Maria Ressa - Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth | The Daily Show (Video + Transcript)
Maria Ressa - Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth | The Daily Show (Video + Transcript)
Sep 19 2025, 2:55 PM
The Daily Show's Maria Ressa - Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth YouTube video description Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and author of the book “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” sits down with Jon Stewart for a conversation about Trump’s authoritarian attacks on free speech in the wake of Disney taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air in fealty to the president and his hand-picked FCC Chair. Ressa, who in 2020 was jailed in the Philippines for her journalism criticizing the country’s former president Rodrigo Duterte, warns about the similarities between the dictatorship she lived under and the Trump administration.
Video interview transcript of Maria Ressa - Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth | The Daily Show Jon Stewart: Thank you for being available on short notice. Generally, I have a Rolodex of all Nobel Prize winners. [laughter] And I had to get to R. So that's how hard it is. Your Nobel Peace Prize-- is there any chance you would give it to our guy and save us all? [laughter]
Maria Ressa: I knew you were going to ask.
Stewart: How are you doing as you're watching... not really the market working, but the government interceding in putting pressure on various things? How much is this moment resonating with you, with your experiences? For those who don't know, you were imprisoned in the Philippines for writing truth.
Ressa: I have eleven arrest warrants-- or had eleven arrest warrants in a little over a year.
Stewart: Right. But only four were coke. [laughter] Which is-- I want to make sure people who know that. But it's the same type of thing.
Ressa: You know, I got to say, since 2016, I've been saying over and over and over-- and I guess I'm just going to say: I told you so.
Stewart: You've said it to me many times. And I've always said, [mimicking muttering] "we're resilient in our civic institutions."
Ressa: And he really has.
Stewart: I really have said that to her.
Ressa: Yeah. He said, "no, it's not going to happen here."
Stewart: Right.
Ressa: Yeah. Hello.
Stewart: Oops. What was it about how you were watching it-- are you at least surprised by the speed of it and the breadth of it?
Ressa: When we talked in March, I was saying, this is going much faster than-- in the Philippines, when Rodrigo Duterte took office, he-- so the Philippines has a Constitution patterned after the United States, three co-equal branches of government. And he collapsed our institutions within six months.
Stewart: Do you think it's weird it's taken Trump eight? [laughter]
Ressa: Your-- I think he did it in the first 100 days.
Stewart: No, he did. Yeah.
Ressa: Yeah. Because if you think about it, 143 executive orders-- and then if you look at the way that shaped the reality of everybody, right? I think that was why we spoke in March. Because I was like, this is happening if you do not reclaim your rights. If you don't stand up, it's going to be significantly harder to claw them back.
Stewart: Let me ask you about-- you know, you've got three branches of government. Were they compliant? I think in this moment, they're compliant here, right? It hasn't been at their objection. It's been at their inaction.
Ressa: So it's identical to what--
Stewart: Identical.
Ressa: --identical to what happened in the Philippines.
Stewart: Interesting.
Ressa: So I feel like it's both deja vu and PTSD. I mean, you know, you have an executive, very powerful-- which, by the way, our first president, Marcos, declared martial law by executive order. That was in the '70s. Anyway, you have an executive. [holds up hand] The legislature is the one that's supposed to hold him in check in real time. [holds up second hand] And the judiciary maintains the rule of law, right? Well, what happened in the Philippines--
Stewart: I want you to have a third hand to show me this. I want to see how this model actually works. [laughter]
Ressa: Well, so what happened, this collapsed, which was shocking. It was shocking to watch. But the very first line of defense you had were the Republicans. And then when that collapsed, that meant in real time-- I mean, are you going to get USAID workers back? All of those things that happened that were implemented in the first--
Stewart: Right, appropriations and money that was done.
Ressa: All of that has happened. And that now is normal. And you can-- whether it's in the physical world or in the virtual world-- and then the judiciary, what's-- I watch the same thing happen here that happened to us, which is, the individual judges and justices become targeted. And holding up rule of law becomes that much more-- that much harder. But here's your other thing. And this is-- Silicon Valley is American after all, right? How can you have rule of law if you don't have facts?
