>> Maria Ressa: Thank you. >> Shari Werb: Welcome to the Library of Congress. I'm Shari Werb, the director of the Center for Learning Literacy and Engagement. Before I introduce tonight's special guest, I want to let you know about our new program initiative called Live at the Library. Every Thursday evening, we keep the library open until 8:30 p.m. with drinks and snacks for purchase. Our exhibits are open and we offer various programs, including concerts, films, and performances. We often pull-out special collections such as the Flutes Lizzo played here at the library, and tonight we have a small exhibit in the lobby of the auditorium featuring the library's collections related to Filipino history and its citizens fight for free expression. If you didn't get a chance to see it on your way in, you'll be able to see it on your way out. We look forward to seeing you back here on Thursday evenings. For tonight's program, we're honored to host Ms. Ressa and we're glad you're all here with us tonight. I want to thank our Libraries Asian American Association and the Asian Division for their help in producing this event. Ms. Ressa is the CEO, co-founder and president of Rappler, the Philippines top digital news site, and was the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. She grew up in the United States and studied at Princeton University before working as a journalist in Asia for over 35 years. She won the UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize in 2021 and was the Time magazine Person of the Year in 2018. Among many awards, she received the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. The library's chief communications officer, Roswell Encina will be in conversation tonight with Ms. Ressa, whose new book is titled “How to Stand Up to a Dictator; The Fight for Our Future.” After the event, Ms. Ressa will be signing books at the information desk located right after you entered this building. There will be time for questions from the audience tonight. So be thinking about your questions. Let's welcome our author and special guest, Ms. Ressa, with Roswell Encina. [applause] >> Roswell Encina: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Library of Congress. Thank you, Shari. I also want to as Shari mentioned, I want to thank the LOCs Asian American Staff Association for helping us support tonight's event. I hope you were able to look at the collection display out there in the vestibule. You'll see items from the people power that came from the library's rare books collection from the music division and many more. So I'm hoping you could enjoy that right after the conversation. And welcome to Maria Ressa. How are you? >> Maria Ressa: I'm good, I'm good. Oh, my gosh. You guys must be nudging at the Library of Congress on a Saturday night (laughs) So thank you. >> Roswell Encina: So as you can see, I'm a big -- I'm a big nerd. I completely tab above it. >> Maria Ressa: I got to love it, right. >> Roswell Encina: So I should say, though, the book is like your memoir is an ode to friendship. >> Maria Ressa: Memoir sounds so old, but yes, I am old. >> Roswell Encina: It's an ode to journalism, to democracy, to Filipinos. In the prologue, actually, and this is what hit me a lot. You ask the readers, what are you willing to sacrifice for the truth? How do you answer that question? And through your book tour and talking to people, how have they answered that question? >> Maria Ressa: Oh, my gosh, He starts with a tough one. I think I've learned a ton. Like we all think we have values. We do the right thing. But you don't really know until you're tested and you know for good or whether it's good or not or bad, President Duterte tested us and it -- and what am I willing to sacrifice? I'm learning I'm willing to sacrifice a lot more than I ever thought I would, and that it's extremely important. And I think from the audiences that I've been on this kind of book tour. It started in November 17th in London, and then here now it's-- I feel like we're learning from the audiences. You're just finding out you're being manipulated. And that to me, was kind of shocking. But everyone feels something is wrong. And so I asked that same question what are you willing to sacrifice for the truth? And it's interesting to a sk it in Washington, D.C. (laughs) >> Roswell Encina: So we share a similar story. Full disclosure, I'm Filipino-American. I was born there. Then my family moved here to the States. Then we moved back, then we moved back. So you kind of have the same thing. How did your dual citizenship or having two countries considered home affect you personally, and how did it inspire your career as a journalist? >> Maria Ressa: Oh my gosh. So when I was growing up in the States, I was born in the Philippines, and then I was ten years old when my -- when we landed in snowy New Jersey and, well, New York then drove to New Jersey. I guess I always thought that when I was growing up, I was a nerd and it wasn't cool to be a nerd back then. And I thought that I was just a quiet kid and I thought maybe I'm Filipino, that I might fit better in the Philippines. And so when I graduated college, I applied for a Fulbright and I went back to the Philippines. And when I got there, that's when I realized, oh, gosh, I don't have the cultural signals of what being Filipino meant. So the longer I stayed in the Philippines, I've now lived more of my life in the Philippines than in the US. When I'm with Filipinos, I feel very American. And then when I'm with Americans, I feel very Filipino. So I don't know if you feel the same way, but you know, what it does is you're part of both. I think any third culture kid would feel this. You're part of both, but sometimes you're part of neither and then I always said it was great training to be a reporter because you pull back and then you can you can jump in. But there's always a side that's going, you know what? What is really happening? I've learned to put the best of both together. I think that's the fun part and this is part of what I wrote. Like people kept asking me, where do you find courage? And it's actually layer by layer by layer. It's in the values that you grow up with. It's in the choices that you make. And so, yeah, Filipino and American. Yes, I'm glad. When we walked in like we had never met each other, I was like, Are you Filipino? >> Roswell Encina: I have to ask you too. You went to school in Princeton. Do you consider yourself like an accidental journalist? Like most Filipino parents, many of our parents are probably aiming for us to do something else. >> Maria Ressa: Medical