The presstitute fighting death by a thousand cuts

Daniel Nelson

Journalist Maria Ressa is a ‘presstitute”, according to President Rodrigo Duterte of The Philippines and his activist supporters.

The insult is nothing compared with the far harsher barbs, harassment, disinformation, threats and, latterly, punitive legal actions that could stack up to a century in jail. They are all thrown at Ressa because she refuses to bow to Duterte’s intimidation.

Attacks on her stem from her ethics, honesty and adherence to journalistic principles which clash with the President’s brash populism, and particularly his anti-drugs campaign which critics say has seen police kill hundreds of people.

“I must admit I have killed,” ‘Duterte Harry’ said in an early interview, and the first body was found three hours after a post-inauguration speech in which he warned, “If you are into drugs, someday you will make a mistake and I will kill you.”

A Thousand Cuts chronicles the government’s campaign against Ressa’s news website, Rappler, shows its star reporter at work, and follows Ressa’s glory trail as she collects enough international media freedom awards to paper her office walls. It also gives glimpses of private moments – particularly with her sister in the US, where her mother took them as children in order to provide a better life. There’s a delightful scene as the more conventional, less politically aware sis tries to persuade her determinedly sober-dressing sibling to glam up for an award ceremony.

The waning of checks and balances over what the President says and does, the use of family members and extremist supporters (“Yes, I will kill for the President”), a bouncingly vibrant social media campaign, the use of lies and half-truths (What do you do when the President lies, and then the allegations are repeated over and over so it’s hard to know where the truth is? “Lies laced with anger and hate spread fastest,” says Ressa): it’s like a Trumpian laboratory, raising issues causing problems in many countries. Ressa specifically says that The Philippines has been a test-bed for the use of online tactics in election campaigns worldwide.

I’d like to have seen see more of the wider media context in the country and some assessment of Rappler’s influence, but this is an informative, inspirational documentary. Ressa emerges as a modest journalist pushed into becoming a fighter for free speech, honesty and democracy. It’s frightening, too: will the rest of us be lucky enough to find such a defender?