Stewart: What-- what is that last word? [laughter] We were told-- so here's what's been interesting. [APPLAUSE] We've been told that any attempt to check facts was a curb on free speech, that any policing on public platforms of anything that occurred-- and by the way, some of it was not right. Some of it was unjust. Some of it was censorious. But it didn't mean-- and we were told that the principle here-- they've said it. "We're going to be the most free speech. We're going to be the most open." And they've just redefined what speech means. What free speech means is free speech is speech that supports the president. And that's the new definition.
Ressa: Are you talking about the tech CEOs or the president's men and women?
Stewart: Well, but are they different? I mean, when you have that kind of meshing, right? It was-- he threatened Mark Zuckerberg with jail because of "Zuckerbucks," which were bipartisan. They went out. It wasn't even electioneering. Mark Zuckerberg went, [whispering] "did you just say jail?" [speaking] Which apparently is the only thing that's worse than being in the Metaverse. But-- [laughter] --I'm not sure which is worse, actually. But he flips over. Now we've got tech. I mean, Elon Musk spent over $100 million to get this man elected. But that's not seen as interference.
Ressa: Corruption.
Stewart: They have joined together. And they're consolidating their power.
Ressa: Yes.
Stewart: Is that a similar-- you know, in Philippines, it's a little different. Basically, social media in Philippines was more like-- it was Facebook.
Ressa: No. I mean, primarily Facebook. But I would say for six years-- these are stats. For six years in a row until 2021, Filipinos spent the most time online and on social media globally. And--
Stewart: Out of anybody?
Ressa: Out of anybody globally. And so what the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower said-- you guys remember that 2018, right?
Stewart: I do, indeed.
Ressa: So what he said was that they tested tactics of mass manipulation in our country. And if they worked in our country, they ported it to yours.
Stewart: Wait. This is like the McRib? They took a-- [laughter] they did a test sandwich and ran it in, like, some place in Columbus and were like, "these people love this shit"? [laughter]
Ressa: And we kept telling you this was happening. In 2016, I said this in Silicon Valley. I said, what is happening to us is coming for you-- 2016, right. And nothing was done. And if anything, all those safeguards that were tried-- that they tried to put in place have been ripped off in time for the 2024 elections.
Stewart: But it hadn't to that point-- in my mind, they had weaponized that brain hack for profit. They hadn't yet weaponized that brain hack for political consolidation and power. That's what feels different.
Ressa: No. What-- you-- what happened in the Philippines is just happening to you.
Stewart: Yes. No, I meant in our country it felt like they weaponized the algorithm for profit. Now they're weaponizing it for both profit and political consolidation.
Ressa: They went hand in hand for most of the rest of the world. I mean, you're not exceptional in this sense. There is a dictator's playbook. [laughter] Right?
Stewart: You think we fell for it? [laughter] We're just a run of the mill country that falls for this? It really is a playbook. They studied Hungary. They studied soft autocracy. They studied hard autocracy. They used the same man. When I watch them and they go on and they go, we fired a missile at a Venezuelan drug boat, I think about Duterte and I think about--
Ressa: That's extrajudicial killings in our country. That's what we called it, right?
Stewart: And that's how we consolidated through the fear on a mass--
Ressa: Fear, anger, hate. Fear, anger, hate. So it's like-- we'll say this one more time because I feel like, you know, Sisyphus and Cassandra combined. We kept saying this.
Stewart: Hold on. That is a great idea for a movie. Hold on. [writes on notepad] [laughter]
Ressa: By design, these platforms spread lies. Social media spreads lies, social media spreads lies. By a 2018 MIT study, at least six times faster. So by design, lies spread faster. That's the incentive. And then in 2017, we saw, in our country, in the Philippines, that if you lace it with fear, anger, and hate, it can go viral. That's the incentive structure. So that was used to attack us. Now, imagine if you're pumped full of-- in the Nobel lecture, I called it "toxic sludge." Online violence is real-world violence. So they hacked our biology. Thinking fast, thinking slow-- we're thinking-fast people. Our emotions, they change the way we feel--
Stewart: Reptilian.