school, doctor, lawyer. >> Roswell Encina: What was your lightbulb moment that you realize this is what I need to do? >> Maria Ressa: I think when I went back to the Philippines. I mean, I slid into it, and I always used to crack a joke that I didn't call it left brain, right brain in college. If you're in college and you're trying to figure out what to do, in the book, I really say there's this one thing, which is always choose the path to learn. Choose to learn whichever path you're doing, and then you shift if you stop learning at something. But for me, it was I did all the right things. My parents said, go pre-med. I was pre-med, so I just collapsed it in two years instead of the four years and then I did English and theater and dance. Then they said do pre-law. So I did pre-law in the one year. And then after the Fulbright, it was the Fulbright where I-- it was for political theater. My senior thesis, I wrote a play and it was a Brechtian allegory because I like sorting out my personal problems in allegories. So it was my mother-- there was a mother figure who was the Aquino figure and then a grandmother figure, the Marcos figure fighting over a child for the Filipino people. So this was like-- this was the senior thesis that went to Edinburgh, to the French festival, the international festival there. And when I got to the Philippines, I-- it was real life political theater literally. And I wanted to learn, but theater wasn't the right way. So I walked into the old government television station where the journalists were learning how to unlearn their own self-censorship because they had come out of almost 21 years of a dictatorship. And I just like every day, that's how I learned through television news. And I kind of fell into it. And then when I mean, yeah, I didn't really choose it. You fall into it, you make the choice every day. And I was making-- I was choosing where I was learning and journalism was incredible. You get to ask anyone questions, you know, and imagine like heads of state will answer. And inevitably you find it was an incredible thrill. I mean, this is what-- it is, a love of journalism which I hope survives. >> Roswell Encina: We'll get to that. Which led to you working at CNN. And you worked in the Philippines at the local-- not the local, the network in the Philippines, which is called ABS-CBN, which turned into-- you were able to get a great opportunity at CNN, where you covered a lot of awful war zones. How did that prepare you in covering-- it's not like the usual type of war zone in the Philippines, but how did the war zones of other countries prepare you to what you had to do in the Philippines? I like what you wrote when you said when you were covering Suharto, “When there was a challenge to power, the leader tried to shape the narrative by controlling the press.” So it kind of almost kind of created the foundation for you of how to approach-- how to approach covering the Filipino government. >> Maria Ressa: I mean, in every level, right? Like every-- you go to any country where a coup happens, the first step is to take the television station or the radio station and then control communications and get your message out. That is for everything. But I think, you know, living a breaking news life, being a broadcast reporter, I was-- I think it was the golden age of journalism. And you're forced to go-- when you go into a conflict area war zone reporting, you take your team. That means you plan your way in and then you plan your way out. And then regardless o f what happens, even if they're shooting from that side to this side and you're alive, you can't duck, you know, you just keep going live. And then the part I like best, which is the best training for things like what we're doing today, you have two minutes at most to distill 400 years of history and the present moment, and you have to do it in three bullet points. That was my 20-year training. So, you know, it was-- I guess part of it is making those judgments. That was the other thing. Like, it made me realize that you have to be prepared. When you're live, you're asked these questions about, you know, the Philippines or East Timor, which was coming out of 400 years of Portuguese rule. And it was-- you have to put it in the present moment. You take the history, but bring it and somehow make it relevant to why you should care about what's happening there now. So yeah, sorry I rambled on to that. >> Roswell Encina: Let me test you on that. For members of the audience and for the folks watching online who may not know you mentioned a lot, Rodrigo Duterte; who is he? The statistics are staggering, I should say, on his war on drugs. in the first couple of years of his administration, about 27,000 people were killed. >> Maria Ressa: Although this is debatable. >> Roswell Encina: And he compares himself to Hitler. >> Maria Ressa: Yes, proudly so he does. >> Roswell Encina: Give us your spill of how would you tell this audience who Duterte is in three bullet points. >> Maria Ressa: Oh, my gosh. (laughs) Our longest serving mayor of Davao City from 1988 until he ran for president on and off, time off. He was a vigilante mayor who was often accused of extrajudicial killings. And in the interview, we did right before he decided to run for office, admitted on camera to me that he had killed three people. Number three, he killed three people, and it's actually what that clip was picked up by everyone else. He believed in order to lead, you need both fear and violence And he carried through. He gave his -- he fulfilled that promise. >> Roswell Encina: I mean, it's pretty horrible. Like the night of his election, people started dying. And could you describe to the folks when they would kill, let's say, a drug lord or someone who sells drugs, what would they do? >> Maria Ressa: Well, for one, it was never really the people who were the power, right? It was inevitably and Amnesty International said this in their report in January 2017. It is always the poorest of the poor. It looked like a war on the poor. But what they did is there were starting July of 2016, June, July 2016, we had one reporter at night would go out with a camera. And every night, they began coming home with videos of at least eight dead bodies a night. And this would be like bodies dumped on the sidewalk sometimes in front of a school. The bodies would be hogtied, they would be gaffer taped, and sometimes their eyes blindfolded. And there would be a cardboard saying (inaudible), which is don't imitate me, right? It was -- you couldn't write this better as fiction, except Gotham City was real for us. And I think it crept up