Firehose of falsehood
After her speech, she set aside 10 minutes for a quick chat with The Wire on the problems of misinformation, lack of trust in the media â and of course the escalating attacks on journalists and rights activists in India.
Ressa pointed out that the arrests of activist Teesta Setalvad and fact-checker Mohammad Zubair were âshockingâ, adding: âEveryone should be talking about it, everyone should be writing about this⌠it should get more headlines.â
Sharing her experience of incarceration, she said that when she got arrested, âpeople donât want to get in the fray⌠partly because of self interest.â But you have to get everyone together, pull everyone together, she said.
If people fight, then that makes the work of journalists easier.
Asked about the spread of misinformation and the adverse effect on democracy this had, Ressa saw the problem as one of information overload:
âI think people are inundated. Which is partly what social media has done, right? In the past where would you get your information? From news organisations that actually have to spend money for editorial processes and distribution.
âWell, today, itâs like a firehose of falsehoods literally, right? So when you have thatâŚindividual people who just, who may have lost their jobs, who just want a simpler world where someone else can make the decisions for themâŚweâre seeing this. I mean, India was the first, Indonesia was the secondâŚaround 2014, there was kind of a nostalgia for a strongman leader and Prabowo [Subianto Djojohadikusumo, defence minister] in Indonesia, the former son-in-law of Suharto [former Indonesian PM] almost won, right? That was when Modi won, in 2014.â
Ressa stressed the need for media organisations to have strong ties with the communities of readers and viewers they serve. âWhat we need to tell our communities is that if you donât fight for your rights now, you will lose them.â If people fight, then that makes the work of journalists easier, she added.
Live with Maria Ressa
Appended below is the transcript of the interview
Arfa Khanum Sherwani: Hello and welcome to The Wire, I am Arfa Khanum Sherwani and I am in the beautiful state of Hawaii in the United States, where I am attending a very important conference hosted by the East West Center. Journalists from all around the world have gathered here. Today I have a very special guest with me â Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa.
Maria is a Filipino-American journalist and author, and co-founder and CEO of Rappler. Sheâs just finished delivering her keynote address and Iâm going to ask her some crucial questions on democracy, freedom of expression and how journalism can survive in the current world, more specifically from the Indian perspective â the way journalists are being attacked, the way human rights defenders are being attacked, and what we can do about this.
Maria, my first question to you would be, why do you think there is a trust deficit? Do you also attribute it to the last two years of COVID, where we were kind of a disconnected world? Do you think it added to the deficit of trust?
Maria Ressa: Well, yeah so COVID actually again, like information, was weaponized, right? Thatâs part of the reason you see people wearing masks or the level of distressâŚCOVID only exacerbated the problem that was there.
Weâve been under intense information operations and thatâs the beginning of it. I think people keep thinking itâs likeâŚrandomly youâre just attacked because. Itâs not [that]. Itâs targeted. And thatâs meant to tear down. JustâŚI think you know this big data case study of UNESCO was very instructive. Sixty percent to tear down credibility, 40% to tear down your spirit, right? So, COVID just added another layer and this is part of the reason I would say, like, this is a once-in-a-century moment. [Chief Medical Advisor to the US President] Anthony Fauci said it was once in a century because of COVID but those very same networks of political disinformation were what was used for COVID disinformation, right?
There really is a connection to information warfare.
AKS: Right. Why do you think people are so willing to believe what the dictators are saying? What the, you know, pliant media is trying to make them believe? Do you not think that people have stopped thinking on their own? Can we really blame all of this on people or you think that you know along with social media and pliant media they have been able to capture their imagination?
MR: Itâs not the imagination as much asâŚI think people are inundated. Which is partly what social media has done, right? In the past where would you get your information? From news organisations that actually have to spend money for editorial processes and distribution.
Well, today, itâs like a firehose of falsehoods literally, right? So when you have thatâŚindividual people who just, who may have lost their jobs, who just want a simpler world where someone else can make the decisions for themâŚweâre seeing this. I mean, India was the first, Indonesia was the secondâŚaround 2014, there was kind of a nostalgia for a strongman leader and Prabowo [Subianto Djojohadikusumo, defence minister] in Indonesia, the former son-in-law of Suharto [former Indonesian PM] almost won, right? That was when Modi won, in 2014.
So itâs a combination of human nature, right? I think what we need to tell our communities is that if you donât fight for your rights now, you will lose them, and you know itâll be easier for journalists who want to keep fighting.
AKS: A very interesting thing you said was that if there is a battle for facts â if peopleâs minds and facts are being manipulated â then how do you trust the entire electoral mechanism and electoral systemâŚ
MR: You canât.
AKS: We have an election coming up in less than two years and weâve already gotten into election mode. How do you think that this manipulation of facts and manipulation of mainstream media is affecting democracies?