Ressa: --to change the way we look at the world, to change the way we act, to change the way we vote. And as of March this year, V-Dem in Sweden said that 72% of the world is now under authoritarian rule, that we are electing illiberal leaders democratically [holds up smartphone] because of insidious manipulation. So they go hand in hand, money and power.
Stewart: And now, with the horrific events in Utah, everybody has the Zapruder film of it in their pocket.
Ressa: And it wasn't taken down on social media.
Stewart: No. Horrifying. And it's-- you know what I liken it to, to some extent? Because this type of manipulation, it will always exi-- you know, I liken it to this. It's like a chef. A chef has a couple of tricks. You come into a restaurant. What's a chef going to do? He's going to be like, you know what? I want these people to come back. I'm going to throw in a little extra butter. I'm going to add a little bit of sugar to the marinara. But it's still within the realm of-- but then you look at ultra-processed food. And you realize, that's different. That's guys in lab coats trying to figure out how to bypass whatever biological signals you give that cause you to stop eating, to bypass that to make you sick. And it's so interesting because you watch MAHA talk about, we have to get rid of ultra-processed foods. It's killing us. It's making us fat. And then Big Pharma comes in, and they give us GLPs. And it's a big cycle. But nobody talks about ultra-processed speech. And that's the difference. The algorithm is ultra-processed. It's not about adding a little bit of humor or a little bit of fear or a little bit of outrage. It's about designing a machine.
Ressa: Yes, absolutely.
Stewart: Me and Maria won the Nobel Prize. I won it too! [cheering] Oh my god. I can't-- I can't believe we're both Nobel Prize winners. Maria, I want to talk about-- right now, in this country, so many people are living on eggshells on the whims of one man. Whether you're a researcher in a university, or a day laborer outside of a Home Depot, or someone who shitposts on Twitter, or any-- there are so many people in so many spheres-- or whether you're a small business that doesn't understand the diabolical whims of tariffs and how they're being laid out just willy-nilly. What do you do with that? I know that must have been what it's like in the Philippines. An authoritarian regime, civic institutions and the way that they function, they can be abysmal, but they provide a certain stability. I've never seen this country, where so many are living on eggshells.
Ressa: And part of that is precisely because there hasn't been enough-- I mean, we were talking about this. There hasn't been-- it feels like Americans are like deer in headlights, you know?
Stewart: Yeah! I feel that way.
Ressa: But if you don't move and protect the rights you have, you lose them. And it's so much harder to reclaim them. It will have--
Stewart: But they keep saying-- our leaders, the ones that we elected to keep an eye on this, keep going on TV and going, you've got to speak up. And you're like, uh, here? Like, right now? Out the window? Like, for what? Like, there is no real sense of process or scaffolding that could create a ladder out of this hole.
Ressa: But this is--
Stewart: You're about to choke me, aren't you? [laughter]
Ressa: No, no, no! No, no! You know-- so let me just say what this moment is. I've been struggling. And I just came from Australia. And--
Stewart: You're a very optimistic person. I know that.
Ressa: So this--
Stewart: For everything you've been through--
Ressa: There were two ways I was going to describe this moment. And it does start with the [holds up smartphone] manipulation and the corruption of our public information ecosystem, right? So I was saying, is this an information apocalypse, or is it an information Armageddon?
Stewart: Okay. Um, those are our-- so-- you are a very optimistic person. [laughter]
Ressa: And that--
Stewart: And our choice is... apocalypse or Armageddon. [laughter]
Ressa: But that's why-- because I'm optimistic, I chose Armageddon.
Stewart: Got-- yep. [laughter]
Ressa: - Right?
Stewart: Yep.
Ressa: Because-- no, think about it. Think about it. Part of it is-- apocalypse is done. It's the end of the world.
Stewart: Apocalypse is the end.
Ressa: But Armageddon is the battle. This is the battle. Right. [applause]
Stewart: Peaceful, peaceful. [applause]
Ressa: Peaceful! [applause]
Stewart: And by the way-- so without this going in that direction then, I want to talk about-- this was-- when was Duterte-- when did he take power?
Ressa: 2016.
