Mr president,

is it important that people be afraid of you?

Yes.

[soft music]

Hello and welcome, I'm Maria Ressa.

[Reporter] Maria Ressa carries the torch of press freedom

in a country held in thrall

by a populous president.

It started with the drug war.

Do not do drugs

because I will kill you.

President Duterte began his administration

with the drug list.

This is the drug industry of the Philippines.

It showed everyone in list

people on that list started dying.

I'm telling the Filipino people,

it's gonna be bloody.

We demanded the government be held accountable.

Duterte was annoyed by our reporting.

You are a fake news outlet.

You will be allowed to criticize us

but you'll go to jail for your crime.

We started leading an attack on social media.

The government created disinformation networks

so people have no idea what the truth is.

I was getting an average of 98 messages per hour.

[Reporter] We don't even know

whether we can trust the police to protect us.

Just because you're a journalist

you think you're exempted from assassination.

We didn't even realize how dangerous it is for you.

Why are you crying?

I'm scared to speak up.

[Reporter] Maria Ressa has been arrested.

The charges against Maria Ressa

were aimed at intimidating those challenged duties rule.

Free Maria Ressa.

So why should you care about what happens

in the Philippines?

They test the tactics of how to manipulate America

in our country.

If it works, they port it over to the rest of the world.

[upbeat music]

Maria Ressa was one of four journalists named

as Time magazine's Person of the Year.

Maria won't be afraid

I'm afraid for her.

[beatbox music]

What we're seeing is death by a thousand cuts,

little cuts to Philippine democracy.

[upbeat music]

We will not duck.

We will not hide.

We will hold the line.

[upbeat music]

Hi, I'm so honored to welcome Maria Ressa,

the CEO and executive editor of Rappler to wire 25.

I watched her documentary just last night

and it's fantastic.

I suggest people look it up.

You could watch it and stream it

from your local movie theater.

Maria, thanks so much for doing this,

especially since it's way past midnight Manila time,

isn't it?

It is, but thrilled to be with you, Steve.

Well, thanks Maria and I've met

and it's been great to get to know her

during this tumultuous time in her life.

Now I know Rappler has actually been in the news this week,

and I wanna talk about that.

But first I wanna talk about the viewers just saw you

getting arrested.

What is the situation now

with the various arrests and in one case, a conviction

that you've had to deal with from that charming gentlemen,

Mr Duterte that we just saw in that clip.

So I have eight arrest warrants, right?

So eight criminal charges and there fall into three buckets,

cyber libel, I was arrested for that.

Tax evasion in order

to file these tax evasion charges,

the government actually renamed Rappler

we're no longer a newsgroup, we're a dealer in securities.

So that's how we,

they have five tax evasion cases against us.

And then the last one is kind of the mother case

securities fraud.

Where are they?

Well look, I have a filing almost every week.

I still spend a big chunk of my time, maybe 80 to 90%,

depending on which week it is.

On legal cases, just this week, Monday

I was supposed to testify to fight for my right to travel

that didn't happen.

In fact, the government tried to expunge my...

Anyway, this is all still ongoing.

And I guess the only thing I can say

is we keep fighting every step of the way

I fight for my rights

I fight for Rappler's rights.

It is a press freedom issue

and the legal acrobatics to bring us there.

Well, I guess the one word to describe all of it

and I think about this all the time now

is I feel like Joseph Cain in the trial it's cop class.

I thought about that when I just read

about the way,

particularly that cyber libel case went through.

Tell us like a little bit about it

because it just seems so incredibly dicey,

how they brought that particular case against you.

So I was convicted along with a former colleague Raison,

does he no longer work with us

he actually went to work for government

after he left Rappler, right?

So we were convicted on June 15th

and I could go to jail for up to six years

for a story that I, that was written eight years ago,

that I didn't write, didn't edit,

had no supervision over it

for violating, supposedly violating a law

that didn't exist at the time that we published it.

And in order to even get us there,

the cyber libel law to get us to court.

They actually had to change the statute of limitations

of libel from one year to 12 years.

And then also come up with a novel interpretation

of republication for digital.

All of these redefinitions will have an impact on Filipinos

for posting on social media.

Now they could be sued for libel for up to 12 years

having said that, we are appealing it

and I have two levels of appeals to go

up to the supreme court, I won't give up.

Right, and you told me recently

the total of possible jail time

that you could serve for this is what?

All the eight cases that we're facing

and it took the international lawyers

it took them all to actually tell me how many,

it's almost a hundred years,

total cumulative sentences of these eight criminal charges.

