This is the story of Maria Ressa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and courageous journalist who fought against the authoritarian government in the Philippines. She stood for freedom, facts, and her rights, offering personal lessons and a vision for the future of journalism and importance of collective action to protect truth in the face of democracy’s fragility.
I think she was an amazing writer. The kind that really inspires and stirs your heart. As I grew up in Indonesia and having to make the choice of staying in Canada vs going back long-term, her story of home, nationalism, trying to fix a broken system, and her search for identity truly resonates with me. Something I noted however was that she’s priveleged for having a choice (ie. going back to US), which made her ways of fighting a dictator rather reckless and non-ideal for everyone. Nonetheless her perspectives in this book were valuable and contageous. It speaks of history, and the wisdoms of living through it.
My Summary
You don’t know who you are until you’re forced to fight for it… you build it (purpose) through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.
Life story
Lessons as a kid: Having forced to move to the US, she learned not to stand out when you don’t know who you are. It tested her identity, what to take with her and what to leave behind (relatable). On a pyjamas party, she learned that when you take risk, you have to trust someone will come to your aid, and when it’s your turn you will be the one helping. She learned that ‘silence is complicity’ and if you don’t stand up for bullies and stay quiet you’re involved. All it takes is one person to stand up and fight because a bully doesn’t like to be challenged publicly. You’re popular if you give people what they want, but question whether that’s what you want. She met a violin teacher who’d take her to gigs, nurturing kids looking for a place in the world, for which no idea was too big to achieve as long as you’re not alone. Like a working democracy, the orchestra gave the notes and systems, but how you play, feel, follow, lead is all up to you. She learned that her achievements all came from a place of insecurity and needing to belong, but you can’t go wrong if you make the choice to learn.
In college, she explored further. She learns that like religion, science were philosophical - ie. everything moves to max entropy, it takes energy to maintain order, for every action is an equal and opposite reaction, that the act of observing changes what you observe. A strict code of honor simplifies her world of ethics.
Be brutally honest and ask the toughest questions to seek clarity and insights. We grow by drawing the line to call out unfairness. Staying silent/compliant changed nothing. Speaking up was an act of creation.
“The present moment of the past”: when the past affects the present and the present affects the interpretation of the past, both past and present coexists to change each other and create the future. Your actions today changes earlier versions of yourself. You have control of who you are and who you want to be.
“empty mirror”: the act of knowing yourself to the degree that you can stand in front of a mirror and see the world without the obstruction of your reflection. Achieve clarity by removing your ego when approaching/responding to the world.
Dropping her life in the US and made the choice to learn, to trust, to be vulnerable, to unlock more possibilities. She had something to prove; that Philiphines deserves better.
Journalism was a real-life theater. She pushed her vision for a young and energetic newscast team. Settling for what you can get is a sign of mediocrity. Keeping her hands full and gobbling up experiences to lead, tackling projects/timelines that someone older would’ve turned down. Despite the realities of society, you can succeed without compromising your ideals. You always have a choice. Ideals however are harder to achieve when you have to get things done - having to pay bribes - you wonder why even bother having a law, you have to draw the ethical line every time. But when your integrity/credibility as journalist is on the line, never agree to be intimidated. Doing breaking-news taught her to maintain composure and summarizing a story down to 3 points, that skill always kicks in to help her survive many crisis.
Corruption culture: people preserve relationships over facts. Unlike classrooms, you can’t call out people as easily because the stakes are even higher in real world - a family to feed.
The most important choice is the person you’ll spend your whole life with. Their values/choices will sway you as you create yourself and making the important decisions about who you are.
Being honest about her identity pushes people away from her world (ie. parents/mentor). There are always repercussions to our choices. The tough question: “How honest will you be with yourself?” You have to embrace fear as the world won’t cushion you against those lies.
You are more than your sexuality. Don’t let that define you. She accepted what’s unfair, and moved on with the other things she had to fight for. Not letting it stop her.
Working across the globe, she learned to assess events via observing context and society’s actions over time, judging would be arrogant. At the time, western media took over the world as they have the finances.
Those in power always attempts to control the narrative, and devise their own stories. Was always the case. With tech, information flows much faster than any government could declare their positions, reporters has less time to learn and explore stories, hard to focus on what matters most and default to whatever’s faster/easier/thrilling (team of teams). Somehow tech both saved us time and stole it from us.
Indonesia 1998: violence (political, economic, religious, separatist, ethnic) was unleashed when Suharto fell after 32 years of power. Covered up violence and hidden ethnic issues surfaced into more violence. Group/system and individual behaviours differ a lot: ‘emergent behaviour’. System exerted pressure on individual made people do things they wouldn’t do alone, destroying self-control and giving everyone freedom to be their worst-self. Emergent behaviour is unpredictable and dangerous. Like a puppet master / dalang, Suharto manipulates from the shadows projected on screen whenever there’s a challenge to power.
