Maria Ressa, Duterte & the Fight for the Free Press
Days before an expected verdict in her trial, Phi…
June 12, 2020
25 min
114 of 178
June 12, 2020
Maria Ressa, Duterte & the Fight for the Free Press
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Frontline Episodes Around June 12, 2020
Episode 114 of 178 — walk the feed in the order it was published.
Maria Ressa, Duterte & the Fight for the Free Press
Summary
Days before an expected verdict in her trial, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa speaks out about reporting on President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war — and then becoming a high-profile target of his government’s crackdown on the press.
As she faces potential prison time on cyber libel charges, the co-founder and CEO of the independent Philippine news site Rappler tells FRONTLINE how she’s preparing, discusses her reporting on Duterte, and says that her conviction about what she does is undaunted: “All it has done is to make us stronger in our intent to continue to hold government to account…”
For more on Duterte’s drug war, watch FRONTLINE’s On the President’s Orders. And for more from Ressa, read FRONTLINE’s interview with her for The Facebook Dilemma, in which she discusses her reporting on how Duterte weaponized the platform to target his critics and spread disinformation. Plus: Stay tuned for the forthcoming documentary A Thousand Cuts, featuring Ressa’s story, which will see a summer theatrical release and a fall FRONTLINE broadcast.
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