Maria Ressa
Nobel Lecture
Presented By: Sem. Marlon A. Hindoy
Nobel Prize Award
• The Nobel Prizes are five
separate prizes
• According to Alfred
Nobel's will of 1895, are
awarded to "those who,
during the preceding year,
have conferred the
greatest benefit to
Mankind."
Nobel Prize Award
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Alfred Nobel
Born: 21 October 1833
Died: 10 December 1896
Swedish
Chemist, engineer, and industrialist
Inventor of dynamite.
In his will, he donated all of his
"remaining realizable assets"
• "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were
first awarded in 1901.
Nobel Prizes 2021
• Thirteen laureates were
awarded a Nobel Prize in
2021
NOBEL PRIZES 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
• The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021
• The Nobel Peace Prize 2021
The Nobel Prize in Physics
NOBEL PRIZES 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
• The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021
• The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021
• The Nobel Peace Prize 2021
Nobel Peace Prize
• The Nobel Peace Prize is
an international award
• Given to those deemed
to have done the most
to encourage
international peace and
cooperation.
Maria Angelita Ressa
•
•
•
•
•
Born: October 2, 1963
Manila, Philippines
Filipino American journalist
Co-founder and CEO of Rappler
Awards And Honors: Nobel Prize
(2021)
• Prize motivation: "for their efforts to
safeguard freedom of expression,
which is a precondition for democracy
and lasting peace."
– sacrifice so much to
hold the line,
– to stay true to our
values
– and mission: to bring
you the truth and hold
power to account.
Persecution of Journalism
• I remember the brutal dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi,
• the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta,
• Luz Mely Reyes in Venezuela, Roman Protasevich in Belarus
(whose plane was literally hijacked so he could be arrested),
• Jimmy Lai languishing in a Hong Kong prison,
• Sonny Swe, who after getting out of more than 7 years in jail
started another news group … now forced to flee Myanmar.
• And in my own country, 23 year old Frenchie Mae Cumpio,
still in prison after nearly 2 years,
• and just 36 hours ago the news that my former colleague,
Jess Malabanan, was shot dead.
Duterte government's shutdown of ABS-CBN
threatens Philippine freedom
• Our greatest need today is to
transform that
• hate and violence,’
• the toxic sludge that’s coursing
through our information
ecosystem,
• that just means we have to
work much harder. (hold up tshirt) In order to be the good,
we have to BElieve THEre is
GOOD in the world.
Government attacks on Rappler
• The last time a working
journalist was given this
award was in 1936,
• Carl von Ossietzky
• Languished in a Nazi
concentration camp.
• Nobel committee is signalling a
similar historical moment,
another existential point for
democracy.
• There are so many more
journalists persecuted in the
shadows with neither exposure
nor support, and governments are
doubling down with impunity.
• The accelerant is technology, at a
time when creative destruction
takes new meaning.
• We are standing on the
rubble of the world
• We must have the
foresight and courage to
imagine what might
happen if we don’t act
now,
Create the world as it should be:
More compassionate,
More equal
More sustainable
To do that, please ask yourself the same question my team and I
had to confront 5 years ago: what are you willing to sacrifice for
the Truth?
I’ll tell you how I lived my way into the answer in
three points:
1) first, my context and how these attacks shaped me;
2) second, by the problem we all face;
3) and finally, finding the solution – because we must!
• In less than 2 years, the
Philippine government filed
10 arrest warrants
• I’ve had to post bail 10
times
• Last year, I and a former
colleague were convicted of
cyber libel
• But, the more I was
attacked for my
journalism, the more
resolute I became.
Five Core Principles of Journalism
1. Truth and Accuracy
2. Independence
3. Fairness and Impartiality
4. Humanity
5. Accountability
Gendered disinformation
• Women journalists are at the epicenter of risk.
• This pandemic of misogyny and hatred needs to be
tackled, now.
• The attacks against Rappler began
5 years ago
 Duterte’s drug war
 Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
 Silicon Valley’s sins came
home to roost in the United
States on January 6 with mob
violence on Capitol Hill.
• What happens on social media
doesn’t stay on social media.
• Online violence is real world
violence.
• Social media is a deadly game for power and money,
• It is a surveillance capitalism,
• Extracting our private lives for outsized corporate gain.
1. Our personal
experiences are sucked
into a database,
2. organized by AI,
3. then sold to the highest
bidder.
• Highly profitable microtargeting operations
• a behavior modification
system in which we are
Pavlov’s dogsa
Pavlov Dog
Facebook
A. Biased against
facts,
B. Biased against
journalists.
• They are by design
• dividing us
• and radicalizing us.
• Without facts, you can’t have
truth. Without truth, you can’t
have trust.
• Without trust, we have no
shared reality, no democracy,
and it becomes impossible to
deal with our world’s
existential problems: climate,
coronavirus, the battle for
truth.
Maria Ressa Arrested
• This officer was a tool of
power
• This is how a nation –
and a world – loses its
soul.
• How can you have
election integrity if you
don’t have integrity of
facts?
• That’s the problem
facing countries with
elections next year
Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is
the front runner – and he
has built an extensive
disinformation network on
social media
•
• take the Chinese information
operations taken down by
Facebook in Sept 2020:
– it was creating fake accounts using
AI generated photos for the US
elections,
– polishing the image of the Marcoses,
– campaigning for Duterte’s daughter,
and attacking me and Rappler.
So what are we going to do?
• An invisible atom
bomb exploded in
our information
ecosystem, and the
world must act as it
did after Hiroshima.
• We need information
ecosystems that live and
die by facts.
• Journalists must embrace
technology.
• Technology in the hands of
journalists won’t be viral
•
• Democracy
– woman-to-woman,
– man-to-man.
To do that, you have to ask yourself: what are
YOU willing to sacrifice for the truth?
• Now let’s go and make it
happen. Let’s hold the
line. Together.
Personal Critique
• Maria Ressa strongly and fearlessly fight for the truth without
hesitation. At her speech in the Nobel peace prize awardee I can say
that I am enlighten through her words of wisdom. While reading
what she shared about her experiences and struggle, I can say that if
I'm in that situation I already frightened, stop fighting, hide and lost
hope to fight for the truth. But by reading continually her
encouraging words, my will also to fight for the truth became alive.
Then after that, I reflected that right now there is consequences in
my actions, especially that the election 2022 is near. If I fight for the
truth, I may be persecuted. But if I do not fight for the truth, I may be
alive but I lost my integrity and let the worse happen on the future.
Personal Critique
• Maria Ressa also give us a good advice to be more careful and
responsible on using the internet.
• Like for example:
– To be conscious on what we are dealing on social media, to
avoid our personal information stolen and also to avoid
misinformation.
– Be a person with integrity, we must not use the social
media in an evil way like spreading lies, hate and violence.
We must use it to do good and spread the truth.
End
THANK YOU!
Reference
• Maria Ressa – Facts – 2021. NobelPrize.org. Nobel
Prize Outreach AB 2022. Wed. 9 Mar 2022.
<https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/ress
a/facts/>