Rappler has grown prominent through investigative reporting, including into mass killings during a police campaign against drugs masterminded by President Rodrigo Duterte, who has labelled the site a “fake news outlet” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-media-idUSKBN1F50HL and a tool of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Since the site was launched, Ressa has had to post bail 10 times to stay out of jail in response to a string of lawsuits accusing her of everything from defamation to tax evasion, and that have stoked international concern about media harassment in a country once seen as a standard-bearer for press freedom in Asia.
Duterte’s government said it does not target news outlets for their reporting.
But Ressa, convicted of libel https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-media-idUSKBN23M03B and sentenced in June last year over a 2012 article that linked a businessman to illegal activities, says the lawsuits are designed to intimidate media and promote self-censorship.
“We’re going through a dark time, a difficult time, but I think that we hold the line,” she said on Friday.
“We realise that what we do today is going to determine what our tomorrow is going to be.”
(Additional reporting by John Chalmers; Editing by Kay Johnson and John Stonestreet)
Some of the journalists who worked for Novaya Gazeta, the paper that Muratov, 59, helped found in 1993, were among the highest profile critics of Putin to have been killed in the last two decades.
They included reporter Politkovskaya and rights activist Estemirova, who both infuriated the Kremlin with dispatches from Chechnya. Politkovskaya was gunned down in her apartment stairwell in 2006 on Putin’s birthday. Estemirova was abducted from her home in the Chechen capital Grozny and murdered in 2009.
Novaya Gazeta was launched at a time of new-found freedom in Russia two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with a brief to investigate human rights issues, corruption and abuse of power.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader and the last Russian winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, donated some of his own money from the award to help fund equipment and salaries for the paper.
“This award elevates the significance of the press in the modern world to a greater height,” Gorbachev wrote in a congratulatory note to Muratov whom he called brave, honest and a friend.
Muratov edited the newspaper for more than two decades between 1995 and 2017 when he stepped down. He returned in 2019 at the behest of staff.
The Kremlin congratulated Muratov on his prize.
“He persistently works in accordance with his own ideals, he is devoted to them, he is talented,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “He is brave.”
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Tom BalmforthWriting by Andrew OsbornEditing by Peter Graff and John Stonestreet)
世纪观察 