By Sam Basa
Background
In June of 2020, a court in Manila convicted journalist Maria Ressa and fellow reporter Reynaldo Santos Jr. of cyber libel for a corruption exposé they had produced. The law that the government prosecuted Ressa and Santos under passed through the legislature months after the corruption exposé was published back in 2012. In addition to the potential jail time, both were fined close to $8,000. Unfortunately, for Ressa, this whole situation is a part of a cycle that started when President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016 (Neuman). Over the past few years, the police arrested Ressa 8 times facing unfair treatment along the way such as being held overnight unable to post bail.
Maria Ressa, the 57-year-old Filipina-American journalist and co-founder of the website Rappler, is fighting a litany of legal challenges that have accumulated over the past few years. President Duterte is using his regime to target her for critical coverage of his bloody drug war. Ressa’s situation provides the US a unique opportunity to express concern over a key ally’s troubling trend with regards to its treatment of journalists, specifically that behavior of President Duterte. Ressa’s case may allow for the US to finally protest the broader authoritarian tendencies of the Philippines at a key moment in the two nations’ relationship.
‘Arrested’
By Leanne Jazul of Rappler
President Duterte
All the trumped-up legal challenges Ressa has had to face are indicative of the Duterte regime’s hostility towards the press. President Duterte was elected in 2016 and formerly served as Mayor of Davao City. He is known for his brash and sometimes vulgar messaging which aligns with his nationalist agenda. Humanitarian groups consistently criticize Duterte for his brazen authoritarian tendencies and his disturbing comments about journalists. His off-the-cuff manner of speech and harsh words have directly incited violence against journalists such as when he said, “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong” (Star Tribune). The words of a popular president who has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in a drug war have power, and when he has labeled journalists as traitors, their lives have quickly descended into danger.
This is characteristic of a man who labeled Rappler a CIA pet project and accused critical journalists of being spies for hostile nations. In addition to the mounting pressure from the Filipino Justice Department, the government terminated Rappler’s credentials in 2018 for its critical views of the Drug War. Under the Trump administration, both Beijing and Washington emboldened Duterte to continue his ways and showed little support for press freedom. Former President Trump reportedly laughed at Duterte’s spy comments and himself has created a hostile environment for American reporters (Star Tribune, 4). When the news of Ressa’s sentencing was announced, the State Department released a weak statement expressing ‘concern’ with the situation while offering no tangible solution for the Filipina-American’s grave situation.
Current situation
Casual authoritarian calls for violence lead to actual violence, and the Philippines has been no exception under President Duterte. From January 30th, 2016 to April 30th, 2019, Freedom House has reported 128 attacks against journalists. These situations have manifested in all forms of attacks—both physical and verbal—as Filipino reporters have been the recipients of death threats and harassment. A popular tool is red-tagging or branding a reporter as a Communist sympathizer, a rapid route to ostracization. Ressa has been the target of vicious campaigns from Duterte supporters and consistently and constantly harassed online. Even more tragic, 6 journalists have been murdered in the Philippines for their work since Duterte took office (Conde). In 2020, the government effectively shut down ABS-CBN, which was the largest network in the country that carried negative coverage of the drug war. Furthermore, Duterte’s government has been using an Anti-Terrorism law to punish any form of dissent they deem worthy by using the law’s intentionally ambiguous language (Puente). The consequences of fostering a system that demonizes reporters, institutionalized anti-press statutes, and punishes those for disagreeing with the government will continue as authoritarianism will only grow in the Philippines. Simply put, more journalists will die, their voices silenced, and democracy will continue to deteriorate for the Filipino people.
Twenty-first-century challenges such as the role of social media companies and misinformation have contributed to the structure of this issue. Almost all news in the Philippines is consumed on Facebook and they were one of the first nations plagued by fake news. The Philippines was considered a testing ground for many of the fake news bot tactics that would be unleashed across the West, most potently in the US in the run-up to the 2016 election. With the Philippines being at the mercy of a massive tech company, journalists have few outlets to approach besides Facebook to promote their work. Ressa and Rappler were on the cutting edge of using Facebook to promote themselves a few years before the platform became inundated with fake accounts posting news on behalf of foreign service agencies trying to drive dissent (Howell). The toxic fake news atmosphere coupled with an authoritarian government that actively encourages violence against journalists has led to a dire situation in the Philippines in severe need of outside influence.
