Maria Ressa Biography
MariaRessa born Maria Angelita Aycardo Ressa is a Filipina journalist, businesswoman, and an Auther. She is best known as the Chief Executive officer of the Rappler online news website. She previously spent nearly two decades working as a lead investigative reporter in southeast Asia for CNN.
Maria Ressa Age
Maria was born on October 2, 1963, in Manila, Phillippines. She is 55 years old as of 2018.
Maria Ressa Family
There is no information provided.
Maria Ressa Sister
Maria’s sister is Michelle and she plays a video of a mother’s Day in Maria’s facebook.
Maria Ressa
Maria Ressa Career
She was first employed at CNN and worked for nearly two decades. She served as Manilla Bureau Chief from 1988-1995. she also served as Jakarta Bureau Chief from 1995-2005. Ressa specialized in investigating terrorist networks which earned her the CNN’s lead investigative reporter in Asia position. She noted in an open letter which was dated 11 October 2010 that she would not renew her six-year contract with CNN.
She became an author-in-residence at The International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Ressa headed the news division of ABS-CBN between 2004-2010. She continued writing for CNN and The Wall Street Journal. She is also an author of two books written and topics revolving around the rise of terrorism in the South East of Asia. The titles of the books are Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center (2011) and From Bin Laden to Facebook 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism (2013). In 2012, she established the online news site: Rappler. Rappler started as a Facebook page named MovePH in August 2011 and later evolved into a complete website on 1 January 2012. Since its establishment, the site has been a major news portal in the Phillippines, receiving numerous local and international awards.
Maria Ressa Arrest
Ressa appeared before the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), on 22 January 2018, to comply with the subpoena over an online libel complaint. The subpoena was issued on January 10 to Ressa, former Rappler reporter Reynaldo Santos, and businessman Benjamin Bitanga. The subpoena was filed in October 2017 by Filipino-Chinese national Wilfredo Keng after Rappler published a story on Keng allegedly lending his sports utility vehicle to the impeached and now-deceased Chief Justice Renato Corona as a bribed form of favor.
In November 2018, the Philippine government announced that it would charge Ressa and Rappler’s parent company, Rappler Holdings Corporation, with tax evasion and failure to file tax returns. The charge concerns the investment in Rappler by the Omidyar Network in 2015. Ressa has denied wrongdoing, and Rappler has issued a statement also denying wrongdoing.
On 13 February 2019, Philippine judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch # 46 issued the arrest warrant against Ressa. The officials of the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation fulfilled this warrant filed under the charge of cyber libel. The charge is currently being contested by Ressa due to the outdated law concerning the article in question. The arrest was live-streamed by many of Rappler’s senior reporters on Facebook as a sign of protest.
Due to time constraints, Ressa was unable to post bail amounting to ₽60,000PHP ($1,150.00 USD), resulting in her arrest and confinement within the (holding) board room office of the NBI building. A grand total of six lawyers, two (pro bono) were assigned to work on her case.
Maria Ressa Citizenship
She is from Philippine.
Maria Ressa Award
- PMPC Star Awards for TV Excellence in Broadcasting Award.
Maria Ressa Person Of The Year
Maria Ressa was selected by the time magazine as personal of the year award.
Maria Ressa Duterte
Maria Ressa is famously known for her critics about the sitting president Duterte. She was recently released from prison and the president commented on the issue saying: ‘I do not relish picking on her. I’m out of it.’
Maria Ressa Books
- From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism
- Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia
Maria Ressa Email
Email her at. maria.ressa@rappler.com
Maria Ressa Facebook
Maria Ressa Twitter
Tweets by mariaressa
Maria Ressa Instagram
Maria Ressa Acceptance Speech
Maria Ressa Interview
Philippines: Journalist and Rappler Founder Maria Ressa
In the Philippines, authorities have arrested award-winning journalist Maria Ressa in connection with a cyber libel case. Ressa is the founder of the independent news site Rappler and a vocal critic of the country’s president. The charges stem from a story published by Rappler in 2012 in which the paper detailed the alleged criminal ties of a businessman based on intelligence reports. This is Ressa speaking during her arrest earlier today.
Maria Ressa: “What I know is I have not gotten an official copy of the DOJ indictment. We would have the chance to file a motion for reconsideration—we should. The fact that an arrest warrant has been issued, well, really interesting. And I will follow. I’m just shocked that the rule of law has been broken to the point that I can’t see it.”
Rappler and Maria Ressa have been repeatedly targeted by Duterte’s government. In November, authorities indicted Ressa and the site on tax evasion charges, which are widely believed to be politically motivated. Click here to see our November interview with Maria Ressa.