Stewart: He's gone.
Ressa: Ohhhh, yeah! [laughter and applause]
Stewart: Okay. So-- so this isn't-- it didn't last forever. And your work, your lone voice crying out from the apartment that they forced you to be in and the imprisonment that they were looking for, it-- it's over. He's not there anymore.
Ressa: So it wasn't-- I wasn't jailed for very long. I'm very lucky in this, right? But let me put it this way. Our lawyers told us I was crazy. And I had a company. And by the way, nothing puts a news organization, coheres, makes it feel so good to be a journalist, than a news organization that is mission driven. When we came under attack, Rappler came together in ways we could never have done.
Stewart: Preach that to the heavens. That is so true and so missing.
Ressa: So what we saw was that if you stand up, if you just keep going-- because our lawyers told us I was crazy, right? Do you negotiate with President Duterte, or not? How can you negotiate when you can't give him what he wants? So we didn't--
Stewart: Which is fealty.
Ressa: --i.e., you can't do your job.
Stewart: Right.
Ressa: And then here's what happened. We just kept doing our jobs. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other, a year where I had eleven arrest warrants and then was convicted. And I still have-- I have to ask for permission to travel from the Philippine Supreme Court until today. But in March this year, Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on alleged crimes against humanity. And he is now in jail in the Hague, waiting for his trial.
Stewart: Wow. [applause] Wow. And listen. And that doesn't mean it's over. And I understand that in the Philippines, his daughter-- and, certainly, the Philippines has a long tradition of family dynasties. And that still exists there. And there's still, I'm sure, choppy waters ahead for Maria Ressa.
Ressa: Well, let's say we move from hell to purgatory, right? [laughter] It's not bad. It's not bad. You got to take--
Stewart: The next book has got to be "From Apocalypse to Armageddon: A Story of Optimism," Maria Ressa. [laughter] Maria, I can't tell you enough what a salve for the soul you always are whenever I get a chance to talk to you, whenever I get to see you. Thank you so much for coming by in this unbelievably strange deer-in-headlight time. And I so appreciate you coming on.
Ressa: No, thanks for having me. It's such a pleasure. [applause]
Kozlik's regular member account. 🍀🐐
The Daily Show's Maria Ressa - Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth YouTube video description Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and author of the book “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” sits down with Jon Stewart for a conversation about Trump’s authoritarian attacks on free speech in the wake of Disney taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air in fealty to the president and his hand-picked FCC Chair. Ressa, who in 2020 was jailed in the Philippines for her journalism criticizing the country’s former president Rodrigo Duterte, warns about the similarities between the dictatorship she lived under and the Trump administration.
Video interview transcript of Maria Ressa - Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth | The Daily Show Jon Stewart: Thank you for being available on short notice. Generally, I have a Rolodex of all Nobel Prize winners. [laughter] And I had to get to R. So that's how hard it is. Your Nobel Peace Prize-- is there any chance you would give it to our guy and save us all? [laughter]
Maria Ressa: I knew you were going to ask.
Stewart: How are you doing as you're watching... not really the market working, but the government interceding in putting pressure on various things? How much is this moment resonating with you, with your experiences? For those who don't know, you were imprisoned in the Philippines for writing truth.
Ressa: I have eleven arrest warrants-- or had eleven arrest warrants in a little over a year.
Stewart: Right. But only four were coke. [laughter] Which is-- I want to make sure people who know that. But it's the same type of thing.
Ressa: You know, I got to say, since 2016, I've been saying over and over and over-- and I guess I'm just going to say: I told you so.
Stewart: You've said it to me many times. And I've always said, [mimicking muttering] "we're resilient in our civic institutions."
Ressa: And he really has.
Stewart: I really have said that to her.
Ressa: Yeah. He said, "no, it's not going to happen here."
Stewart: Right.
Ressa: Yeah. Hello.
Stewart: Oops. What was it about how you were watching it-- are you at least surprised by the speed of it and the breadth of it?
Ressa: When we talked in March, I was saying, this is going much faster than-- in the Philippines, when Rodrigo Duterte took office, he-- so the Philippines has a Constitution patterned after the United States, three co-equal branches of government. And he collapsed our institutions within six months.
