Through them, it is journalism and freedom of information that the committee in Oslo wanted to reward. On Friday October 8, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa, founder of the investigative media Rapper, and the editor of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, for “Their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a prerequisite for democracy and lasting peace”.
Tireless fighters for the freedom to inform, the two laureates are “The representatives of all journalists who defend this ideal in a world where democracy and freedom of the press are faced with increasingly unfavorable conditions”, said Norwegian committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen. “Free, independent and factual journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda”, she added.
58-year-old journalist Maria Ressa was attending an online symposium on independent journalism in Southeast Asia when the news broke. “It’s for all of us, I’m in shock. It is a recognition of how difficult it can be to be a journalist ”, she reacted live, very moved. Born in the Philippines, Maria Ressa lived in the United States from the age of 10. She returned to Manila in 1986, where she became a CNN correspondent in 1995.
Crusade
By crowning this journalist with a rare pugnacity, the Nobel committee pays tribute to the crusade she has been leading for almost six years against the abuses of President Rodrigo Duterte, with the site Rapper, a medium that she founded with three other women journalists and of which she is the director in Manila. Rapper was particularly distinguished by its coverage of the deadly war on drugs of the populist leader.
In October 2016, Maria Ressa published a series of surveys on how trolls, fake news and fake accounts helped Rodrigo Duterte come to power. She denounced before the hour a “A ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy that uses the power of the Internet and exploits the algorithms fueling social media to sow confusion and doubt”. In 2018, Facebook admitted that Cambridge Analytica, the British communications consulting firm, had used data from hundreds of thousands of Filipinos without their consent – the second largest contingent of hacked users after Americans.
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