right? And we saw that disruption start to happen: from social platform, to reality, to the streets, right?
RESSA:
Yes. I think it's three steps, right? It's a three-step process. The social media platforms were built to, you know — and I'll quote them — it was built to connect all of us globally, right?
ARONSON-RATH:
Mm.
RESSA:
But what they always forget is that — in the process — that technology takes our data. Every single post, and builds models of all of us, that then allows both machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to serve our most vulnerable moments to a message. To anyone who will pay, right? So this kind of powerful microtargeting, this is now no longer mass media. This is like someone reaching into your soul, and knowing when you are vulnerable to a message, when you're afraid. Even feeding you messages for you to be afraid, then coming in with an entire metanarrative to take advantage of that fear.
So the first step was the infrastructure, you know? And then, as they grew over time, as they optimized, and grew to — if you put WhatsApp and Facebook together, you're talking about more than 3 billion users around the world. We've never been at this point, where that much of humanity is on one platform, right? So then what happens is, as they optimize, they then realize that they could keep people on site longer if they bypass rational thinking — the thinking slow part — which is where journalism and democracy takes place. And focused on the emotions, on the thinking fast part.
And you can see this in the Frances Haugen papers that were just released. That emotions are weighted five times more. Imagine: anger, weighted five times more. So, you know, the algorithms of bias, of amplification. What is programmed at scale into the design of the platforms. And all the research has shown this. What spreads fastest and further, and gets the most viral amplification distribution, are lies laced with anger and hate. That's the second part.
The third part is who takes advantage of that at scale for power and money. It's not the advertisers, it's not the marketers who these tools were built for. It's power. And we saw this in the Philippines in 2016, you know. But we weren't the first. I mean, I think you saw the first rollout of this, the experimentation in Crimea.
ARONSON-RATH:
Yes.
RESSA:
This was in the FRONTLINE documentary, and the fight for the Ukraine.
ARONSON-RATH:
Yes.
RESSA:
How there was a dual reality, and the United States government was essentially powerless to deal with this. So, you had this annexation, in this day and age, right? And aided by dual realities, and no one could tell which is real. So by 2016, you have these dominoes falling: the Philippines; about a month later, Brexit; then you had, um, Catalonia elections; the election of Donald Trump; you had Macron in France,
So geopolitical power, and now you add the pandemic to it. And you can see how even that has been weaponized, because we now live in an age when lies kill. And we know this from the data, that these former marketing tools are now being used for geopolitical power play.
And here's an interesting example of that, are the Chinese information operations taken down by Facebook. September, last year — right before the U.S. elections — those information operations were creating fake accounts for the U.S. presidential elections. They were most successful in the Philippines where they were polishing the image of the Marcoses. And they were attacking me and Rappler. That's the way it works now.
ARONSON-RATH:
That is the full circle, and that's the concept of A Thousand Cuts, right? A multitude of little cuts that equal the whole of what we're experiencing now, and what you specifically have been experiencing. What's the latest on this state of play in terms of the upcoming election? I'd love for you to just set the stage. A lot of Americans won't quite know exactly what's happening there yet.
RESSA:
Yeah, yeah. And, you know what? If we lose our democracy — which is really what is at stake in these elections — then it's a hop, skip and a jump before you do. Because this is what we have seen, where essentially these tactics of manipulation, mass manipulation, are being tested.
I think that's why it's an exciting time. The creative destruction has new meaning, because the world as we knew it has been destroyed. And now we need to create new forms of civic engagement, new forms of communication, new forms of coming together for elections. And the reality is that you can't have integrity of elections if you don't have integrity of facts. Then you're just having emotions fight against emotions. It's ultimate chaos.
But, look, I'll answer that question about elections in just two ways. I'll answer it as a reporter for the rest of the world and then one for the Philippines directly. For the rest of the world, think back to the future: 1986. A Marcos against a woman. That's really what we have right now, because while we have about 10 presidential candidates, it narrows down to about five who have both the political machinery and the ability to win, to bring in the votes.
