Nobel Winner Maria Ressa on How to Stand Up to a Dictator

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, As Russians are standing against Putin’s authoritarian rule, our next guest is no stranger to taking on dictators. Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa is a journalist and fearless defender of freedom. Exposing corruption and abusive power in the Philippines. She joins Michel Martin to discuss her new book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator”, and offers ways to fight authoritarianism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Maria Ressa, thank you so much for joining us.

MARIA RESSA, AUTHOR, “HOW TO STAND UP TO A DICTATOR”, JOURNALIST AND CEO OF RAPPLER: Thanks for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: I do want to say, congratulations on the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a great honor and very much deserved. And your new book is about “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future”. You talk about just how difficult the fight has been for journalists around the world. And also, it has to be said for you and for your colleagues in the Philippines. I mean, the book is sort of, I would say, a memoir and a manifesto. And it tells the story of your love and commitment to journalism, but it a warning to the rest of the world that what you’ve been experiencing in the Philippines is spreading, is coming for the rest of the world. Why do you say that the Philippines is the canary in the coal mine and that democracies around the world need to pay attention to what has happened there?

RESSA: It already has spread all around the world. I mean, just look at what happened in the United States on January 6th. And then look at the kinds of the way identity politics has been hit with information operations splintering American society. It is almost like when you look at what has happened, you have Russian disinformation, and information operations able to go to the molecular level of American democracy. This is what has happened anywhere around the world where these American social media platforms — now you got — you’re going to have to add TikTok, but where the technology has insidiously manipulated us. And the book lays out all the data. It is evidence-based, our discovery of it. But essentially, where we are living today, is a world that is completely upside down because what is rewarded are lies when. And so, when news organizations lost our gatekeeping powers to technology. Technology abdicated responsibility. Not only did it not distinguish between fact and fiction, it actually prioritized the spread of lies over these really boring facts. And beyond that, you know, why? Why did it do that? Because in the end, in an attention (ph) economy, the end goal is to keep the reader, the viewer, the watcher scrolling, right. So, there’s mild addiction that’s there. You have elevated levels of dopamine, the part of our brain, the amygdala which triggers fear, anger, hate. Us against them. I would argue it’s the worst of humanity. That this is what is rewarded. And then what happens to societies when that happens? These three sentences I’ve said repeatedly in the last six or seven years. When you don’t have facts, you don’t have truth. Without the truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. We cannot solve any problems and you cannot have democracy. And what we’re seeing globally is a rollback of democracy, back to 1989 levels. You have 60 percent of the world now living under autocratic rule and we still keep having elections, right? So, the transformation is happening in front of our eyes.

MARTIN: So, Maria, go back to the Philippines, if you would. How did you see this start to take hold? And why did it start to take hold so thoroughly in the Philippines? I mean, is it because Filipinos, for whatever reason, have been very diligent adopters of social media?

RESSA: We’re first adopters. You know, in — we were — before social media, we were the texting capital of the world, SMS, short messages. We were among the first to go mobile first. And then with social media, as early as 2017, 97 percent of Filipinos on the internet are on social media. Today, it is 100 percent. So, the 100 percent of Filipinos on the internet are on Facebook. Facebook is our internet. So, this is part of what you see. And then because Rappler was born on Facebook and we monitor the data that comes through, we can see the behavior that it encourages, right. Like, I was a reporter at a time when governments would talk about the CNN effect, this is before 1996. Well, now we have social media impact. And it is not in one country. It is global. And the impact tears down shared reality. It tears down democracies.

MARTIN: The people with autocratic impulses in the Philippines, did they see what you saw or was this just a happy accident for them? Do you see what I’m saying? Like, how is it that their impulses were the ones that took hold as opposed to others, as opposed to pro-democracy, pro-civil society impulses?