Stewart: Do you think it's weird it's taken Trump eight? [laughter]
Ressa: Your-- I think he did it in the first 100 days.
Stewart: No, he did. Yeah.
Ressa: Yeah. Because if you think about it, 143 executive orders-- and then if you look at the way that shaped the reality of everybody, right? I think that was why we spoke in March. Because I was like, this is happening if you do not reclaim your rights. If you don't stand up, it's going to be significantly harder to claw them back.
Stewart: Let me ask you about-- you know, you've got three branches of government. Were they compliant? I think in this moment, they're compliant here, right? It hasn't been at their objection. It's been at their inaction.
Ressa: So it's identical to what--
Stewart: Identical.
Ressa: --identical to what happened in the Philippines.
Stewart: Interesting.
Ressa: So I feel like it's both deja vu and PTSD. I mean, you know, you have an executive, very powerful-- which, by the way, our first president, Marcos, declared martial law by executive order. That was in the '70s. Anyway, you have an executive. [holds up hand] The legislature is the one that's supposed to hold him in check in real time. [holds up second hand] And the judiciary maintains the rule of law, right? Well, what happened in the Philippines--
Stewart: I want you to have a third hand to show me this. I want to see how this model actually works. [laughter]
Ressa: Well, so what happened, this collapsed, which was shocking. It was shocking to watch. But the very first line of defense you had were the Republicans. And then when that collapsed, that meant in real time-- I mean, are you going to get USAID workers back? All of those things that happened that were implemented in the first--
Stewart: Right, appropriations and money that was done.
Ressa: All of that has happened. And that now is normal. And you can-- whether it's in the physical world or in the virtual world-- and then the judiciary, what's-- I watch the same thing happen here that happened to us, which is, the individual judges and justices become targeted. And holding up rule of law becomes that much more-- that much harder. But here's your other thing. And this is-- Silicon Valley is American after all, right? How can you have rule of law if you don't have facts?
Stewart: What-- what is that last word? [laughter] We were told-- so here's what's been interesting. [APPLAUSE] We've been told that any attempt to check facts was a curb on free speech, that any policing on public platforms of anything that occurred-- and by the way, some of it was not right. Some of it was unjust. Some of it was censorious. But it didn't mean-- and we were told that the principle here-- they've said it. "We're going to be the most free speech. We're going to be the most open." And they've just redefined what speech means. What free speech means is free speech is speech that supports the president. And that's the new definition.
Ressa: Are you talking about the tech CEOs or the president's men and women?
Stewart: Well, but are they different? I mean, when you have that kind of meshing, right? It was-- he threatened Mark Zuckerberg with jail because of "Zuckerbucks," which were bipartisan. They went out. It wasn't even electioneering. Mark Zuckerberg went, [whispering] "did you just say jail?" [speaking] Which apparently is the only thing that's worse than being in the Metaverse. But-- [laughter] --I'm not sure which is worse, actually. But he flips over. Now we've got tech. I mean, Elon Musk spent over $100 million to get this man elected. But that's not seen as interference.
Ressa: Corruption.
Stewart: They have joined together. And they're consolidating their power.
Ressa: Yes.
Stewart: Is that a similar-- you know, in Philippines, it's a little different. Basically, social media in Philippines was more like-- it was Facebook.
Ressa: No. I mean, primarily Facebook. But I would say for six years-- these are stats. For six years in a row until 2021, Filipinos spent the most time online and on social media globally. And--
Stewart: Out of anybody?
Ressa: Out of anybody globally. And so what the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower said-- you guys remember that 2018, right?
Stewart: I do, indeed.
Ressa: So what he said was that they tested tactics of mass manipulation in our country. And if they worked in our country, they ported it to yours.
Stewart: Wait. This is like the McRib? They took a-- [laughter] they did a test sandwich and ran it in, like, some place in Columbus and were like, "these people love this shit"? [laughter]
Ressa: And we kept telling you this was happening. In 2016, I said this in Silicon Valley. I said, what is happening to us is coming for you-- 2016, right. And nothing was done. And if anything, all those safeguards that were tried-- that they tried to put in place have been ripped off in time for the 2024 elections.