I hope I stay alive that long.

[laughs]

That's it--

Sorry, I do laugh about it now

'cause it's almost

I guess it's kind of gallows humor how do you deal with it,

it's unbelievable and I just, I laugh.

How do you deal with it actually?

Just laughing,

I mean, there's more to it than that.

There are some emotional moments in that documentary,

every time I see you,

you're always so upbeat and every time I leave,

and then talking to you,

I'm about to slash my wrist because it's so disturbing

what's happened to you.

I guess, so you play with your own fear,

it's in your head

and I just remember that all the time

and we talk amongst ourselves in our team, right?

So how do I?

I think of the worst case scenario of whatever it is

and then I imagine how I would deal with it.

I embrace my fear and if I really pulled it tight,

then I can rob it of its power over me.

And this goes to everything

this is also kind of the way that I run Rappler, right?

We have to embrace our fear and then go beyond that.

We work flow our responses to our fear.

So what's the worst case scenario?

Let's figure it out,

break it down and then drill it.

Like for example,

in the film you see Pia Renada, our reporter at the palace.

She chase, she follows Duterte right?

Followed until we were banned.

Anyway she, we had actually just drilled, right?

A few days before she was banned from the palace.

What we should all do if we get harassed

or if you're prevented access

and we had it down to it,

pulling out your cell phones,

what things needed to be set up on your cell phones

and how many steps does it take for you to go live

and you go live.

And, one of the things she told us after that was that

when it happened,

she had just drilled it like a day or so before earlier

and it worked, so that's it,

it's like, I guess it's games with yourself as well,

because the world is doing things you can't control

so you figure out what you can control, which is yourself.

Wow, so let's talk about this week's news

the Rappler was involved in.

So yesterday Facebook's head of security

Nathan Gleicher announced, that Facebook has shutdown,

some accounts, pages and groups originating from China.

So we all heard about the Russian interference with,

the American election and before that Ukraine.

And it looks like China is now taking a page

about getting involved in, messing with other countries,

elections and governance

and one of the people who they were backing

just like they backed Trump in America was Duterte

the leader of the Philippines,

who is your prosecutor and you've investigated him.

Now did Rappler had a hand in locating

these groups, these organized groups

to circulate misinformation,

didn't they?

You tell us about that.

So Facebook about this time 24 hours ago,

they announced that they would take down

two influence operations

and what I mean by influence operations is, state.

In this particular case, both looked state sponsored,

but, you in a closed system you feed lies.

And the end goal of all of that is to change the minds

to change the way people think

so they change the way they act.

In, there were two,

the first was Chinese influence operations

they originated from food jam.

And then the second were Philippine

domestic influence operations that were linked by Facebook

to the police and military.

We had a hand in the domestic one,

the police and military,

because we were quite alarmed by the inciting to hate

inciting to violence against human rights, activists,

lawmakers, journalists

and given the anti-terror law that was just passed

where anyone designated a terrorist

can be arrested without a warrant

and held for up to 24 days.

We felt that, people brought this up,

we did the stories and then brought it up to Facebook.

I think the second one,

the Chinese operations are interesting for me

'cause we started seeing these accounts filtering in

a year ago.

And one of the interests, of course,

you can look at the report now,

but it shows you that this network

the Chinese influence operations were focused

not just on the Philippines, but on Southeast Asia,

Taiwan, Indonesia,

they were most successful in the Philippines

and in the Philippines, they were pro-Duterte, pro-Marcos.

They focused on content on the South China sea,

which is deeply contentious.

And then finally, of course,

this is a network that attacked me personally

I mean, it's kind of good to know that,

well, we knew this from the data,

but I was just gonna be glib and say,

so now China comes in to also join the attacks

that are state sponsored here.

So it is exactly what we have seen from four years ago

is just as usual from Russian disinformation, it spreads

Chinese disinformation is now evolved,

has been affected by that and that,

well it's great that Facebook took it down,

there is a lot more that needs to be taken down.

One thing that was interesting,

that came out from Facebook,

I think in this first part you said

it wasn't the content of the posts

which violated Facebook policy,

but just the idea that

they were from these inauthentic networks.

So basically some of the content just attack you directly

and what he was saying is Jim that's okay

you think after all this time,

Facebook would maybe,

look at their policies and say,

is it okay for a policy to be personally attacking

not just prominent journalists like yourself,

but anyone with such lies?

Are these parts of discussions

that you've had with Facebook?

Yeah, Steven I mean

your book actually shows all of the difficulties

that Facebook has had with this.