on us. You know, so we were counting eight dead bodies. But at a certain point, the Philippine National Police actually admitted that during that time period, at least 33 people died every night. You don't feel a cataclysmic change when this happens. This is why I started calling it death by a thousand cuts. It kind of changes reality slowly. It normalizes violence, but you don't realize how much it changes you. >> Roswell Encina: Some people may think, especially here in the States, how could somebody like that be elected to be president? >> Maria Ressa: Well, I should ask you. >> Roswell Encina: I'm not in the Philippines (inaudible) [applause] So to give the audience an example, what kind of narrative did Duterte put out there for the Filipinos to digest? >> Maria Ressa: It's the same thing that strongman ruler have used in every part of the world. There's almost a dictator's playbook. It is tough on crime, it is not rule of law, but rule by law. It is kind -- He gave three promises. He said that he's going to stop corruption. That didn't happen. He was going to stop drugs, that also didn't happen. But they were all -- it was quite concerted. You know this -- and this is why it's so directly connected to our information ecosystem, because during the time he was campaigning for president, the drugs, which became a problem everywhere, I think around the same time, right. Drugs moved from a number eight nationwide concern to number one, and that was part of it, right. He promised that Filipinos would feel safer, yeah. >> Roswell Encina: I think he even said that he wants the Philippines to be great again. >> Maria Ressa: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, here we go. Yeah, he will -- he'll pull -- that sounds -- yes. Like I said, they all sound familiar. >> Roswell Encina: So you wrote here to that-- And I'm going to read something from your book in quotes. is that Duterte said this. “Hitler massacred 3 million Jews, he once said. Now, there is 3 million drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them. His language was false, you're right. Hitler murdered six million Jews, and the presence of three million drug addicts in the Philippines was unlikely. (inaudible) but his statement took off on Facebook and social media, which opens up to what I was going to ask you. You've been very critical of social media in the book, especially Facebook. Just to give everybody an idea here, we're always on our phones. I was about to say my phones are on me somewhere. We look at our phones all the time, but it doesn't compare how it is in the Philippines. Just give them an idea of like, how big is Facebook and how big is the use of social media and the Internet on Fillipinos. >> Maria Ressa: So before social media, Filipinos spent the most time texting, SMS, short messages and our-- kind of like our second people power was organized through texts. But at a certain period of time a few years back, we hit 100% of Filipinos on the Internet, are on Facebook. Facebook really is our Internet. And as of January 2021, it had been six years in a row where Filipinos spent the most time online and on social media globally. This is from Hootsuite and We Are Social, those numbers. You know, I think of the Philippines as like if you're doing genetic research and you want to have quick generations, you use fruit flies, drosophila, right? So the Philippines is like the fruit flies if you want to test anything that has to do with social media. >> Roswell Encina: So knowing all that of how much Filipinos digest Facebook and Twitter and everything else, is it fair to say that it makes Filipinos or the country ripe for misuse or for the rise of, what do you call them, click account camps? >> Maria Ressa: So the other thing -- well, the other thing in the Philippines is that there's kind of like this homegrown industry that was connected to fraud, Hotmail when there was a lot of email fraud up until it was controlled. A lot of those false accounts, those were coming from the Philippines, phone verified accounts on social media. So that would be the most recent one. But Hotmail, online fraud, all of these things actually, even there was one point where coronavirus disinformation was coming out and the doctor here in the United States that was named had his office in the Philippines. It's very-- we had links to everything that was kind of bad on the Internet. But one of the things that did come out of this was that we became a testing ground. And this is what the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower called us. He said that we were the petri dish. They tested tactics of mass manipulation in the Philippines, Nigeria, countries like ours, where law and order is weak, they can get away with it. And then if it worked, they ported -- that's the word he used. They ported it over to you. So, I mean, actually, the two biggest stories of my career had to do with how these-- how attacks against America were being tested in the Philippines and the first one was 9/11. You know, when the plane crashed into the World Trade Center, it was a memory for me because I remembered reading an interrogation report of the guy who was probably the first pilot recruited by al Qaeda. He had been arrested in the Philippines in 1995. And at that point, when 9/11 happened, he was in a federal prison in the United States. His name was Abdul Hakim Murad, and he was working with Ramzi Yousef, the guy who did the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. They didn't bring it down then, but his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, they were all in the Philippines. So when Ramzi Yousef failed the truck bombing, he moved to the Philippines to train the Abu Sayyaf, see how we're all connected. And then his uncle came around 1994, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that first pilot, Abdul Hakim Murad, came, they created a cell there. In 1995, they had a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton because he was coming to the Philippines to assassinate the pope. And then they had these strange plots, right? One was to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. And it named the buildings World Trade Center, Pentagon, Transamerica in San Francisco, and a bunch of other buildings that-- and then other plots like a liquid bomb plot. If you remember in 2002, Richard Reid in London, he was the liquid bomb plot. It created a mess of all the airlines. They tested this, the liquid bomb, they carried it out. And it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef who got it through airport security on heels -- on