MR: Itâs killing it, itâs killing democracy and then the people who are trying their best to stand up to power, itâs like Sisyphus and Cassandra combined, right? Itâs impossible odds, but we journalists are foolish enough to try, right? So more power to you. I mean this is why we need courage.
AKS: Coming back to, you know, the mediaâs role. Like Rappler, The Wire is also a small organisation. We are non-profit and we are supported and sustained just by peopleâŚ
MR: Your community.
AKS: âŚYou think that this is the kind of model that can really challenge dictators, because we are nowhere. I mean, of course, we are there and there is an appetite and hunger to know more, to listen to us, to read us. There is a huge viewership and readership we have. But at the same time we can never match the size and the reach of the mainstream media.
MR: This is why weâŚalso, you know, social mediaâŚthese tech platforms, theyâve enabled this. But part of the reason I continue to engage â weâre one of two Filipino fact-checking partners â is because they have the power to do something right now and I think we need to maybe come together better and demand greater safety.
AKS: How do you do that?
MR: I donât know, letâs figure it out.
AKS: What are the new models that you can think of?
MR: This is something we just did in three months which was way too little. It was a six-month project that we did, right? But again, like this RISJ, the Reuters Institute report to me was very damaging to the credibility we need, right?
So anyway, how do we do it? This is the fun part. All right I should have ended with the fun part. This is horrendous but it is also creation so this is where we kind of have to get our minds together, get our talents together, get our alliances together and try to create something that doesnât exist yet. How do we do that?
AKS: Innovation?
MR: Itâs partly innovation but, definitely, I think it will come from person to person, it will come from each of our areas of influence and kind of coming together. We could certainly go to Facebook all together, right? I mean this is part of in bond, for example. YouTube is the other one. I donât know if thatâsâŚyou know, for us YouTube is number one now.
AKS: So YouTube is a problem in India right now. Like I am solely on YouTube because TV has been bought over by the powers that be.
MR: Yeah, so theyâre almostâŚ
AKS: So theyâre now trying to capture YouTube, the only medium available and YouTube has so willingly given in and is giving in to the demands of the government.
MR: So thatâs a story we should all be doing and frankly we can get international media concerned about that because this information is seeded. So we have a lot in common, I think. Thatâs the other part, I think we should strengthen that.
AKS: Maria, you emphasized on the fact that online attack is an offline attack â you said this is a real world attack. Now in India it has shifted already from online to offline.
MR: The weaponization of the law!
AKS: I am, as a political journalist, just a tweet away or an article away from going to jail. Literally. How do you think people like me and my organisation, TheWire, should function under so much pressure? Like, real life consequences?
MR: So the first thing is you need lawyers who will help you through this. You need to tell your community what is happening. You need to make sure youâre safe. Right? Like, there has to be plan A, plan B, plan C. And you need to assess this almost on a daily basis and then you need to also reach into government.
AKS: Reach into government, as in?
MR: You need to talk to them and find out because again, treating⌠I think itâs a stakeholders thing, right? Because, like for me, for example, well the MarcosâŚWhat does this show about the Marcos administration? Iâm not sure yet. Am I foolish for giving the Marcos administration the benefit of the doubt? Some people will say yes. I hope they donât jail me, but you know, I mean, you gotta talk to them so thatâŚYou also have power and collectively you do have power.
AKS: Last two questions. One is on women journalists. Do you have a particular message for them because you know theyâre targeted for their gender, theyâre targeted for their work in general? We are a marginalized community and then this pressure that comes on us. It is just impossible sometimes to carry on the way we do.
MR: Yeah, we have to. There are now groups that are helping us. And for a lot of this we need to come together. Youâre not alone, right? Thatâs the first message. Youâre not alone. There are a lot of us who are feeling this and thereâs a way to fight it. But most of the time itâs not you fighting it alone, right? Because any journalist, human rights activist or opposition politician, women politicians are getting clobbered. They canât fight this battle on their own and thatâs why we look at my three pillars â technology, journalism, community. I always go back to that Pareto principle. âWhere do I spend most of my time?â If we can fix the tech that will take care of the poison that keeps coming in, the virus of lies, and then we can begin to rebuild.
AKS: Last question. There are two very important people in India, one is Teesta Setalvad, a very well known human rights activist who worked with the survivors of the 2002 Gujarat riotsâŚ
MR: Yeah, I saw thisâŚ
AKS: âŚwhen Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat. And the second is a leading fact checkerâŚ
MR: I sawâŚ
AKS: âŚTheyâre both in jail right now. What do you have to say?
MR: Shocking. I thinkâŚIndian journalists, and you should get⌠You know, these thingsâŚIâll say from experienceâŚwhen I got arrested, the journalistsâŚpeople donât want to jump in the fray. You see? Partly because of self interest. But how do you get everyone together? You talk to everyone. You pull the people together. Thatâs where the activists are better than journalists. Weâre kind of bad at thisâŚ[laughs]. âCause we think the story should tell the story, right? But itâs shocking and it should get more headlines.
