Maria Angelita Ressa, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize 2021 on Friday, is a Filipino-American journalist and author. She is also the co-founder and CEO of Rappler, which is a Philippine-based online news organisation famous for revelations of corruption by government and elected officials. Ressa is the first Filipino Nobel laureate.
Before launching her own news website, Ressa had worked for the global news organisation CNN as a lead investigative reporter in Southeast Asia for nearly two decades.
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Ressa, who is known to be an open critique of the government, was arrested for cyber libel due to accusations that Rappler published a false news story concerning businessman Wilfredo Keng on February 13, 2019, and was later found guilty by the court.
Many in her country saw Ressa’s conviction as a politically motivated act by Duterte’s government.
Time’s magazine names Ressa the Time’s Person of the Year in
2018 for her fierce contribution and efforts in combating fake news. Ressa is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information
and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.
Born in 1963, Ressa studied molecular biology and theater as an undergraduate at Princeton University, where she graduated cum laude with a BA degree in English and certificates in theater and dance in 1986.
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Ressa also co-founded independent production company Probe in 1987, and simultaneously served as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila until 1995. She then ran CNN’s Jakarta bureau from 1995 to 200.
The journalist is also a published author. She wrote two books- ‘Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center (2003)’ and ‘From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism’ based on concerning the rise of terrorism in Southeast Asia.
Ressa founded the online news site Rappler in 2012 along with three other female founders and with a small team of 12 journalists and developers. It initially started as a Facebook page named MovePH in August 2011 evolving into a complete website on January 1, 2012.
Apart from the Nobel Prize, Ressa has also been awarded the World Association of Newspapers’s Golden Pen of Freedom Award for her work with Rappler and the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.