I think that they continue to duck responsibility

as a publisher, they don't want to be called a publisher,

even though in a way they are.

I mean, to all intents and purposes,

Facebook is the world's largest distributor of news, right?

But look, the reason we Rappler also,

don't just look at the content

because that's a whack-a-mole game, right?

And it's much easier to think about it

the work that we did with Counterterrorism before

actually helped infuse the way we gather data

and the way we look at networks of disinformation.

'Cause I don't wanna get distracted by misinformation

and I also wonder why Americans always use

misinformation versus disinformation.

It is very clear,

there are networks that are meant to manipulate us,

and those are the ones like terrorism we should take down.

So that's kind of the way Facebook

has dealt with the network is, they came up with this,

this definition,

CIB coordinated inauthentic behavior, right?

But the problem is that this definition

maybe would have worked four years ago in 2016,

when the information ecosystem,

the influence operations coming in started, right?

Well, it started earlier than that

it started in 2014.

But anyway now, four years into it,

like in the Philippines,

it's the attacks are constant for four years.

These types of exponential when lives

laced with anger and hate spread faster

and further than facts.

Those lies are part of these information operations

they change the way people think.

So four years later,

real people think this now, I mean real account.

So how do you deal with that?

I think that's a failure

in terms of how Facebook thinks about this,

because the influence operations

have fundamentally changed the ecosystem.

Democracy is weaker everywhere around the world,

including in your country.

Yeah I wanna talk about that the second.

And we've certainly seen that it's an attack on truth,

but, since the Philippines we're a little ahead on this.

I wonder as a journalist,

you do this great investigative journalism,

but does it get to a point where the audiences

that you want to present that journalism to

just won't be affected by it

because they won't believe anything.

And that's the goal and I think we are there.

This is the problem, this is,

and that's the root,

that's the core of Russian disinformation, right?

And that I think was a basic understanding

that Facebook didn't have

I mean, they brought in a lot of people in 2018,

but it was quite late in the game.

I mean, the attacks against me began in 2016

journalists equals criminal, right?

And look at how it went, where it went in 2020,

there are Filipinos who believe I'm a criminal

and yet I haven't done anything differently,

but the information ecosystem was fundamentally changed

by social media platforms.

So yeah, so the goal of Russian disinformation

is not to make you believe in anything,

but to destroy your trust in everything

and that includes why are journalists attack?

Why are news organizations attack?

Because we bring the facts,

we still hold power to account.

I would say in the last four years,

the journalists have done their jobs

we continue to do that even when it's become

far more dangerous to do so

so in the United States, right?

But the problem is, that when the information ecosystem

is so chaotic and when the distribution system

prioritize lies over facts,

prioritizes anger and hate over rational thinking.

Then, you're left

with a democracy where people can't tell fact from fiction,

that means you don't have facts, you can't have truth

you can't have trust.

How can you have a democracy

if you have no integrity of facts?

How can you have integrity of markets?

And then how can you have integrity of elections, right?

So having said that

this is, we saw the reports start to come out

the research reports start to come out as early as 2017

and, we felt the attacks in 2016.

So globally in 2017,

I think it was Freedom House that said that

in at least 27 countries around the world,

cheap armies on social media was rolling back democracy.

A year later in 2018,

that was almost doubled by Oxford university's

Computational Propaganda Research Project.

And then in 2019,

it was more than 72 countries

and who knows, right?

What we've seen with the Corona virus

is that power has consolidated power.

They are automatically given greater power

because of the virus.

And in countries like mine, Hungary, lots of Brazil.

All of a sudden government gets authoritarian style

populous leaders get far more power and far more money.

So in 2016, something Ange

that I tell in my book, Facebook The Inside Story.

You warned Facebook about this

you said, this is happening right now in the Philippines.

And it could be happening in the United States

it could even elect Donald Trump

and everyone laughed because that seems so absurd.

Do you feel that in that time,

because it was a few years

that Facebook had been getting these complaints.

Facebook understood it and was turning a blind eye

or they hadn't understood it at that point.

And the second part of the question would be,

do they really understand it now?

So I think in 2016, they didn't understand it because...

So, you know this better

actually Steven I should ask you.

They put the growth people in charge, right?

You would know that better

they put engineers who were in the word is optimizing.

So they were optimizing to manipulate us,

to keep us on the platform

and also optimizing for money.

The micro-targeting, I actually always say that

today, the social media platforms

are behavior modification systems

because they take everything we put in,

they use machine learning to build the models of us

and then they take our most vulnerable moment to a message.

