Rappler CEO Maria Ressa may have suckered an entire Western news media industry into spreading her lies, but not Stephen Sackur, renowned hard-hitting investigative journalist and host of the BBC’s show Hard Talk. Cornering Ressa for such a talk, Sackur asks all the hard questions of Ressa; how, despite all her claims that a climate of “fear” blankets Philippine society and that dissenting voices such as hers (of course) are being threatened, Duterte continues to command public approval most world leaders could dream of.
This leads Sackur to ask pointedly…
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Do Filipinos really care about Maria Ressa or Rappler?
Listen to Maria Ressa stammer out a lame and, quite frankly, bullshit response to Sackur’s hard questions here or watch her here…
Evidently not convinced, Sackur suggests that Ressa really needs to get real. She lives in a secure gated residential enclave that leaves her lots of latitude and headspace to worry about imagined — clearly self-serving — issues that, in actual fact, are far from the pressing more “street level” concerns of ordinary Filipinos.
Drawing from Ressa’s assertions that Filipinos, specifically “journalists” are living in dangerous times, Sackur asks if she fears for the safety of her staff at Rappler. Ressa starts off answering in a roundabout way with her favourite analogy of a “Damocles sword” hanging over people’s heads (she uses this at least three or four times over the course of the interview). Nonetheless, she simply fails to answer the question flat out. Indeed, she fails to answer that and most of Sackur’s hard questions for that matter. Listen carefully to Ressa’s waffling answers and, clearly, they are all non-answers.
As for the “international support” Ressa likes to brag about, Sackur points out that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte enjoys the “friendship” of US President Donald Trump, has developed close relations with China, and has all but “neutralised” the influence of the International Criminal Court on the Philippines’ domestic affairs. Sackur then asks Ressa: Has the international community let you down?
Sackur’s question was about international support for her. Unfortunately, Ressa again went off-topic and rambled on about how Duterte did this and did that. By then, Ressa was clearly running out of steam to power her bullshit machine. She was increasingly becoming incoherent and halting in her manner responding to the question.
Luckily Sackur brings her back to the point he was making; that notwithstanding whatever Ressa says, both Trump and Duterte had been exceedingly successful sidelining the media and using social media to influence public sentiment to their political ends. As expected, Ressa launches into that other favourite spiel of hers — that technology is to blame for all that. She singles out Facebook, just short of citing how it was “weaponized” against people like her. Fortunately, just before she got to that, Sackur begged to interrupt and pointed out that Ressa was essentially saying that democracy does not work. “If you are talking about manipulated public opinion,” Sackur asks, then she is, he continues, “de-legitimising” the people’s right to choose their government; that if, as she asserts, their opinions are “fake”, then democracy does not work.
Ressa agreed and confirmed that she is, indeed, asserting that “democracy is dead” in the Philippines. What “killed it” she insists are social media platforms that have become “behavioural modification systems”. Sackur interrupts again. “This is dangerous territory,” he points out. Ressa, Sackur observed, is suggesting Duterte does not have a mandate. But the fact is, Sackur stresses “this man [Duterte] has an extraordinary mandate”. Ressa stands her ground and claims that this mandate is being propped up by “lies lies lies” spread on social media. Evidently, Sackur wasn’t convinced. Maria Ressa simply missed just about every single one of the points in his questions.
Sackur moves on and raises the reality that Duterte rose to power on the back of a mass disillusionment over the failed promises of the “people power” narrative and the “human rights” rhetoric that underlies it. He points out that the political landscape that arose following the 1986 “people power” revolution was and continues to be virtually identical to that surrounding the “regime” it supposedly toppled. Amazingly, Ressa agreed and, in a pained manner, had to agree that the “revolution” was “a failure”. Unfortunately Ressa then reverts back to blaming social media for enabling, supposedly, a reversion back to “fascism” as the “failure of liberal democracy” became evident (she claims).
Sackur ends the show shortly after all that. Probably just as well considering Ressa was, quite simply, becoming just a waste of his time and that of his listeners.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
A transcript would be nice…
Yes true…we the common people shame on this Maria ressa fake news creator and spreading lies and conspiracy theories.
It is very interesting interview for “HardTalk” Host, Stephen Sackur…Maria Reesa cannot hide the truth, that she is one of the “propaganda machine operatives” of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis…
The 1986 “EDSA revolution”, was in truth a U.S./C.I.A and U.S. Department of State coup d’ etat, against the late Pres. Marcos Sr….The issue then was : the renewal of the 99 years lease of the U.S. Bases in the Philippines. Pres. Marcos Sr. refused to renew the lease of the U.S. Bases… China , the Soviet Union, and North Korea , were still threats to the U.S. military presence in theSouth East Asia region. There was no way to protect the “trade routes” of U.S. shipping lanes.
So, they removed Pres. Marcos by coup d’ etat, with the help of the two opportunists, in his inner circle : Juan Ponce Enrile, who was the Secretary of Defense, and Brig. Gen. Fidel Ramos, who was the Chief of the Philippine Constabulary. Cory Aquino lost the snap election to Pres. Marcos Sr.; but they claim the election was rigged by the COMELEC. Like what COMELEC , Andres Bautista, did to Leni Robredo, in exchange of multiple bank accounts , supplied by YellowTard oligarchs…
They tricked Pres. Marcos, of a helicopter transport that, had to take him to his Province of Ilocos Norte…instead, they took him to Guam and to Hawaii, under the command of U.S. Gen. Allen. He was exiled to Hawaii, U.S.A.
