HOW TO STAND UP TO A DICTATOR

A Filipino journalist who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize describes her ongoing fight against political corruption and online disinformation.

For years, Ressa has been a brave and consistent critic of technology’s increasing power in affecting people’s behavior, and she and the news site she co-founded in 2012, Rappler, have been consistently targeted by the regimes of Rodrigo Duterte and his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Like Russian journalist Dimitry Muratov, with whom she shared the Nobel, the author has battled the information warfare tactics of dictators and remains under constant threat of harassment and arrest. In this engaging work, Ressa shares the story of her life and career, beginning with her immigration to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1973, when she was 10. Her early years in the U.S., she writes, were defined by three lessons: Always choose to learn, embrace your fear, and stand up to bullies. These lessons would follow her into a successful career as a journalist—first at CNN, where she served as the bureau chief in Manila and then Jakarta, followed by a role heading the news division at the Philippines network ABS-CBN. When she resigned over an ethics issue in 2010, she and some journalist friends began work on Rappler, with the intention of injecting the positive elements of social media into old-fashioned journalism. Increasingly, however, evenhanded journalists—who once served as reliable “gatekeepers of facts and information”—were being pushed aside by unscrupulous tech companies and manipulated by populist politicians like Duterte and Trump via bots, fake accounts, and disinformation campaigns. These nefarious tactics led to the author’s profound disillusionment with Facebook, in particular, which she now calls “one of the gravest threats to democracies around the world.” Her courageous work has garnered well-deserved international attention, and her book serves as a readable, urgent plea for journalistic integrity, vigilance, and transparency. Amal Clooney, who serves as one of Ressa’s attorneys, provides the foreword.

An indispensable journalist presents an impassioned, well-informed warning about vital global issues.