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Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler. Photo: EPA
Five years ago, we got an email from Maria Ressa, a journalist in the Philippines. She’d left her “traditional media” job in late 2011, she said, to “strike out” on her own. Energised by the possibilities of technology and the rapid adoption of mobile phones in her country, she had co-founded Rappler, and it already had become the Philippines No. 1 digital-only news site.

It was more than that, though. Maria and her Rappler colleagues saw a civic mission in what they were doing. They organised events for young Filipinos to talk about education, health and politics. They offered live video coverage of political hearings. They let readers react to stories, and then took coverage cues from those responses. When a typhoon devastated part of the archipelago, Rappler deployed a satellite truck not only for covering the news, but to help communities and families to reconnect by giving them access to the internet.

‘Be silent or you’re next’: Maria Ressa posts bail, but arrest ‘puts all Filipinos at risk’

Rappler took pride in improving the transparency of the country’s government and holding the powerful to account. During the 2016 presidential election, Rappler challenged the Philippines’ Commission on Elections for the right to live-stream debates to its millions of younger users and got the Supreme Court to weigh in unanimously on its side. It also distinguished itself by taking all the candidates seriously – including a populist, tough-guy mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, who won a plurality of the vote in a crowded field despite, or perhaps because of, a reputation for letting the police freely use violence to curb crime. He even admitted that he had personally killed people he believed were drug dealers.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Photo: EPA

Those killings introduced a phrase into the popular lexicon in the Philippines: “Extrajudicial”, or beyond the law. For headline writers, EJKs – extrajudicial killings – soon became commonplace. Duterte encouraged law enforcement to get rid of drug dealers by any means necessary, and soon journalists were tallying EJKs across the country. By Rappler’s count using the police’s own data, at least 5,000 Filipinos were killed without due process over two years. Various human rights groups peg the number at 20,000.

The government and Duterte’s many loyalists insist that number is exaggerated, a distinction without much moral value, and that many of the deaths occurred in legitimate police actions. But the tide of blood drew the attention of Maria and other journalists, and soon Rappler was publishing carefully documented, excruciatingly painful accounts of what can only be described as state-sanctioned police murders.

Managing editor Glenda Gloria and chief executive Maria Ressa in the Rappler newsroom. Photo: Cherian George

Perhaps not surprisingly, a state that practises extrajudicial killing soon went beyond the law in its efforts to curb Duterte’s critics. Since Duterte’s election, Rappler and Maria have been subjected to a crescendo of legal actions predicated on distorted interpretations of the country’s own laws. These actions not only threaten the free and independent press in the Philippines, a constitutional democracy, but they should discourage investors, foreign and domestic, and alarm the country’s citizens.

Philippine news website Rappler’s licence revoked after Rodrigo Duterte threat to expose its ‘American ownership’

When Maria wrote to us five years ago, she wanted us to invest in Rappler. We run a venture-capital firm, but hail from media, having collectively spent decades at The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Thomson Reuters and working to foster independent journalism around the world. We carefully reviewed the Philippine constitution, which like laws in many countries places restrictions on direct foreign ownership of media. We consulted the country’s best lawyers, got assent from regulators, and followed precisely the model that foreign investors in other constitutionally restricted sectors like telecommunications have taken for years. We ended up with Philippine Depository Receipts, not shares, giving us economic benefits of ownership without any direct ownership or management of Rappler.

The mother of an alleged drug dealer mourns her son, killed by unidentified assailants, in Manila. Photo: AFP

The government’s first assault on Rappler was to suggest it had violated the constitution by taking foreign capital. Prosecutors had found a mistake in a document another foreign investor had signed, and regulators ordered Rappler closed. A court overruled the regulator, saying the punishment was absurdly draconian.

Then the government launched a tax-evasion case against Rappler, saying it should have paid taxes on the sale of instruments to foreign investors. The case is pending, but ridiculous on its face. If true, some of the country’s biggest telecom and television companies would face the same charges for selling their own Philippine Depository Receipts to foreign investors.

Malaysiakini, Rappler: attacked just when they are needed most

The latest charge, which led this week to Maria Ressa’s arrest on Wednesday in Manila, is the most far-fetched yet. A Filipino businessman claims he was libelled by Rappler in 2012 and got the country’s Justice Department to pursue a criminal complaint – even though the law they are attempting to apply wasn’t passed until four months afterwards. (Maria was released on Thursday on bail.)

Duterte says he has nothing to do with these cases and doesn’t know the businessman behind the “cyber-libel” charge. But his blithe acceptance of extrajudicial violence now extends to his government’s repeated extrajudicial efforts to combat his journalistic critics.

The Philippines’ commitment to constitutional democracy and a law-based system of government are being challenged and those who believe in it – citizens, politicians, judges, investors and business leaders – should stand alongside Maria Ressa and Rappler.

Marcus Brauchli, Sasa Vucinic and Stuart Karle are partners at North Base Media, an investment firm focused on media and technology

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