Individual-Based Awareness Campaigns
The State Department should lead a coalition of allies to voice their concern with the Philippines’ backsliding into authoritarianism. Positioning Ressa as the focal point of these efforts allows for public support to coalesce around one story as a proxy for thousands of others. This type of campaign has worked to varying effect in the past in other nations as figures like Aung Sun Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela became world-renowned for fighting for civil rights in their countries. The international attention that Alexei Navalny has garnered in recent months shows people’s propensity to latch onto the stories of individuals as a gateway to learning more about mass political movements for freedom. Centering on one person also removes the abstract nature of large-scale political situations as her story is more accessible. Now, those aforementioned figures and their countries did not swing towards liberal democracy because of foreign support but because of gradual changes in domestic politics. The most recent plights of both Ms. Suu Kyi and Mr. Navalny prove that awareness campaigns do not equate to liberty as both are now captives of their respective governments. Maria Ressa could be the same as these individuals, a beacon for truth and press freedom, clashing with a violent President in Duterte, raising the issue on the world stage and hopefully spurring domestic, Filipino-led change. Hopefully, with the US and its allies’ help, Ressa will not be condemned to the same fate as Suu Kyi and Navalny.
Raising the profile of Ressa would also not be difficult as she is a well-renowned, respected member of the journalistic community. Time Magazine honored her in their Person of the Year award in 2018 and they featured her alongside other courageous journalists who faced oppression, including the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (Kiely). The US must stand up for Ressa and Santos to actively fight back against a world where those like Mohammed Bin Salman or Rodrigo Duterte can execute and jail journalists for dissent. Ressa is also an American citizen who grew up both in Manila and New Jersey. Despite Duterte’s popularity, especially amongst the older generations, her story has the opportunity to resonate with many Filipino-Americans who have immigrated here since the 1960s. She has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her fight, an accolade that is sure to raise her case to the forefront around the world.
Solution Proposal
There are many ways that the State Department can try to sway Duterte to reform. To start, the US gave over $195 million to the Philippines in aid in 2020 alone (Kiely, 5). American tax dollars go into the pockets of a regime that has no respect for freedom of speech and the press. In a possible roadmap for the Ressa situation, the Biden administration has begun to target and sanction specific government officials tied to Khashoggi’s murder with a focus on banning domestic travel and seizing assets (Rhodes and Vietor). This proposal simply requests the State Department to follow its own precedent with the Philippines as it did with Saudi Arabia. With good fortune, the Ressa situation will never devolve to Khashoggi-like proportions but the Biden administration has set the framework for dealing with allies that have persecuted journalists. Holding allies with extreme authoritarian tendencies to account, especially ones as geopolitically integral to American security interests such as Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, should be a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. The potential drawbacks of a Manila more aligned with Beijing than Washington are real and worrisome, but if the Philippines continues to head down a road of authoritarianism then, the US should reevaluate its stance towards the nation as a whole.
There is a long and arduous history of the US intervening in Filipino affairs; a painful legacy of war, colonization, and oppression that will never go away. But the American-Filipino alliance also achieved incredible feats, specifically the defeat of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Being an ally means being honest. The US needs to take a strong stance against the persecution of Filipino journalists for the aforementioned reasons but also because it is in accordance with core American values. When the Philippine Constitution was established, it was designed to closely mirror its American counterpart. Section 4 of the Filipino Constitution features the same protections for freedom of speech and the press that start the Bill of Rights. It is the American ideal of a free press that can relay the unsavory truths about its government to its people. The Filipino people are supposed to enjoy that ideal as well. Both Constitutions entitle Maria Ressa to her rights yet she is receiving no protection from either government. That needs to change before it is too late for her, for the other journalist tried with libel, Reynaldo Santos, and for the thousands of other fearless journalists fighting for the truth
Bibliography
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