the shoe. This is why the Philippines, because we have the exact same security system that the United States has. So they figured out that there was a two inch gap. They carried it through. They created the liquid bomb plot, inserted it at the bottom of a seat of a Philippine Airlines flight going to Japan and ignited it. The businessman who was sitting on that seat died. So to see it again in 2002, it was tested in the Philippines. I'm sorry I brought you to 9/11, because it was quite pivotal. But that was the first time where these tactics were tested in the Philippines. And then to see information operations, information warfare. Again, Cambridge Analytica is the perfect example. The country with the most number of compromised accounts on Facebook is America, you. The country with the second most number of compromised accounts was the Philippines. >> Roswell Encina: So you mentioned that disinformation became big business. Let me read something again from your book here. What we were seeing was a kind of asymmetrical warfare online, except in this case, it was Goliath using the tactics of David. It was the platforms and larger powers using the surreptitious tactics of a rebel group. So it's interesting that it's very ground roots but it was -- or very maybe rebel like maybe you would see on Star Wars, but it was really taken on a level of -- on a greater level. >> Maria Ressa: Yeah. I mean, think about it where to me, part of the reason we had set up Rappler was in 2009, we watched the Arab Spring, right? And it was all the disparate groups fighting for their freedom and social media was a tool for that. Well, after the Arab Spring, governments realized they could do the same thing. And so they use, they exploited these same tools and with power and money that they had, they just-- that's where it was, asymmetrical power. But it's the Goliath, so what happens to the Davids? We're still trying to figure that out. >> Roswell Encina: So as we mentioned earlier, very critical of Facebook and a lot of the social media there. You met with them, too, and kind of warn them. Let me read one more thing. You wrote, “I believe that Facebook represents one of the gravest threats to democracies around the world. And I am amazed that we have allowed our freedoms to be taken away by technology companies’ greed for growth and revenues.” You presented the facts to Facebook executives, even Mark Zuckerberg. How did they respond to you, or did they do anything? >> Maria Ressa: Well, you know, when I started getting 90 hate messages per hour, I was told I should report it 90 per hour. I was like, there aren't enough hours in the day, my working for you. But so how did they respond? I think we were alpha partners, essentially alpha partners of Facebook. We knew Facebook better in the Philippines than Facebook did, right? >> Roswell Encina: Did you harness the power of Facebook at the beginning, right? >> Maria Ressa: I was the truest of true believers. And I still believe that technology could help jumpstart development, right? It's the design of the social media platforms that is creating the cascading failures that we're seeing today. You could change the design, the companies won't make as much money, but how much money is enough to destroy the very foundations, the very systems that gave birth to you? This is what --So look. Everything in the book is fact based. It is evidence based. If you want the data, I can give them to you. I wrote 400 pages and my editor chopped it in half because he said, do you want them to know everything you know or do you want them to read it from cover to cover? (laughter) But I have the data. Please tell me it is there. There are elements there. What we saw was that there was a dramatic sea change around 2014, and that was around the time when, well, what happened in the real world. Russia began seeding Meta narratives that led to the annexation of Crimea. Those same Meta narratives are the ones that were used earlier this year when Putin decided to invade Ukraine itself. It was also 2014 was the time when our president today, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. began information operations to rehabilitate the name of Marcos, turning it Marcos from a pariah to a hero. If you don't remember the people power revolt in 1986, 36 years before we elected our president, Marcos today, so 36 years before people power sparked these movements for democracy everywhere around the world because 87, it was Korea, 88 it was Myanmar. We know where Myanmar is today, you know, down to like the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, where Vaclav Havel thanked the Filipino people. So in 1986, Ferdinand Marcos had ended nearly 21 years of rule and had been accused of stealing $10 billion in 1986. So anyway, so 2014 was when the information operations to change history began. It's quite successful. And the other thing that happened in 2014 was the beginning of instant articles on Facebook, because this is deeply connected. And by 2014, American news organizations were going onto instant articles. 2015 was when we were other parts of the world. There were four news organizations from the Philippines that Facebook invited. We're still partners with Facebook, where I think they see me as a frenemy. I hope we're still partners because I do think that social media is part of our future. We just-- it just has to evolve. So when they did that, though, they brought news on board. They didn't change the algorithms, the algorithms of amplification. So all of a sudden, the facts, which one news groups were the gatekeepers, we actually were responsible for the public sphere, right, and we were held accountable for it. when technology took over around 2014, it abdicated responsibility for the public sphere, and it did a lot more. For one, it didn't distinguish lies from facts. And because the goal is to keep you scrolling, it's an attention economy. Lies actually spread faster than facts. And then if you infuse it with fear, anger, hate, us against them or what Viktor Orban in Hungary calls white replacement theory, then you stay longer, right? That's the business model that we didn't have a name for it. Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard emeritus professor, wrote this book in 2019. She coined surveillance capitalism. I'll do one last thing, just in case you don't, right. Like for every post you put on Facebook and you can use this on any social media, machine learning comes in and builds a model of you that knows you better than you know yourself. So every user has a model. Model sounds okay, but replace that word with clone, right? So machine learning comes in and clones us our private thoughts, our fears. And then the company says, because we cloned you, we own your clone. And artificial intelligence comes in and takes all of our clones, and this is the mother load database that is used for microtargeting. Microtargeting is not the same thing as advertising. Advertising, we see the same thing, right? But microtargeting takes your weakest moment, your weakest point to a message and then feeds you that message, but gets paid to do it. So it's almost like Roswell, like I tell him my deepest, darkest secret. Then he'll go to you without me knowing and tell you, I got Maria secret, who will pay me the most for that? And then he targets it. He sends it to me. That's surveillance capitalism. And the other abdication of responsibility for this is our governments, democratic governments, and I would say the US government, because these were American companies. In this theater, if you were to yell fire and there's not a fire, there are consequences. They're building rules. Well, not the Library of Congress. This is much bigger than this. But there are laws for building codes, right? There are laws for pharmaceutical companies. Imagine if a pharmaceutical company can come here and give this. I'll try drug A and I'll try drug B for over here. Oh, drug B killed you guys, we're sorry. That's what is happening online. And we know that genocide has happened in Myanmar, enabled by social media. This is by Facebook. I even like pulled back a little bit because this is what the UN found and it is what Meta -- what Facebook itself found. I will stop my rant. >> Roswell Encina: I was going to ask, you mentioned both Duterte and Marcos. I guess what baffles me a lot is we are all familiar with the tactics that Duterte used. It's been used by other leaders and other people who ran for office around the world. I won't mention names. Then, Marcos used the same tactics and nothing-- You know, it worked again. It makes you feel a little hopeless and helpless, almost, of what is being done if we know what the problem is, but it keeps on happening. So what's happening in the Philippines clearly is a warning of what could be happening in other democracies. >> Maria Ressa: Yeah, I mean, part of it is because let me give the upside. There is an upside in this, right. The technology that we are using today has actually shown that human beings have a lot more in common than we have differences. That this is the hard part, right? It's optimistic, but it's also not -- that we can be manipulated in exactly the same way, regardless of culture, language and history. And that is through our amygdala. A scientist, a biologist from Harvard said this, and he studies emergent behavior in ants. Emergent behavior is how does a species behave as a whole? So the individual parts are consumed in the species. And he said, this is E.O. Wilson. He said that the greatest crisis we're facing is our Paleolithic emotions, our medieval institutions and our godlike technology. This is the problem we're facing because in the end, “The March of Folly,” you guys read Barbara Tuchman's book, “The March of Folly,” the repeat of history oftentimes connects to our own, the weaknesses in our biology. And this has figured this out really well. And it's gotten worse, right? Tik-tok is worse than the American companies. Anyway, let me not go there. But this is why we repeat the cycles. It is power and money. And I do lay this out in the book. And how do we break the cycle, that's also in the book. >> Roswell Encina: There's a lot to digest in the book, actually, so I was mentioning like what could the average person do if you're feeling hopeless or helpless, what can we do? There's a whole chapter in your book titled Don't Become a Monster to Fight a Monster. I'll let you read that part, but that seems to be easier said than done. So what can we do? Whether you're here in America or you're in the Philippines or you're in some other country, what could be done to curtail all this? >> Maria Ressa: So the first part is don't bury your head in the sand because and this you're seeing the latest Pew Global Attitude survey just said that you're shying away from news. It's too much bad news. When you do that, you abdicate your power because then you give up. So let me respond quickly to your question. The solution is actually in the long term, it is education. In the medium term, it is legislation. And then in the actual short term, it's just us. This means you. We have to stop from becoming users, from users and consumers, very passive to citizens who try to figure out what civic engagement looks like in the age of exponential lies, in the age of a behavior modification system you carry in your pocket. Alcohol, there's an age when you can drink alcohol. Why do we let our kids get this? >> Roswell Encina: During the Duterte administration, you were almost declared like public enemy number one. >> Maria Ressa: Yeah, that's a familiar phrase. >> Roswell Encina: There are so many cases that they filed against you. They attempted so many times to arrest you. I think there's -- you tell us how many cases are against you right now? Where does it stand? How are you doing? What happens when you get home? >> Maria Ressa: It was methodology. So you can see and you can connect it with what you're living through. First, it's online attacks, bottom up, lots of lies. When you say a lie a million times, it becomes a fact in this information ecosystem, right? So the Meta narrative that was seeded for journalists for me is journalist equals criminal. You say that a million times, you pound it astroturfing, it's like a manufactured reality. And then a year later, it came top down from President Duterte himself. He attacked Rappler and me and he didn't do it in a press conference. He did it in his State of the Nation address where we were live. >> Roswell Encina: That's the equivalent of the State of the Union. >> Maria Ressa: The State of the Union, right. So we were live. And when he said that, I just-- our newsroom is very open and I just looked at my co-founders and I messaged to them what I was going to tweet and I immediately tweeted, Mr. President, you're wrong. And then a week later, we got our first subpoena and then 14 investigations, 14 cases, 11 cases. Then slowly it began to go down. In January 2018, we got our first threat of shutdown, and then within four months, we dropped 49% of our advertising revenue. We were supposed to have gone bankrupt by the end of 2018, but Nietzsche's also, right? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So we found a sustainable business model that prepared us in a strange way for the pandemic lockdown. Anyway, so what happened? 2019, I just kept getting arrested. In 2019, I had the Philippines issued ten arrest warrants in less than two years, and there was like a horrible moment when it was like-- it was a second time I was getting arrested in six weeks and I kept thinking, God, this is so disruptive to work. You have to laugh because it's a little bit crazy. In order to be here today, I have to ask for court permission, for court approval. I have to give the flights that I'm on. And if I'm not on it, I could get arrested or I have to let the courts know beforehand. So that's what I mean. You know, when I -- you really -- like before when I could get on a flight without having to ask anyone's permission, I kind of took it for granted. And I try very hard not to have Stockholm syndrome now when I get permission to travel, you know. But it's a very different time. And that's why-- and I'll be serious, that's why when I ask you to think about what you would sacrifice, this is the moment. This is the time when if we don't take the right steps forward, we can lose so much. >> Roswell Encina: How do you I mean, that is just frightening and maddening all at the same time. How do you stay strong through this or through those years when there's constant threat of you being picked up and arrested? And I'm just reading -- you'll see in the -- you'll read in the book what president Duterte did to some of his enemies. It must have been just absolutely numbingly scary of --I don't know how you continued -- when it was easy for you to -- many people probably told you, just stay in the States. >> Maria Ressa: No, no. I mean, strangely, it was there were a lot of lessons I learned when I was much younger as an immigrant kid in the US. You have to laugh. That's the first, I think. But the second thing is I learned to embrace my fear. And I learned this when I first came because you are your own worst enemy and fear is your own worst enemy. I learned this in conflict reporting. So the key part is whatever it is, you're most afraid of, you have to like, hold it, embrace it, imagine it, and then figure out what you would do. And because I had Rappler, I go one step further. I think of the worst-case scenarios, and then we work flow it and we drill it. So as shut down, for example, right, we drill it every quarter. And sometimes, we make mistakes because at one point, you know, these men burst into the office and then we had a new , social media manager and he puts it live on our Facebook page that has like five million followers. And then we had to apologize but that's what it is, right? Whatever it is you are most afraid of, conquer it. You take the sting out so that we can keep doing our jobs. In the end, the Damocles sword is hung over our heads to prevent us from doing our jobs. And I think I get great satisfaction when I see Rappler doing excellent accountability journalism to hold power to account. We continue with investigative journalism. I certainly haven't stopped speaking, and I wrote a book, 5:00 AM Wake ups. That's what -- this is what it was. And I think that's -- the other reason I wrote it was because it is this moment in time, you know, and it is not just the Philippines, it's not just the United States, although where you go, you will -- You will drag us with you. Where you go, the world will most likely go because this will be a tipping point. We figured this out, right? We looked at the number of elections. So imagine if you don't have integrity of facts, which we don't on our-- I mean, I became a journalist because information is power, but because our information ecosystem prioritizes the spread of lies. If you don't have integrity of facts, how do we have integrity of elections? We really don't because this is in the Nobel lecture. I called it a behavior modification system and we're Pavlov's dogs. We’re being AB tested, we're being given drugs and oh, sorry, that didn't work for you; you died. So if you don't have integrity of elections, that means every election is kind of a death by a thousand cuts a little bit. And I know many of you think the midterms was better than you expected, but it's still death by a thousand cuts because the mother problem, the root problem, which is the information ecosystem when it rewards a liar, think about your families, right? If you have kids and you tell your children lie all the time, I'll keep rewarding you if you lie. That is our information ecosystem today. So sorry, 60% of the world today now lives under autocrats, autocracy and we've-- the number of democracies have now been rolled back to 1989 levels. And it will be the tipping point when you look at every country is 2024 and there are three major elections that we are looking at it is Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim population, where the front runner in Indonesia's elections is the son in law of former President Suharto. Suharto was in power for almost 32 years. I covered the end of his -- when he lost power. And Indonesia went from having one leader for almost 32 years to having a new president every year. And they were so traumatized by so much change that there was a kind of a yearning for stability of a strongman. So this is a cycle we have globally. The second is India. The world's largest democracy. And then the third, the most critical one is you. Where are you going to go? That question, you know, is for you, because you'll take us with you. >> Roswell Encina: Before we take questions from the audience, let me ask you one more question. In 2021, you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And as a Filipino American, I'm very proud to be sharing the stage with you. What does this prize mean for you, the Filipino people, and most importantly, fellow journalists? >> Maria Ressa: In Oslo, there's an Edward Monk exhibit, and I'm still doing the screening. I mean, for Rappler, it meant-- I mean, I think that night we only had 30 minutes together and we were on Zoom. Like when the announcement happened, I had three computers and two cell phones, and they all went off. And the 30 minutes with Rappler, everybody was laughing and crying because in many ways we have PTSD. You know, it's like when you get pounded so much, you don't know whether you're doing the right thing, whether you're being foolish. And in many ways, it proved to us that doing the right thing is the right thing. I think it was for every journalist around the world. You may not-- you may always blame the journalist, but in general, given the