And of those, there's a big gap. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — "Bongbong" — in the last survey is ahead by a significant amount. So he's the front runner, 35 years after his family was kicked out, ousted in a People Power Revolt. The woman challenging him is the vice president now, Leni Robredo. She ran and won against him in 2016 by just 200,000 votes. And he spent years really pushing for recounts, and every recount has actually given her more votes.
So here they are again, right? And the only way a Marcos will win again is if you don't have integrity of facts. Because what Rappler has done through the last years, is expose the disinformation networks of the Marcoses, the information operations where they have systematically shifted reality, you know? Their father is no longer a dictator kicked out and accused of plundering 10 billion U.S. dollars, in 1986 dollars, right? Their father is now the greatest president this country has ever had. A hero. The best leader, you know?
These are ongoing information operations. We exposed these in 2019. We did a huge three-part series where we showed the data, and he by far — Bongbong Marcos' reach on social media, on YouTube, on Facebook, on TikTok — it's overwhelming. No one touches what they've done. Again, shifting realities.
Leni Robredo has had the same problems that Democrats have had, which is how do you fight lies? Do you lie? And use anger and hate as well? Or not? She's chosen not to. And so will that be enough to win? If you go by statistical survey, she's significantly behind.
For Filipinos, as a reporter for the Philippines? You know, I would say: This is it. This is the moment where, like 1986, it will determine our future. And it's ironic, also, because the management of COVID has weighed heavily on this. And you can see how President Duterte, as the people who have supported him over the years — it's like rats deserting a sinking ship now. He is facing the ICC on charges of the killings in the drug wars. So, yeah, we are — for Filipinos: This is it. It's do or die. Will our democracy survive? You know, will the people who have been afraid to speak, will they vote? And is the vote actually valid if we don't have facts?
ARONSON-RATH:
You know, Maria, when you talk — I mean, Ramona, you're probably thinking too — the gravity of this is so real. And, thankfully, you're there filming.
DIAZ:
[Laughs]
ARONSON-RATH:
What's going through your head as she's speaking about the state of play in the Philippines?
DIAZ:
It's really scary, actually. It's frightening. But being on the ground, I mean. Leni Robredo, you know, her whole campaign is about leaning into radical love and kindness. And in a way, she's changed the rhetoric a lot, because then you find Ferdinand Marcos suddenly being reversioned as the family man wearing pink, as well. Because they found that it works. Because the minute she announced, Twitter exploded with pink.
So they found that people are shying away from the kind of fear and sort of vulgarity of the Duterte years, and wanting some kind of way back to decency and kindness. I don't want to sound like a Hallmark card, but this is what I'm finding on the ground just talking to people.
And, in a way, Leni has already changed the temperature of the discussion. But will she win? I mean, people — they've reversioned this history of the Marcoses that you don't recognize. That's also a failure of the educational system in the Philippines. And so people don't really know who Imelda Marcos is, really. They know her as this sort of entertaining figure. But they don't really know exactly what happened during the martial law years.
ARONSON-RATH:
Maria, I want to come back to you, as Ramona's talking, and you were also sharing — it's hard to have an election with integrity if the facts aren't clear. If people don't know what truth is. What are you and Rappler doing right now, in platform terms?
RESSA:
I think two things. One is we built the tech to build communities of action. It took us far longer than it should have, because the money for that went to pay our legal fees. This should have rolled out in 2018. Instead, we started building it in 2019, 2020. And now it's 2021. So we're way delayed. I don't know if the ideas will work, but we'll know. So you got to fight tech with tech. Right? I hope to build a place that will be safe for our users to ask questions without getting clobbered, to think aloud, and to listen to each other, right? That's what's been missing. To be the good, right?
If you think about what social media has done, it's actually gagged the good. The toxic sludge that's pumping through the information ecosystem enables the worst of human nature to come out. And that's been used by digital dictators. That's what we've seen. So now with our platform, we hope to be able to build these communities of action and try to get to integrity of facts. But, we're not Facebook, we're not YouTube. So I know that this is an experiment in progress.