RESSA: It’s because of the incentive structure, right. What — I think, the Duterte force, so this was around 2015, 2014. 2015 was when news organizations lost our gatekeeping powers detach (ph). And what wound up happening is that it’s, kind of, like throwing spaghetti against the wall. There were a lot of Filipinos on social media. Before social media, before Facebook, it was Multiply. And so, then the — it became a large group of people that were then first for entertainment and then shifted to politics. And this is part of what I laid out in the book. How did it happen? How did we discover it? Who discovered this? And how did young kids work in a political campaign and shift, you know, drugs, for example, was a number eight concern during our 2016 campaign. And because it was a key concern for Rodrigo Duterte who was then a mayor, it rose to number one, largely with the help of social media. So, it’s the same thing. It’s — bottom up, you know, they — there were lies, half-truths that were pounded, metanarratives that were pounded online for a year. And then the same thing would come top down from the campaign or from the president himself. In our case, I was targeted with a metanarrative that I was a criminal. Filipinos — some Filipinos believe I’m a criminal, right, because then a year later, President Duterte says the exact same thing. Reinforces the lie and says it in his State of the Nation Address. And then that’s quickly followed a week later by the first criminal charges, the investigations. We had 14 investigations in 2017, 2018. By 2019, I was getting arrested, like, I think I had 10 arrest warrants in less than two years starting in 2019.

MARTIN: So, you are obviously seeing what was going on with former president Trump —

RESSA: Yes.

MARTIN: — who became a very aggressive user of Twitter to demean lots of different people, but particularly journalists.

RESSA: Yes.

MARTIN: Whom he repeatedly called them sick or, you know, enemies of the people, and so forth. But the question I have for you is, you know, why do people believe that because it wouldn’t work if people just dismissed it?

RESSA: Well, you have to look at the technology separate from the content, right. There is — in the Nobel lecture, and this is part of the date that I included in the book, it is very clear that it is a behavior modification system. That’s why I started with, what are the algorithms pushing? What kind of behavior is rewarded, right? So, when — I mean, Duterte was Trump before Trump was Trump. If you really, look at it this way, right? And what did it reward? When Duterte attacked, that was rewarded. You know, it was — I mean, there are all sorts of new words that came out of this. Gaslighting, right? Information operations. When President Duterte, in July 8th — and I will never forget this. I wake up and President Duterte attacks me. And I wake up to this and it gets viral spread on social media. And when that happens, it’s almost like a brigade coming at you, pounding you. It’s not — it isn’t something like, you know, in the physical world where there are people in the room and people realize, oh, that’s not civilized. I’m not going to do that. It isn’t like that. This is programed. The algorithms of distribution choose. And that’s the incentive structure they put in place. So, someone like Duterte got tremendous reach, tremendous distribution, and as the government — and this is something that laid — is laid out in the book, you can see that both Duterte and Marcos information operations worked hand in hand. These networks worked together. And they would have — they would, for example, be told, oh, let — attack Michel today. Choose her post. This is the post. Attack it in one spot. And this is how you’re going to attack it. And it comes. But that kind of attack becomes personal. It is information warfare.

MARTIN: You know, you’ve actually talked to Mark Zuckerberg about this, the founder of Facebook. You’ve actually spoke to him about this and you’ve laid all this out for him. What did he say when you did?

RESSA: I think the main problem is that the company and Mark and the officers there, because he certainly has the final say on everything, they’re so focused on growth, you know. One of the sayings he used is company over country. They’re so focused on growth and it is clear, it is at great cost. And the harms which these reports started coming out in 2016, it was very clear what was happening in the Philippines, you know, it took five years to come out with a policy that addressed the kinds of attacks we were getting in the Philippines where, you know, it’s not inauthentic behavior. They’re not fake accounts. They’re real people that are attacking you on command, and it’s called brigading. And it wasn’t until December last year — yes. December 2021, that, you know — I mean, when did I first feel it? 2016, 2017, and December 2021 was when — in the meantime, here I am, battered. So, I think part of it is that unless you are under attack, you don’t feel it. You don’t see all the attacks. You will see a fraction of the attacks if you were to search for me. But I can see it, I can pull the data, and that’s part of what’s given me the certainty. I think the other part is even for men who aren’t attacked, gender disinformation is a new tool against women, against LGBTQ. If you are marginalized in the real world, there is something that gives permission for certain viciousness that comes at you at exponential pace. And until you’re targeted, you don’t know this, but the impact again is three ways, right. It’s personal, psychological. It’s groups, it changes group dynamics. It’s sociological. And then finally, it is emergent human behavior. It is the worst of us that is encouraged. That is what is shaping our future, I think it’s extremely alarming.