The U.S. installed their “puppet President Cory Aquino”, claiming she won the snap election. U.S. Secretary of State, Shultz and the U.S./C.I.A. were her supporters, along with the U.S. Bases in the Philippines.
The rest was history.
The Lopezes, ABS CBN, who were allied to Cory Aquino, became the “political propaganda machine” of Cory Aquino; and the Aquino Cojuangco political axis.
Maria Reesa and the YellowTard propaganda operatives, were then unleashed to “dumb down ” the Filipinos. Extolling , Benigno Aquino as a martyr; and worshipping, Cory Aquino as a saint…They built themselves , statues; renamed the Manila International Airport , as Ninoy Aquino International Airport. They built the EDSA shrine; and declared , EDSA holiday every year.
At the beginning of the social media; the Aquino Cojuangco political axis , decided to order, Maria Reesa, to establish, the Rappler.com. It is to “neutralize ” , Filipino bloggers, and Filipino websites, that were against their political agendas.
Unfortunately, the social media, and the internet are still “uncharted territories”, you cannot control the hyperspace….so Filipino internet bloggers were free, to express their personal opinions, and bring out the “cans of worms” of the Aquino era…the Filipino bloggers and social media people cannot be controlled… Maria Reesa and her fellow YellowTard propagandists, may have been frustrated by this situation.
This is the true “Peoples’ Power”, liberating the minds and mindsets of “dumb downed ” Filipinos by the Filipino social media people…
The ” Filipino illustrados” of our times, ignited the downfall of the Aquino era…history repeated itself in the Philippines, in our era, in our times . The heroes are the ordinary social media people and the ubiquitous bloggers !
Human Rights data are feed by Ressa. So they will have a wrong data.
Ressa is living in her own world. She wants to paint the Philippines as a failed democracy due to social media.
Maria Reesa and her fellow YellowTard propagandists, lost the “social media war”…The common social media people and the triumphant bloggers, are the “clear winners”. As the “cans of worms” of the Aquino era, in the form of massive corruptions; despicable incompetence; thievery, and greed of their fellow oligarchs are brought out in the open…their YellowTard candidates of “otso diretso” went directly into the “inodoro” in the 2016 election.
Lugaw Robredo, the fake Vice President is still in office. Robredo is their hope of regaining their power back. The COMELEC crook, Andres Bautista, is a TNT in America, with his multiple bank accounts given by the YellowTard oligarchs.
Yet, Maria Reesa cannot convince herself, she already lost the propaganda war. She is there spreading her lies about the Philippines …this Bitch is an American citizen spreading disinformation and lies about our country !
Seems like Maria Ressa is on a mission to get as much international interview and presence as possible to spill out all the falsehood propaganda and fake news agenda as one of her last ditch effort to tarnish the reputation of Duterte, since se was already found guilty of cyberlibel and tagged officially as a criminal (shame on her, hahaha). Because of this, she is a woman (or maybe a man, ehem… rumors) scorned by the President (who she always accuse as having a hand on her cases, but could not find any substantial proof), made it her mission to paint this government in the baddest light globally as much as possible as part of her revenge.
And yet, it seems slowly backfiring at her. The cracks are in place, as Shakur has found out from her answers. Slowly, and surely, will take time, until she is found out to be a sham and fraud of the journalism world.
Karma is real, Maria. Your clock is ticking…
Lol. Maria Ressa was again the topic of scorn in the ABS-CBN Franchise Hearings in the Congress. It appears that during her stint in ABS-CBN she had the power to regularize some reporters who had been asking to be regularized already, but she refused. And now, ABS-CBN is in hot water for her actions. This woman has a clear track record of violating other people’s rights and yet she screams to high heavens when she gets what she deserves. What a psychopath.
Having watched the programme on the BBC website, my first reaction was that Sackur gave Ressa a major free pass. As the immediate case related to libel, he never raised the contents of the article complained about, which appears to a layman to be blatantly defamatory ,and why her legal team produced no evidence in court in defence of it.
Darth M had left the chat on this one. ?
#RIPDilawans
Hardtalk is a show designed to antagonize/vilify whomever is the guest. thats their shtick to get clicks and views. If you watch with a preconceived opinion, you will have it confirmed and be happy (like benigno). more objective viewers see it for the entertainment purpose and move on after a few laughs.
I am intrigued by why you think that a BBC production worries too much about ‘clicks and views’.
I saw the interview and Ressa answered all the questions of Sackur. No lies, no disingenuous reply and no deceptive response to all the direct to the point no nonsense inquiry from Sackur. The way she rebutted the inquisitive questions is a sight to behold.
In fairness, Sackur did not give Ressa softball questions. He really took it to her and put her in a defensive spot to see how she will fare in defending herself. I wonder if the likes of Duterte and co. can withstand such inquisition without losing composure.
Truly, Maria Ressa is one of a kind!
You really loved Maria Ressa that much? That’s simping right there.