The bigger thing is to try to organize ourselves in the Philippines. And I think about this in four tiers. We're trying to — all the news groups, hopefully, are coming together. So we will have a fact-checking consortium, where, if all the news groups are there, then they can carry every fact check together. That's one.
Then on top of that fact checking, there's a layer of civil society — our partners, our civic engagement partners — with more than 150 of them. Civil society groups, NGOs, focused on human rights, on the environment. They're issue focus groups, but what we all have in common is we need to make sure facts survive, right? So that's a layer on top, and also, frankly, a distribution mesh, if you think about it like that.
Then on top of that, we are helping organize the academic community. In the U.S. elections, you had something called the "election integrity partnership," where the universities and those doing disinformation research came together. But it wasn't connected to fact checking. What we're going to try to do in the Philippines is to pull that all together so that the data that we get, gets delivered almost instantly to the academics, as it is to the journalists. The academics can take a week to process; the journalist will have less than a day. So they won't have the rigor of the academics. But hopefully the academics will be able to pull everything together so that they will have better research and more thought out on a weekly basis.
And then on top of that, to stop the impunity, we're working with lawyers, right? So that there is some individual costs. And this is a lesson that came from the approach of the Magnitsky Act, when instead of looking at country sanctions, you do individual sanctions. So that there is some personal costs to those whom you have evidence of manipulation. That's the idea. I don't know. Will it work? Who knows!
ARONSON-RATH:
I mean, how are you going to capture all of this in your Nobel lecture, is what I was just starting to think.
RESSA:
[Laughs]
DIAZ:
[Laughs] No pressure!
RESSA:
I realized how great I am at procrastination.
ARONSON-RATH:
[Laughs]
DIAZ:
[Laughs]
RESSA:
I'm, I'm thinking about it a lot. And, and it's a tough one, because I have 15 minutes. And you know, it is both micro and macro. It is the first time a Filipino voice will be heard there. And it can't just be Filipino, but it must be Filipino.
DIAZ:
Oh, my god. [Laughs]
ARONSON-RATH:
Ramona, how do you feel when she says that?
DIAZ:
Yes! it must be specific, but it must be universal, right? At the same time.
RESSA:
Right! Right?
DIAZ:
It's so difficult, that balancing act. But I thought it was longer? I thought you had like 40 minutes or, or no?
RESSA:
No, 15.
DIAZ:
Ah, 15. That's even harder!
RESSA:
And then, and wait! The other part I also started looking at is, of all the Nobel winners, I'm only the 18th woman to get this. So, you know, this is why every time I sit down to write — and I think I've had like, like many different instances — I stare into space. And the hard part is, I think in the end, people want to know what to do. Right? They want action points. And then when meaning has been atomized the way it is today, it becomes a search for meaning, but that search for meaning is individual.
And so that's kind of the goal that I want for this is that anyone listening should, like, jump up out of their seats, to say, "I got to do everything I can right now to protect — not just democracy, but — to make sure that the world is the way I think it should be! And make sure that this is a world I want to live in." How's that?
DIAZ:
That's a very small job. [Laughs] Oh, my god.
ARONSON-RATH:
[Laughs] Well, Maria, I am going to be thinking of you now, as you sit down, and you write your lecture, and you think hard, and we'll be there supporting you.
RESSA:
Isn't that insane? I'm going to write it now.
ARONSON-RATH:
Well, you're both remarkable, inspiring women. And I thank you both.
DIAZ:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Raney.
RESSA:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
ARONSON-RATH:
Oh, you got it.
RESSA:
Thank you for all you do. [Laughs] Thank you, guys.
ARONSON-RATH:
To stream A Thousand Cuts now, go to frontline.org, where you can read, watch and listen to all of our original reporting on this film and many other stories.
This podcast was produced by Erika Howard and Miles Alvord, with production support from Megan McGough-Christian. Katherine Griwert is our editorial coordinating producer. Frank Koughan is our senior producer. Lauren Ezell is our senior editor. And Andrew Metz is our managing editor. I’m Raney Aronson-Rath, executive producer of FRONTLINE. Music in this episode is by Stellwagen Symphonette. The FRONTLINE Dispatch is produced at GBH and powered by PRX.
