Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa, a Filipino-American journalist, co-founded the independent news website Rappler in 2012, which she is now the CEO of. She is known for her work in investigative journalism and her work as a human rights advocate. Prior to Rappler, she worked at other prominent news organizations such as ABS-CBN and CNN International.

Her journalism covers controversial topics such as human rights abuses, corruption, and the war on drugs in the Philippines. She faced legal persecution and harassment from the Philippine government because of both her and Rappler’s critical reporting on Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.

Contributions:

• Under her leadership, Rappler has won numerous awards for its investigative reporting such as the 2018 Free Media Pioneer Award from the International Press Institute.
• Her fight for press freedom has earned her numerous awards as she has been cited for using “freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence, and growing authoritarianism in her native country.”
• She was the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, which details Rappler’s fight for democracy.
• She is the author of three books such as How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism, and Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia.

Awards:

• Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, 2018
• Golden Pen of Freedom Award, 2018
• Knight International Journalism Award, 2018
• Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award, 2018
• Shorenstein Journalism, 2019
• Columbia Journalism Award, 2019
• UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, 2021
• Nobel Peace Prize, 2021