And they sell that to the highest bidder

that micro-targeting makes it extremely potent

and that bidder can be a government or a company.

And I don't think this is advertising in the old sense

anyway, I'm sorry I got derailed.

But here, I guess the first part of that is that

in 2016, they may not have known completely,

but they got repeated warnings.

I was very personal

I gave them Excel sheets of stuff

and the conversation that you've talked about was in 2016.

In 2017, I did get to talk to Mark Zuckerberg,

to Sheryl Sandberg I brought up that the Philippines

in fact, I invited Mark to come visit the Philippines

to see how powerful Facebook is.

Facebook is our internet a hundred percent.

Did he take up--

I'm sorry say again.

Did he take up your invitation?

No.

The way he dealt with it was,

he was just starting the travel through the US

'cause he was just realizing how little he knew, right?

So he's, you know this better than I,

because you've sat in so many interviews with him,

but he struck me as a bright young man.

Yeah 'cause I'm much older than,

but had never lived outside the United States.

And, I told him I said, Mark,

97 at that point was 97% of Filipinos on the internet

that are on Facebook, Facebook is our internet.

And then he just looked at me and this was like maybe about

10 or 11, no more than a dozen of us.

And then he just said,

wait Maria,

where are the other 3%?

Well, you got the other 3% in the succeeding years

and I laughed at that point in time,

but now it's just look

looking at these influence operations.

This is insidious manipulation of us.

And I guess that's my question is

how can we do we have freewill?

That's one, the second is and this is something

that the Chinese influence operations do.

They were the post that they posted against me

were inciting hate.

Inciting hate, inciting violence

degrading you so that you're not a human being

these things are extremely dangerous.

And we've seen the violence erupt in countries like Myanmar,

where the UN sent a special, a fact finding group

and Facebook sent its own

and they determined that genocide happened.

Gosh, I mean Steven, we can talk about so many things, yeah

Yeah, I guess you tell me what do you think

are you hopeful?

Me, well, I mean I'm disturbed

I'm disturbed that what's happening

in the Philippines and in America.

But when I said this is something positive,

we have a question from our audience that,

maybe we can finish on a more of an upbeat note.

So what is Justin Slootsky asks

what is an achievable positive change

that could be made in the world in the next five years?

So I'm going to so many things that I would to happen,

but if I could like wave a magic wand,

enlightened self-interests for Facebook.

It's so strange

'cause I was just talking to some of the folks there,

they have tremendous power,

but it's the abdication of the use of the power.

They don't want it, Mark has said this,

you don't want Facebook being the arbiter of free speech.

Like I feel every time I hear that

and every time I hear a Facebook rep say that,

I always think, good God get over yourself, you already are.

And the choices that you have made

have destroyed democracy and put people like me

in extreme danger and has killed people

because the problem is that, the global South,

our countries are the ones that bear the brunt

of Silicon Valley's decisions.

So a positive thing number one,

I guess Facebook is asking for regulations.

Regulations take time

I hope enlightened self interest happens that Facebook

does things like what it just did 24 hours ago,

take down these networks of disinformation

that are fomenting hate,

that are spreading lies that are meant to kill democracy

that's one and it isn't just Facebook.

It's these kinds of designs,

the kind of the algorithms

that create a loop that manipulate us

these things are embedded in every social media platform,

it's just, Facebook

is the world's largest distributor of news.

I think that's that's one.

The second is can the world please come together

we're watching the UN general assembly

on the 75th year, right?

But 75 years ago,

the atom bomb went off the end of world war II,

the end of fascism.

And now it looks like we're on the cusp of returning

to fascism if we cannot solve this problem

that was created by moving fast and breaking things right?

So, we've talked about this all the time,

'cause I go Steven, please tell me, give me hope.

I have a lot of,

I put a lot of hope and faith still in Facebook

we can't put the genie back in the bottle

and I'm just hoping that they move fast enough

and do not wait for legislation.

Having said that they asked for it

so yes, we need laws

we need to come together beyond the laws

and treat it like we did post world war II.

The world came together to prevent humanity

from destroying itself

and that's when we created the UN,

the UN declaration of human rights, right?

So this is another one of those moments,

we need to do this and this protects our lives

and our democracies.

Well, I asked you for positive

you gave me atom bombs and Fascisms Maria.

But you are the inspiration.

You are positive

[mumbles]

Anyway I wanna thank you so much.

You can go to sleep now

and wire 25 thanks you

and best of luck to you.

To you too, thanks.