Stewart: But it hadn't to that point-- in my mind, they had weaponized that brain hack for profit. They hadn't yet weaponized that brain hack for political consolidation and power. That's what feels different.
Ressa: No. What-- you-- what happened in the Philippines is just happening to you.
Stewart: Yes. No, I meant in our country it felt like they weaponized the algorithm for profit. Now they're weaponizing it for both profit and political consolidation.
Ressa: They went hand in hand for most of the rest of the world. I mean, you're not exceptional in this sense. There is a dictator's playbook. [laughter] Right?
Stewart: You think we fell for it? [laughter] We're just a run of the mill country that falls for this? It really is a playbook. They studied Hungary. They studied soft autocracy. They studied hard autocracy. They used the same man. When I watch them and they go on and they go, we fired a missile at a Venezuelan drug boat, I think about Duterte and I think about--
Ressa: That's extrajudicial killings in our country. That's what we called it, right?
Stewart: And that's how we consolidated through the fear on a mass--
Ressa: Fear, anger, hate. Fear, anger, hate. So it's like-- we'll say this one more time because I feel like, you know, Sisyphus and Cassandra combined. We kept saying this.
Stewart: Hold on. That is a great idea for a movie. Hold on. [writes on notepad] [laughter]
Ressa: By design, these platforms spread lies. Social media spreads lies, social media spreads lies. By a 2018 MIT study, at least six times faster. So by design, lies spread faster. That's the incentive. And then in 2017, we saw, in our country, in the Philippines, that if you lace it with fear, anger, and hate, it can go viral. That's the incentive structure. So that was used to attack us. Now, imagine if you're pumped full of-- in the Nobel lecture, I called it "toxic sludge." Online violence is real-world violence. So they hacked our biology. Thinking fast, thinking slow-- we're thinking-fast people. Our emotions, they change the way we feel--
Stewart: Reptilian.
Ressa: --to change the way we look at the world, to change the way we act, to change the way we vote. And as of March this year, V-Dem in Sweden said that 72% of the world is now under authoritarian rule, that we are electing illiberal leaders democratically [holds up smartphone] because of insidious manipulation. So they go hand in hand, money and power.
Stewart: And now, with the horrific events in Utah, everybody has the Zapruder film of it in their pocket.
Ressa: And it wasn't taken down on social media.
Stewart: No. Horrifying. And it's-- you know what I liken it to, to some extent? Because this type of manipulation, it will always exi-- you know, I liken it to this. It's like a chef. A chef has a couple of tricks. You come into a restaurant. What's a chef going to do? He's going to be like, you know what? I want these people to come back. I'm going to throw in a little extra butter. I'm going to add a little bit of sugar to the marinara. But it's still within the realm of-- but then you look at ultra-processed food. And you realize, that's different. That's guys in lab coats trying to figure out how to bypass whatever biological signals you give that cause you to stop eating, to bypass that to make you sick. And it's so interesting because you watch MAHA talk about, we have to get rid of ultra-processed foods. It's killing us. It's making us fat. And then Big Pharma comes in, and they give us GLPs. And it's a big cycle. But nobody talks about ultra-processed speech. And that's the difference. The algorithm is ultra-processed. It's not about adding a little bit of humor or a little bit of fear or a little bit of outrage. It's about designing a machine.
Ressa: Yes, absolutely.
Stewart: Me and Maria won the Nobel Prize. I won it too! [cheering] Oh my god. I can't-- I can't believe we're both Nobel Prize winners. Maria, I want to talk about-- right now, in this country, so many people are living on eggshells on the whims of one man. Whether you're a researcher in a university, or a day laborer outside of a Home Depot, or someone who shitposts on Twitter, or any-- there are so many people in so many spheres-- or whether you're a small business that doesn't understand the diabolical whims of tariffs and how they're being laid out just willy-nilly. What do you do with that? I know that must have been what it's like in the Philippines. An authoritarian regime, civic institutions and the way that they function, they can be abysmal, but they provide a certain stability. I've never seen this country, where so many are living on eggshells.