ecosystem, the journalists have done our jobs. It's almost like oftentimes, it feels like there's a giant dam that's about to fall, and we're just holding it with our fingers and we're waiting for it to fall. So my friends in international news organizations all around the world journalists have been under attack. And that was a recognition that, hey, you're not alone. The other part, I think sorry last year was journalist. This year the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the Nobel Peace Prize to civil society, to Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and those are the two parts that need to work together to figure out what civic engagement, what democracy needs today. So the Peace Prize is on the go. >> Roswell Encina: We could talk all night here. So I know many of you are anxious to ask Maria some questions. So if you don't mind raising your hands and we'll have a microphone come down to you. >> Maria Ressa: Yay! I get to see you. >> Roswell Encina: Let's start over there where Clay is. >> Thank you. In Wilcox, could you talk a little bit about how you use government information that might be leaked to you that you then publish? You know, Julian Assange has been in prison for this. And five major sources just said that we published the information he gave. >> Maria Ressa: Yeah. So what I do and I've actually gone through DC, a lot of my earlier reporting, especially the ones on terrorism. So I, after 9/11, I did most of the reporting out of Southeast Asia and South Asia. You have sources, you know, you get documents. There's a period of time I flew through DC on my way to New York and I was stopped and there were classified documents in my luggage. And I had to-- I thought, look, this is how different it would be, right? I think if it if I came through today, that was like 2001, 2002, they called CNN. And then I was-- I got on the plane to New York. Classified information, like everything else needs A, to be verified, B, you need to make sure that your accountable to everyone, including the public and the sources that you have. And that's how we would use the information. I mean, that's my first book uses largely classified documents, but in terms of today, the world has gotten -- three things have gotten conflated and they're all separate problems. The first one is really like, what's the role of privacy and secrecy? Where does where is the line between national concerns and individual concerns? And what we've seen now is I think you've seen Edward Snowden, Julian Assange is another one. And it's -- part of it is the technology. In the old days and my old days, we would sift through. I would get hundreds of classified documents and none of it would get released until I have gone through it, my editor has gone through it. We went through an entire Caché of videotapes from Osama bin Laden's headquarters, his HQ, and CNN had four or five of us working on this, in addition to a lot of team behind the scenes cataloguing this. That kind of scrutiny hasn't been there now, given these massive data troves. The closest we come to is like the ICIJ, where we do consortiums like the papers that have come out, and that is not a direct public dump, right? So you handle it very securely. You're aware of the dangers of it, and you tell the story. >> Roswell Encina: Let's do a new one. Let's get someone on this side. How about that woman over there? There you go. >> Sylvia Camus, born in Cebu City. Thank you so much for your insights. And I want to ask a question about a very important topic. Filipino Food. Every five to 10 years, Filipino food is rediscovered, and I'd really like to hear your thoughts on why Filipino cuisine has not been as ingrained in American culture, like Vietnamese food and Thai food. Thank you. >> Roswell Encina: You are the chef now. >> Maria Ressa: I know you have to help me with that. I think part of it is in many ways, Filipinos, we assimilate. Like, again, please disagree with me. These are based on my own experiences. And you'll see, like when I wrote in the book, I wanted to understand the culture I was walking into. But let me answer about the Filipino food. We need to do this in a more concerted way. >> Roswell Encina: When you have a taste test. Let's do this gentleman over here in a Tie. You got him, okay. >> Hi, good evening, Maria. It's nice to see you in Washington, D.C. I'm (inaudible) from the an LLM student from Georgetown University. I have a question. So it has been tough fighting the dictator back in the Philippines. The numbers vary. Some say it's 29,000. According to the Philippine National Police. Around 29,000 died during the drug war. Some say it's 27,000. But the most important thing is maybe around 30,000 people died. And what keeps me up at night until now is how do we get justice for these 30,000 people? And I don't think we can do something about it or the prospects are not very positive in light of the new administration. So my question would be what would be the role of, number one, the media to make sure that the stories of these 30,000 people will not be forgotten? Second, what would be the role of maybe the international community in making sure that someday somehow, we’ll be able to make sure that justice will be served on this 30,000 people? And maybe what is the role of the Filipino people to preserve the story? Because I don't think we would be able to see prosecution of people in the next six years. >> Maria Ressa: My gosh, una maraming Salamat. Thank you, I said, thank you for that and it's a great question, I think. So first is the number of people dead who died in this brutal drug war is the first casualty in the Philippines battle for facts. Because if you ask the Philippine national police, they had rolled back the numbers in 2020 to -- it went up to 7,000 and it rolled back to 2,000. That's of 2017, January 2017. Then in December 2018, our commission -- the head of the Commission on Human Rights, came out with a 27,000 people killed. But then the police were saying it was like 5,000 and we couldn't -- the church even got involved in this where it was trying -- we were trying to figure out parish by parish. Imagine doing this in America, right? Parish by parish, has anyone died in your community? And then and we still don't have the exact numbers. Having said that, this is part of, I think, why the government attacked us and part of the reason we got awards. Awards always come with a tax. We did a series called the Impunity Series where we looked at -- we made those numbers, people, we told their stories. And it is incredibly hard. The families are afraid to ask