Source:www.democracynow.org
Maria Ressa News
Press freedom under attack: why Filipino journalist Maria Ressa’s arrest should matter to all of us
In a scene right out of a thriller, agents from the Filipino National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) raided journalist and editor Maria Ressa’s Manila office at 5 pm on Wednesday, February 13, after most courts had closed. They took her from the Rappler newsroom where she is an editor, to a police watch house and threw her in a cell.
Ressa’s lawyer bagged up enough cash to post bail and rushed to the only available judge who was presiding over the night court. The judge refused bail, forcing the journalist to spend the night in prison before another judge finally released her the following day.
Ressa’s crime? According to the NBI, she had been arrested on charges of “cyber-libel” – online defamation – for a story alleging a prominent businessman was involved in criminal activity.
Why it matters
Maria Ressa’s case is important not only because a government used a criminal statute to intimidate and lock up a journalist for what should have been treated as a civil dispute, but because of what it says about the way governments are increasingly using the “rule of law” to silence the legitimate work of journalists.
“As a journalist, I know firsthand how the law is being weaponized against perceived critics,” Ressa told CNN.
“I’m not a critic,” she continued. “I’m a journalist and I’m doing my job, holding the government to account.”
Ressa is one of the world’s most decorated reporters. A former CNN correspondent, she set up the news website Rappler.com early in 2012 with a group of colleagues. Since then, it has won numerous awards and become one of the most respected news organizations in the Philippines, fearlessly covering the Duterte government and the consequences of its war on drugs that has claimed thousands of lives.
Last year, TIME Magazine named Ressa a “Person of the Year” – among several journalists including the recently murdered Jamal Khashoggi – for her courageous defense of press freedom.
Rappler published the disputed story in May 2012, four months before the government passed the cyber-libel law. (Under the Philippines’ constitution, no law can be retroactive.) The law also requires complaints to be filed within a year of publication.
The NBI said Rappler had updated the story in 2014 (it corrected a spelling error) and argued that because the story was still online, the website was guilty of “continuous publication”.
The cyber-libel charge is the latest in a long string of legal attacks Rappler is fighting off. Ressa told CNN she is involved in no less than seven separate cases, including charges of violating laws that prohibit foreign ownership of media companies and tax evasion.
She vehemently denies all the allegations, and to date, there has been no evidence to support them. Instead, the legal assault has widely been condemned as a blatant attack on press freedom.
After the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – responsible for registering companies in the Philippines – warned it was revoking Rappler’s license to operate because of breaches of the ownership laws, Philippines Senator Risa Hontiveros tweeted this was “a move straight out of the dictator’s playbook. I urge the public and all media practitioners to defend press freedom and the right to speak truth to power.”
The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines expressed “deep concern” over the SEC decision, saying it was “tantamount to killing the online news site”. And, the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines said the decision
will be remembered in Philippine press history infamy. It is the day that a government built on democratic principles struck a blow on one of the pillars of Asia’s most vibrant democracy.
The SEC has allowed Rappler to continue operating while the case is pending, but the threat of closure remains.
In its defense, the country’s justice department denied it was an attack on press freedom, arguing free speech did not give license to engage in libel. That is true of course, but the way the authorities in the Philippines have been twisting the law to suit a blatantly political purpose should be troubling to all of us.
How governments silence journalists
The Duterte administration isn’t the first to do this. It happened to my two colleagues and I in Egypt, where we were charged and convicted for terrorism offenses after we spoke to the Muslim Brotherhood – the group who had six months earlier been ousted from power as the first legitimately elected government in Egypt’s history.
As responsible journalists, we had a duty to speak to all parties involved in the political crisis, and for doing our jobs, we were sentenced to seven years for “promoting terrorist ideology”.
Turkey is the world’s most prolific jailer of journalists, with 68 in prison. Yet all are there on terrorism charges.
And the problem is not limited to authoritarian regimes. As much as former US President Barack Obama spoke out in our defense while we were imprisoned in Cairo, his administration used the Espionage Act (passed in 1917 to deal with foreign spies) more than all his predecessors combined.
The act was applied against government workers leaking information to the press. If the leaks exposed genuinely sensitive information, this would be understandable, but in almost every case it was to go after journalists or their sources revealing politically embarrassing stories.
In Australia, a slew of laws have come in that, in their own way, choke off journalists’ ability to hold the government, courts, and individuals to account. Whether it is the data retention law that makes it almost impossible to protect sources, or the chronic overuse of suppression orders that restrict journalists’ capacity to report on court cases, or defamation laws weighted heavily in against the media, all make our societies more opaque without providing protection for legitimate journalistic inquiry.
As Maria Ressa said after she was released on bail:
Press freedom is not just about journalists. This is certainly not just about me or Rappler. Press freedom is the foundation of every Filipino’s right to the truth. We will keep fighting. We will hold the line. This has become more important than ever.
Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, The University of Queensland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Source:mumbrella.com.au