Ressa: And part of that is precisely because there hasn't been enough-- I mean, we were talking about this. There hasn't been-- it feels like Americans are like deer in headlights, you know?
Stewart: Yeah! I feel that way.
Ressa: But if you don't move and protect the rights you have, you lose them. And it's so much harder to reclaim them. It will have--
Stewart: But they keep saying-- our leaders, the ones that we elected to keep an eye on this, keep going on TV and going, you've got to speak up. And you're like, uh, here? Like, right now? Out the window? Like, for what? Like, there is no real sense of process or scaffolding that could create a ladder out of this hole.
Ressa: But this is--
Stewart: You're about to choke me, aren't you? [laughter]
Ressa: No, no, no! No, no! You know-- so let me just say what this moment is. I've been struggling. And I just came from Australia. And--
Stewart: You're a very optimistic person. I know that.
Ressa: So this--
Stewart: For everything you've been through--
Ressa: There were two ways I was going to describe this moment. And it does start with the [holds up smartphone] manipulation and the corruption of our public information ecosystem, right? So I was saying, is this an information apocalypse, or is it an information Armageddon?
Stewart: Okay. Um, those are our-- so-- you are a very optimistic person. [laughter]
Ressa: And that--
Stewart: And our choice is... apocalypse or Armageddon. [laughter]
Ressa: But that's why-- because I'm optimistic, I chose Armageddon.
Stewart: Got-- yep. [laughter]
Ressa: - Right?
Stewart: Yep.
Ressa: Because-- no, think about it. Think about it. Part of it is-- apocalypse is done. It's the end of the world.
Stewart: Apocalypse is the end.
Ressa: But Armageddon is the battle. This is the battle. Right. [applause]
Stewart: Peaceful, peaceful. [applause]
Ressa: Peaceful! [applause]
Stewart: And by the way-- so without this going in that direction then, I want to talk about-- this was-- when was Duterte-- when did he take power?
Ressa: 2016.
Stewart: He's gone.
Ressa: Ohhhh, yeah! [laughter and applause]
Stewart: Okay. So-- so this isn't-- it didn't last forever. And your work, your lone voice crying out from the apartment that they forced you to be in and the imprisonment that they were looking for, it-- it's over. He's not there anymore.
Ressa: So it wasn't-- I wasn't jailed for very long. I'm very lucky in this, right? But let me put it this way. Our lawyers told us I was crazy. And I had a company. And by the way, nothing puts a news organization, coheres, makes it feel so good to be a journalist, than a news organization that is mission driven. When we came under attack, Rappler came together in ways we could never have done.
Stewart: Preach that to the heavens. That is so true and so missing.
Ressa: So what we saw was that if you stand up, if you just keep going-- because our lawyers told us I was crazy, right? Do you negotiate with President Duterte, or not? How can you negotiate when you can't give him what he wants? So we didn't--
Stewart: Which is fealty.
Ressa: --i.e., you can't do your job.
Stewart: Right.
Ressa: And then here's what happened. We just kept doing our jobs. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other, a year where I had eleven arrest warrants and then was convicted. And I still have-- I have to ask for permission to travel from the Philippine Supreme Court until today. But in March this year, Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on alleged crimes against humanity. And he is now in jail in the Hague, waiting for his trial.
Stewart: Wow. [applause] Wow. And listen. And that doesn't mean it's over. And I understand that in the Philippines, his daughter-- and, certainly, the Philippines has a long tradition of family dynasties. And that still exists there. And there's still, I'm sure, choppy waters ahead for Maria Ressa.
Ressa: Well, let's say we move from hell to purgatory, right? [laughter] It's not bad. It's not bad. You got to take--
Stewart: The next book has got to be "From Apocalypse to Armageddon: A Story of Optimism," Maria Ressa. [laughter] Maria, I can't tell you enough what a salve for the soul you always are whenever I get a chance to talk to you, whenever I get to see you. Thank you so much for coming by in this unbelievably strange deer-in-headlight time. And I so appreciate you coming on.
Ressa: No, thanks for having me. It's such a pleasure. [applause]
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