because they get targeted. We know now the International Criminal Court is moving forward in its investigation of former President Duterte, but under President Marcos, it's unclear whether they will get any help, right? I don't know what will happen, but let me put it in the context of what is happening around the world. The investigation of war crimes in the Ukraine, the killings, it's a really, really -- bad is an understatement for what our world is going through right now. If the world is a startup, we're in the valley of death and we have to come out of it. And I guess that's part of the reason. Yes, I care about the Philippines. I care about justice. The first thing that needs to happen is Filipinos must ask for it. But power and money gets in the way. That's the first. The second is overseas diaspora, there are 10 to 12 million Filipinos overseas. The Philippines largest overseas source of revenue is our people who send home the money. You have tremendous power. Asking for justice will help and is not as dangerous for you. But the last part is that let's look at this in context of what the world is going through. And when we pulled it that way, because I look at Mexico, I look at Myanmar, I look at India. And it's not-- it doesn't diminish what we are going through, but it is how do we get a sense of justice in this fragmented world? Our institutions are moving too slowly, and that's part of what I'm hoping. I mean, you'll see in the book, I think technology is going to be part of the solution. It has to be, and that's-- I'll end with there, the three pillars. These were the three pillars of Rappler, and these are the three pillars of a solution, I think, for the future, technology, the demon and the angel has to be part of the solution. Journalism, which is an antidote to tyranny, which gives you the facts, right? We're not influencers, we're journalists. And the last part is community. The community has the power. We will risk everything as journalists to give you the news, but please listen and watch. >> Roswell Encina: We have time for just one more question here. Well, let's pick from this side. How about this young woman over here that's in the striped sweater? >> Hi, Maria. I'm Hannah Domingo. I'm a Filipino reporter based in D.C. And just a context, I used to be -- I used to work in Hong Kong. And I messaged you because I was being harassed, because people thought I worked for Rappler, because I was a Filipino journalist. >> Maria Ressa: I'm sorry. >> No, and I told you and I messaged you and I said, you must be doing something good back home because I'm in Hong Kong and I'm being harassed. And it's not a good thing, but it's a nod to what you're doing. And the question is, I am far removed from the Philippines and covering the Philippines, but I am harassed on Facebook and stuff. How do you keep the morale in the newsroom of young journalists? Like how do you tell them to -- like keep showing up every day, seeing bodies out on the streets every day, that gets to you as a reporter. So how do you keep your journalist to show up every day? >> Maria Ressa: Well, you should have come into our newsroom. You would feel much better. But so of course, China was the other big one. I was trying to think of other places around the world, right, that we need to look at. But how did we do it? It wasn't us. The mission of journalism is even more important today than it has ever been. And then what happened when we came under attack? I kind of did like a meeting like this. There weren't as many people, but, you know, we had a General Assembly shortly after the government first tried to shut us down. And this was before we did a press conference to rebut what the charges were. And I told our folks, we're about 100 people in Rappler. We're 63% women, not by design. You know, we look for men all the time, and the median age is 23 years old. We're very young. But that, by the way, is the median age of the Philippines. So we're representative of the Philippines. And when this shutdown-- when the threat of shutdown happened, I knew that I'm in charge of, you know-- I know their parents will be worried. I know they may be worried. So in our General Assembly, I just said we're moving into a different place and we're going to be fighting this. But if you're uncomfortable, if you are afraid or your parents don't want you to be here, let us know and we will help place you in another news organization. Not one journalist took it, not one. And what happened as we came under attack is everyone threw everything in, 150% effort. It is exhausting. And, you know, the founders were. I'm 59, so I don't mind telling you how old I am. We're in our late fifties, early sixties. But now when we founded Rappler, we were still in our fifties, you know, late forties, early fifties and our young 20 somethings, what they did was the mission became everything. And they would come out and work so much harder. All of the normal frictions of managing a news organization disappeared because everyone was running at their own steam. Having said that, the attacks online were exponential, and so by August 2016, we started feeling that. By October 2016, I offered counseling because we have a young team and we didn't know what we were going through. But what we found out by October 2016 with the counselors didn't know how to counsel us, right, because it was so new. How do you deal with exponential attacks on social media? We didn't really talk about this but information operations, that's very different from free speech. Information operations uses the bullet, that's the gun, and the bullet is disinformation, right. And that is pounded at you to shut you up, to tear your credibility down. So what we did in 2016 was we helped our -- it would have been the psychologist who were trying to help us, we connected them with DART. It was trained the trainers. And then we did counseling for our folks who wanted it. And then we also did our own QRT, quick reaction team. If you're the one being attacked, you don't respond. The rest of our team does. And this is what we have to do, right? It's person to person. It's person to person defense of our democracy. >> Roswell Encina: Well, before we go, as I mentioned earlier, the LOC Asian American Staff Association, helped us with this program. So we have something for you. (applause) >> Maria Ressa: Thank you. >> Roswell Encina: Thank you to everyone for joining us this Saturday night. Maraming Salama to Maria. Maria will be signing books outside. I hope you could buy the book and we'll see you out there. Thank you again for coming out and happy holidays.