Left problems like KKN (corruption, collusion, nepotism) because leaders failed to educate. Under their rule, you stood out taking risks and is better to sit back and conform (Yeah.. Indonesian loves that). Students are rewarded showing respect to authority and knowing your place, forming lack of creative independent thought. Education, the ability to discern/question, determines quality of governance, productivity, quality of workforce, investments, gdp, but would take a whole generation to bear fruit / feel the impact.
From CNN, she moved back to lead the largest news company in Philippines. She asked to start as training consultant to learn each other outside any power structures. Different from being a reporter, taking this role requires experimenting with ideas, shaping policies and organization goals to take actions that mattered for the nation. Upgrading craft and mastery goes first. She promised transparency, accountability, consistency - a system that functions regardless of personalities. “Be cruel to be kind” - building env for excellence/professionalism/world-class/being-the-best requires confronting the system of patronage head-on (ie. downsizing). Empathy/accountability was essential. The hardest decisions are the ones you must communicate yourself, if you don’t have courage to deliver the news to people affected by your decisions, think twice.
Everything is political (making a social system/culture that works and managing people). If you try changing culture, it’ll fight back - you have to be ready to take it on (she got lawsuits every month in the first year).
Embracing technology: they aired stories from citizens to create participatory culture to energize the youth to report news. “wisdom of crowds” (as opposed to mob rule) is created given 1. diversity of ideas 2. independence 3. decentralized structure 4. mechanism to turn judgement to collective decision. Her goal being to spread empowerment/hope and foster debate/engagement. They hit the ‘tipping point’ when one day someone revealed the truth about a massacre. Like Princeton’s code of conduct, citizen journalist made it hard for election candidates / dictator to openly violate rules given there’s a free press anyone could run to for help. She and a few visionary veterans set out to create a startup called Rappler. To put TV news on the phones, creating communities of action through journalism. Government does better when people are involved. In each story they embed a mood meter that tracks what public is feeling (show mood of the day) and what issues they care about, following that people tend to make emotion-driven decisions. Chose to hide metrics like time-spent and views from reporters to incentive quality news on stories that mattered. Their anti-corruption campaign shows where taxpayer money went.
Journalism were sacred - they consolidate information to create informed citizenry for democracy to work, there’re ethical limitation, and it wasn’t to win arguments / popularity. Tech companies removes the gatekeeping role of fact/truth/trust, and built a system incentivized around money and power. Like emergent behavior, everything we do ripples through social network impacting 3 degrees.
Rodrigo Duterte would kill its people to stop corruption/criminality/drugs. The rise of click and account farms, political influencers helped governments consolidate power. Supply met demand and disinformation became a huge business. Philippines became a fraud hub, a global leader in online automated/manual attacks due to economic incentives and cheap labor. These are CIB (coordinated, inauthentic behavior) to artificially make hashtag trends or to hijack what’s currently trending. Astrosurfing is an attempt to change public discourse, for example the campaign team would make innocent FB groups that occasionally seed crime stories regarding the drug war. There were efforts to cleanse history, justify the state of lawlessness, spreading polarization, anger, hate and fear through disinformation. Political influencers started targeting/slandering journalists to tear down credibility after Rappler stood up against the disinformation. They made the narrative of going against the oligarchs to make businesses do what they wanted. They made viral fake sex videos to humiliate and jailing their opposition politician. A lie gets viral and reaches exponentially through the network. Those who stood up against lies were gaslit. Facebook liked to keep it quiet as though they wanted users to think their platform is trustworthy. Tech allowed creation of behaviour at scale that brought out the worst in humanity. There are lots of noise supercharged with emotions, destroying rational/clear thought, lack of concentration, empowerment of individual over collective. Repeated lies soon became the shared reality, destroying the information/trust ecosystem they’re built for. Violent emotions made FB rich.
So Rappler fought against their charges, spending lots of legal fees and time. Silent is consent, and they spoke to tell their own story. She learned the importance of simplifying explanations to prevent misleading lies. The law can be an illusion sometimes, and thus its important to #HoldTheLine not to voluntarily give their rights no matter the danger. Press freedom is the foundation of the right for every citizen to access the truth.
“There are upsides to even the worst events. If I go to jail, I could sleep, for one.”
“We die a little everyday. Each day lived is also another day never to be repeated.”
So, how do you stand up to a dictator? When ignoring/responding doesn’t work, you need to build communities of action. You can’t do it alone, create a team, strengthen your influence, weave and connect the bright spots. In the long term, education - so start now. In the medium term, legislation/policy to restore law (vision an internet that binds us instead of tearing us apart). In the short term, it’s just us - collaborate! beginning with trust. It’s not easy but we have many reasons to keep fighting.