A Thousand Cuts

Morning!

You want to be somewhere within reaching distance,

because I will come to you for...

Propaganda.

Yeah.

Pia, you're my first strike.

What will you ask me?

I'm assuming I'm going to ask you

what it was like to get banned from the palace.

Okay, got it.

Rambo, you, of course, numbers.

Drug war, what's changed, right? Okay.

Because it's on two fronts, right?

You have the, people expect...

People think that's the main accomplishment,

so what did they really accomplish?

Okay, breaking it down. Yes.

Okay.

Five...

Hello and welcome, I'm Maria Ressa.

We are at the 2018 State of the Nation address.

Use the hashtag #SONA2018.

"Rappler" team is there.

Rodrigo Roa Duterte,

president of the Republic of the Philippines.

Wow... wow.

Award-winning Filipina journalist Maria Ressa,

the founder of the independent news site "Rappler,"

vocal critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte...

Maria Ressa, a high-profile journalist

in the Philippines, she was named

Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2018...

Maria Ressa carries the torch of press freedom

in a country held in thrall by a populist president.

Okay.

Fantastic!

It's, like, let me focus you first

on what's happening in the entire information ecosystem.

It's dark and light, let me, let me use that now, right?

They're trying to actively form alternative news.

And they've succeeded.

Trending News Portal was a really good distribution.

Mocha is a really good distribution.

That's why, all of a sudden, our society is so polarized,

because that's what they're doing.

This group just amplifies, pounds,

but they never share any of the traditional news sites.

And the traditional news sites are so blind

that they don't even see they're getting killed here, right?

This is fascinating--

it's a snapshot of our information ecosystem today.

I never planned to be in politics.

When I supported then-Mayor Duterte,

it was just voluntary.

For a dancer like me, for an entertainer like me,

to be appointed in Malacañang,

that's really something big.

And last but not the least...

Journey to the Presidency."

1,164 shares.

Reached 233,860.

He's the first chief implementer

of the government's war on drugs.

After his retirement, he was chosen

to clean up the corrections bureau,

also plagued with illegal drug problems.

Trust me, I have my own way of stopping you

from doing your illegal acts-- trust me, ah.

Believe you me, I can stop you, ah.

So...

Yes, sir!

Gentleman's agreement.

Yes, sir!

>> Yes, sir!

Yes, sir!

We're sitting now with Davao mayor Rody Duterte.

Thank you for joining us.

Can you please, you are the man of the hour,

people wanting to know whether you're running for president,

vice president, yes, no?

Where are you?

So no qualms about killing killers?

The level of poverty on the ground is phenomenal.

They've had other presidents and other governments,

and their lives have not gotten better.

Duterte comes in,

he offers not just change.

He offers revenge.

"Whoever did this to you, I will stop it."

Rodrigo Duterte and Alan Peter Cayetano

campaigned in Cainta, one of the most... towns in Rizal.

I've covered Duterte for a long time.

I covered Duterte when he was still the mayor,

who nobody really,

who everybody thought was just a wild card.

He had a reputation of being an iron-fisted mayor.

He had a lot of nicknames,

like, people were calling him Dirty Harry,

or the Dirty Harry of Mindanao.

But, sir...

He may have been a politician,

but he was an outsider politician,

like, a small-time politician.

So his messaging

was being someone cut out from political elite circles

in Manila.

"I'm an outsider, and I'm here to change everything."

I, Rodrigo Roa Duterte...

President Duterte, right after his inauguration,

stood on a platform

and said, "If you're into drugs,

"sometime in the next few years, you will make a mistake

and I will kill you."

It took three hours.

The first body was found a few blocks away from where he spoke.

Please, sir.

A year-- actually, that's what

I'm going to start off with.

And I'll just say that, a year ago,

this is what we, we talked then,

and you've done everything you said.

All of our surveys showed it.

We had-- I'll show you all the... yeah.

Social media.

By February we knew.

In 2016, "Rappler" fought two levels of impunity.

The first was the drug war.

The war on drugs became a war on the poor.

We had one team that would go out every night,

they would come home with at least

eight dead bodies a night.

The narrative of the government is that they fought back.

These are extra-judicial killings or murder.

"Impunity" in the drug war was a continuing series.

We put faces and names

to the people being killed.

We demanded the government be held accountable.

Anyone on Facebook who questioned

the people who were being killed was automatically bashed.

We began to gather data.

We began to look at the accounts attacking all of media.

We stumbled onto something-- disinformation networks.

When you see the network that spreads it,

you can follow other networks, and then you can see its growth.

Mid-September, I started writing.

First, the weaponization of the internet.

The second piece was how

Facebook algorithms impact democracy.

As soon as we released it, we got pounded.

I was getting an average of 90 hate messages per hour.

Mocha Uson blog, she attacked "Rappler,"

said, "Oh, 'Rappler's' C.I.A."

Followed by another blogger, Thinking Pinoy,

who seeded the ideas that we're foreign-controlled.

"Rappler" is misrepresenting itself...

It was the second State of the Nation address.

It comes out of President Duterte's own mouth.

Of course, we were covering it live.

I automatically tweeted, "Mr. President, you're wrong."

I was told later on that offended him.

What do you do when the president lies,

then it's repeated a million times

so people have no idea what the truth is?

This set the stage.

A week after the president did that,

we got our first subpoena.

January 2018, the government tried to close "Rappler."

Tried to revoke our license to operate.

In a little more than a year, we faced 11 cases.

Oh, hi, sir, sir, earlier in your speech,

you said that the issue in the SEC ruling

against "Rappler" is not an issue of press freedom.

But at the same time during your speech,

you were giving comments about the media and about "Rappler."

So what does that mean, sir?

You say that this is not an attack on media,

but you also have attacks on media in your own speech...

'Cause the end goal

is to actually make you doubt the facts.

Mocha! Mocha!

Good morning,

Uh...

Duterte! Duterte!

Duterte! Duterte! Duterte!

A prominent critic

of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested.

Maria Ressa is C.E.O....

A warrant for a cyber-libel case was served past 5:00 p.m.

inside "Rappler's" office in Pasig City.

Press freedom advocates say

the government's charges against her are retaliation

for her critical reporting of authorities in the Philippines.

We'll go, we'll go to NBI now.

We'll go to the NBI, can you guys come?

It's a shock, it's a shock, but we're going.

No further comment.

Excuse us, excuse us.

We have until 9:00 to be able to post bail.

Without the right documents, we cannot post bail, so they're...

Stumbling blocks to prevent...