MARTIN: Your online news site, Rappler. You’ve mentioned Rappler several time, you’re one of the founders. You know, it’s been a leader in exposing corruption and malfeasance within the government. But Rappler’s early use of Facebook kind of helped to fuel its growth. So, if you could go back in time, is there anything you would do differently?

RESSA: I would sound the alarm much sooner because you know I gave Facebook the benefit of the doubt. I mean, I still continue to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I know that the inertia to stay with a business model that has frankly killed democracy in different parts of the world, has sparked violence in different countries around the world. I think this is something that I wish I had known a little bit sooner. But, you know, having said that, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, these are going to be part of the solution. They have to be. It doesn’t all drop. And what I’m hoping to do what the book is really to show you our discovery of this. And also, to show you how simple it could be. On January 6th, Facebook did something that they could do and this is to turn up the news ecosystem quality. It’s one — it was one of their great glass measures, you know, when the violence happened, everyone was scared. And so, what they did, they turned up quality news, essentially, like a button. And when they did that on crowd tangle, you can see NPR, New York Times, CNN, right? You could see quality news come up. And they kept that on for a few weeks. But then they realized they made marginally less money. I mean, why would a company that controls the public sphere let that little amount of money control the future of democracies? I think these are some of the things we — that could be easily done in tools they already have, the news ecosystem quality.

MARTIN: Do you take any comfort from the fact that in Brazil, say, Jair Bolsonaro was defeated. In the United States, former President Trump was defeated. In France, for example, the far-right party did not prevail. Much of the world has organized itself to resist Vladimir Putin’s predations in Ukraine. Does that suggest — what does this tell you?

RESSA: It’s not as bad as you feared, but it is still going on, right. Jair Bolsonaro only lost by one percent. The statistical surveys actually had him losing by far more. So, you know, Brazil shifted slightly because civil society came out. In the United States, you know, the death by 1,000 cuts is still continuing because the — our data, our private thoughts, you know, the clone of us that each of these social media platforms has is still being used to microtarget, is still being used to change our behavior. So, I think, in my case, what we see is I continue to warn you. The system is flawed. It’s like, the factory is still spewing out things that will kill us. We are still getting cut and we’re ignoring each cut because we’re saying, oh, it wasn’t as bad as it was. I mean, your 2024 elections, the 2024 elections will be pivotal because there are three key elections that year. And if the United States, if nothing has shifted in our information ecosystem and we continue the same trend, it’s going to be very close. The problem hasn’t been solved. And the only way to solve it — look, there’s three ways. In the long term, it’s really education. Our people need to know they’re being insidiously manipulated. In the medium term, the government needs to jump in and actually legislate, right. This is — I mean, should it be legal that I am hit with at least 90 hate messages per hour with information operations? I have evidence the information operations comes from China. And that’s the medium term. Legislation, in the short term, it’s hand-to-hand combat. It is trying to figure out to stop being a user or a consumer and be a citizen. Look, the reality is that America has long known that it has been the target of information operations. I mean, there’s s 1000-page Mueller report that lay — set out. There’s so many footnotes there. And yet, has anyone held — been held accountable? Has there been justice? And I think that’s what we struggle with. The January 6th Committee has come through and it’s moving slowly. But even as your solving January 6, 2021, it is still moving forward, in the same thing, we are still bleeding out.

MARTIN: Before I let you go, Maria, what are you going to do? I mean, the fact is you are still in legal jeopardy if you go back to the Philippines, aren’t you?

RESSA: I will keep working. We keep working. Because the end goal of all these attacks is to stop us from doing our jobs. And I feel like, you know, I try to swat away the Damocles sword. My team in Rappler, we know that it’s critical to do our job well now. And I think whether or not I go to jail will depend on what I do now. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m a journalist. Very proud of it. I think there’s, you know, the standards and ethics of journalism of CNN, which is where I grew up, this made me who I am. And at a time when the mission matters, we’ll continue doing our jobs.

MARTIN: Maria Ressa, thank you so much for talking with us today.

RESSA: Thank you so much for having me.