Nobel-winner Maria Ressa on how the future of journalism and democracy are linked (2024)

Amna Nawaz:

Amid a rise of authoritarians and crackdowns on press freedom worldwide, the future of news and democracy are inextricably linked.

Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa, author of the book "How to Stand Up to a Dictator" and CEO of the digital news site Rappler, has spent nearly 40 years on the front lines of the battle for press freedom in her home country of the Philippines and around the world. She joins us now here for a deeper discussion.

Maria, welcome back. Great to see you.

Maria Ressa, CEO, Rappler:

Thanks for having me.

Amna Nawaz:

So, you are in town because you're being honored by the group Vital Voices for your commitment to press freedom in the Philippines and around the world.

On the press freedom front, I want to ask you about what Reporters With Borders recently shared from their annual World Press Freedom Index.

They found that political pressure on media has increased at an alarming rate. Tell us about why we're seeing this right now.

Maria Ressa:

I mean, it's hand in hand with the deterioration, the degradation of democracy, right?

And you compare RSF with Freedom House, which is a decline of seven — in the last 17 to 18 years. And then you put that together with the Committee to Protect Journalists numbers. The attacks on journalists have increased as the quality of democracy has gone down globally.

We have to sacrifice more to keep doing our jobs.

Amna Nawaz:

When you look at the stakes, we talk a lot about the U.S. election this year, but this is really a key election year around the world, right?

Globally, more voters than ever are heading to the polls in 2024, representing some 49 percent of the world's population. When journalists themselves are under this kind of political pressure and under these kinds of attacks, what's the potential impact on elections?

Maria Ressa:

This is let — me throw another quick stat, which is that Sweden has said — there's a think tank there that said 71 percent of the world is now under authoritarian rule, right?

We are electing illiberal leaders democratically, because journalists are attacked, not just in the business model, not just the government that wants to grab power, but also the people, the trust of the people in the news organization, right, all this coming through information warfare, information operations on social media.

And it is about to get worse, because you now have generative A.I. coming in, so you're going to get industrial-grade propaganda coming at you, and you won't be able to tell the difference from fact and fiction.

Amna Nawaz:

On that tech front, because you focus a lot there on the intersection between big tech and journalism, you wrote recently, and you said: "What's clear is that journalism won't survive if we don't build our own tech."

What should journalists be doing now that we're not?

Maria Ressa:

So, look, essentially, democratic governments, including the United States, have outsourced technology for the public sphere to private companies driven by profit.

And this business model, surveillance capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff wrote about it. That book didn't come out until 2019. We didn't even know. Our data is being collected, we're being cloned, and microtargeted. It's a different business model from a news organization, right?

You're going to different the personalization of your reality. But the difference with that, though, is if you have 100 people and they have their own personalized realities, they would be in an insane asylum. So, globally, this is what we're creating because of surveillance for profit.

And that surveillance for profit has to stop. Impunity must be stopped, because it has been used by China, Russia, Iran to microtarget the cellular level of democracy. This is why, starting in 2016 in the United States, you have had Russia — Russian disinformation touch 126 million Americans.

This is data that was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018.

Amna Nawaz:

At the same time, what we're seeing is really a coming together of some news companies and big tech firms with A.I. technology.

We just saw in the last couple of days, last week, "The Atlantic," Vox Media, and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp making deals with OpenAI to develop products, to access their archives. What do you think the future holds there?

Maria Ressa:

Generative A.I. has not been proven. It is still speculative, at best.

And neither A.I. of social media nor generative A.I. are anchored in facts, right? So what we are doing when we cut deals with these companies is the same mistake we made with social media when we took the share button and put it on our Web sites. We're giving away valuable, our — in that case, our relationships with our community to social media that allowed the growth of Facebook.

Meta, the world's largest distributor of news now, just last year decided they were going to choke traffic to digital news sites, right? So you lose control.

On generative A.I., by giving that, right, you're going to get a fraction of the kinds of investments that are walking into these companies, right? And, again, it will not be anchored on facts.

Amna Nawaz:

Maria, you spoke recently at Harvard's commencement, and there was a powerful moment you pulled from your own experience as a journalist under attack in the Philippines and the advice that you gave to them.

And you said this: "These times will hopefully teach you the same lesson I learned. You don't know who you are until you're tested, until you fight for what you believe in, because that defines who you are."

What do you hope this next generation of journalists and leaders takes away from that?

Maria Ressa:

You know, I speak with both our young journalists, because Rappler is a young organization. Our median age is 25 years old. We're about 100, 120 people, right? Median age is 25.

And when we came under attack, it wasn't just the — our young reporters, but it was also their parents you have to deal with, right? And the question they always ask is, why do you want to be a journalist?

But you know what? When we came under attack, all the friction of a news organization, running a news group fell away. The mission became everything. This is the time that will define whether facts, evidence-based thinking, whether that will win.

Amna Nawaz:

Maria Ressa, we are so grateful for your leadership in this space and for making time to come talk to us. Always great to see you.

Thank you.

Maria Ressa:

Thanks for having me.