Volume 1, Issue No. 50
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .
Our latest as of Wednesday, June 24, 2020
~ Maria Ressa's legal battle has gone from court of law to the wider court of public opinion. Her defense tactic is one of shock and awe. Flooding her team with renowned lawyers who advocate for human rights and civil liberties indicates the kind of game plan she would pursue to reverse a judge's decision convicting her and a former colleague of cyber libel.
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MARIA RESSA'S CAUSE CÉLÈBRE
A Celebrity's 'Shock and Awe' Tactic
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"If you ever find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging." - Judith D. Collins
In that context, I'd say I was green with envy, not in a materialistic way, but in the sense of what the 56-year-old Maria Ressa is doing in furthering her legal defense.
On June 15, 2020, Manila court Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa has found Ressa, CEO of Rappler, and Reynaldo Santos Jr., a former colleague, guilty of the crime of cyber libel and face six years of jail time. They're out on bail.
I've got to give it to her - it's quite impressive engaging international legal luminaries to fight and advocate on her behalf, especially for her who sounds conflicted about her citizenship. She told BBC "I always felt that I wasn't as American as Americans and then I realised when I got back to the Philippines that I was not Filipino."
Had I been blessed with such wealthy and influential friends and a bagful of money, I would have had mounted a robust defense of my work as an investigative journalist - unafraid, free of censorship, and free to speak out.
Just a few years ago, I was a co-respondent in four libel cases in the Greater Toronto Area where claimed damages totaled more than four million Canadian dollars. The amount, guaranteed to make one bankrupt, is unprecedented for me as a journalist, for my principal and for the community newspaper I was writing for in Canada.
Two of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuits had died, with one winning a judgment but soon passed after a heart attack. The other complainant succumbed to cancer while the case hung.
In the third suit, the court ruled in favor of the petitioner and awarded damages, but so far could not collect, so it's still active. The litigant in the fourth lawsuit had defaulted by inaction and dismissed.
Then, now, and in the future, winning the lottery (assuming I wager) is the only possibility that would change my posture in battling lawsuits generated by my reporting. Investigative journalism is fraught with dangers to life, limb, and purse - that's the reality I face every time I write.
If luck had smiled on me at that time the lawsuits were lodged, I would have pursued the cases with a battery of reputable lawyers who are experts in Canadian defamation law. I mean real good lawyers who don't see you as a piggy bank.
Given that background, luck is on the side of Maria Ressa, the online journalist, felon, and celebrity. (Related update: https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/06/22/opinion/columnists/topanalysis/libeled-businessman-invited-to-invest-p100m-in-rappler/733396/). She has successfully hyped and packaged herself as a victim of political persecution by a tyrannical and authoritarian government.
She rides to world applause, a freedom fighter in Western eyes, and a hero to her Yellow supporters and purported human rights group. In reality, the accolades are undeserved for she's neither hero nor fighter. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RexihfFtXo).
If truth be told, it is Ressa's celebrity rather than her journalism that has attracted a legion of international supporters, including former US secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright.
Celebrity attracts celebrities, and so, coming to her aid, are famed lawyers Amal Clooney and Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC of London-based Doughty Street Chambers (DSC) which has offices in Manchester and Bristol, as well as at The Hague in The Netherlands.
Clooney and Gallagher, according to Rappler, will be working with barristers Can Yeginsu and Katherine O'Byrne and top US law firms Covington & Burling LLP, including Ambassador Daniel Feldman, Peter Lichtenbaum, and Kurt Wimmer at their office in Washington DC.
"Ressa and Clooney have no difficulty getting international media attention," according to an opinion piece in Southeast Asia Globe by Tom Smith, a principal lecturer in International Relations at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.
"Their global profiles were in place before (President Rodrigo) Duterte even took office in 2016," says Smith who claims to have lived and taught in the Philippines at De La Salle University in Manila.
"However, it is their profile, as prominent and influential women holding power to account, that in part makes them targets of Duterte’s pervasive political power". This statement is both evasive and untrue.
It's dizzying to have advocates and topnotch lawyers in world capitals coming to Ressa's defense. Just imagine the costs. Just imagine the psychological impact on her perceived persecutors. Just imagine how much those barristers uplift her value and persona on the world stage.
Reading through the names makes me say this really is shock and awe in journalism, much like the shock and awe** George W. Bush, the 43rd US president, had employed when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 for possessing weapons of mass destruction, which later proved false.
(**Shock and awe is a tactic based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight. - Wikipedia).
It's quite obvious to me that Ressa took inspiration from Bush (his father, George. H. W. Bush, was the 41st US president), showing off who she could sign up for to defend, she claims, the exercise of the freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Philippines.
The chorus of statements of support, notably from former presidential candidate and first lady Hillary Clinton, could also put some weight, publicity-wise, on Ressa's appeal of her conviction.
Clinton's statement on Twitter that Ressa was convicted "for doing her job" and that "attacks on the press . . . are attacks on democracy" could trigger sympathy and influence outcomes.
Amal Clooney's warning to journalists to "keep quiet, or you'll be next" is very much along the same line. And so is Time magazine's it "is the latest blow to press freedom in the country".
Rishad Patel, co-founder of Splice Media in Singapore, could not contain himself and swoons: "To Maria Ressa, our dearest friend and a friend of freedom everywhere, I just want to say that I love you, that I'm wishing you strength, and that we will hold the line. Thank you for inspiring us".
The way these things are being played up in international media suggests Ressa is catering to the court of public opinion, rather than a court of law.
"I have been targeted and attacked simply for being an independent journalist," she explains, a point consistent with her packaging. In reality, the many lawsuits against her and Rappler involved questions about ownership, payment of taxes, and violations of the Constitution.
"The decision (on her conviction) is devastating," she says at a press conference soon after the verdict was handed down last week. "I feel like we will keep fighting. It's a blow to us. I appeal to you to protect your rights. I appeal again - don't be afraid.
"If we can't do our job, then your right will be lost," she adds. Clever, huh? (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).
