MANILA — Maria Ressa has been accused of fraud, tax evasion and receiving money from the Central Intelligence Agency. She’s been arrested twice and posted bail 8 times.
She is also the Philippines’ most prominent journalist, a Fulbright scholar, a Time magazine Person of the Year for her crusading work against disinformation, and a constant thorn in the side of Rodrigo Duterte, her country’s authoritarian but widely popular president.
On Monday, after years government threats and accusations, Ms. Ressa and a former colleague at the news site she founded, Rappler, were both convicted of cyber libel by a court in Manila. They could be sentenced to up to six years in prison, and were each fined $8,000.
The verdict is a new setback for press freedoms in a country where journalists have been bullied and threatened. If President Trump calls American reporters “the enemy of the people,” Mr. Duterte goes a step further, calling them “sons of bitches” who are “not exempt from assassination.”
The verdict in the trial, which lasted almost a year, was delivered on Monday by a judge in a nearly empty courtroom. Just three reporters were present because of social distancing rules intended to contain the coronavirus.
Speaking to a crowd of dozens of reporters and photographers outside the courtroom, Ms. Ressa said her conviction should serve as a warning.
“We’re redefining what the new world is going to look like, what journalism is going to become,” Ms. Ressa said. “Are we going to lose freedom of the press?”
Prosecutors first filed libel charges against Ms. Ressa in 2017 after a businessman disputed an article that he said inaccurately linked him to a top-level judge and tied him to the drug world. Rappler reported that Wilfredo Keng, the businessman, had lent a sport utility vehicle to Judge Renato Corona and cited sources who claimed Mr. Keng was tied to illegal drugs, human trafficking and murder.
Ms. Ressa faces another seven charges, including accusations of tax evasion. She has denied all of the charges and has said the prosecutions are an attempt by Mr. Duterte’s administration to defang Rappler and debilitate the country’s critical news media.
Ms. Ressa is a dual citizen of the United States and the Philippines.
Rappler and other news organizations have doggedly covered Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs that has left thousands of people dead and disappeared. The campaign has drawn international rebuke for its brutality.
Mr. Duterte’s attacks have caught the attention of press freedom groups and human rights lawyers, including the celebrity lawyer Amal Clooney.
“Today a court in the Philippines became complicit in a sinister action to silence a journalist for exposing corruption and abuse,” Ms. Clooney said in a statement. “This conviction is an affront to the rule of law, a stark warning to the press, and a blow to democracy in the Philippines.”
The court declared Rappler, the company, to have no liability. Ms. Ressa and the Rappler journalist Reynaldo Santos were both sentenced to between six months and up to six years in prison. It is not clear whether they will actually serve any time, and both were granted bail pending appeal.
Speaking last week by telephone, Ms. Ressa said the charges were an attempt to silence Rappler, which has been critical of Mr. Duterte and his bloody crackdown on drug dealers and users.
“Corrupt, coerce, co-opt. ‘You’re with us or against us,’ ” she said. “If I’m convicted, then it’s codified into law.”
Regulators originally dismissed the charges because they related to a 2012 article, but were later overruled by more senior officials. Ms. Ressa has argued that prosecutors improperly applied the law retroactively.
The case is the latest in a series of moves by Mr. Duterte’s administration to intimidate the news media in the Philippines since he took office in 2016. In May, Mr. Duterte effectively shut down ABS-CBN, the most influential broadcaster in the Philippines, which in some of the country’s most remotes regions is the only available news source.
“Imagine an order by a regulatory agency telling CBS or CNN to shut down, and they do? And it’s nationwide,” said Ms. Ressa last week.
Mr. Duterte has accused Rappler of being funded by the C.I.A., which Ms. Ressa and the company have denied. Pia Ranada, Rappler’s star political journalist, has been banned from attending official presidential events.
Harry Roque, Mr. Duterte’s spokesman, sought to play down the significance of Monday’s verdict, saying the media should “respect the decision.”
“The president has said repeatedly that he has never filed a case of libel against a journalist despite his negative reporting,” Mr. Roque said. “He believes in free speech, and believes that anyone who works in government should not be thin skinned.”
But Leni Robredo, the leader of the opposition in the Philippines, called the verdict a “chilling development.”
“We must remember that this is merely the latest instance of law being utilized to muzzle our free press,” she said in a statement. “Silencing, harassing, and weaponizing law against the media sends a clear message to every dissenting voice: Keep quiet or you are next.”
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said the verdict on Monday “basically kills freedom of speech and of the press.”
“This is a dark day not only for independent Philippine media but for all Filipinos,” the group said. “But we will not be cowed. We will continue to stand our ground against all attempts to suppress our freedoms.”
The Philippines offers a cautionary tale for the United States and many countries around the world that are currently led by populist leaders who have turned their focus on the news media and accused reporters of “fake news,” Ms. Ressa said.
Ms. Ressa, a former CNN bureau chief and longtime journalist, created Rappler in 2012 with three female reporters who made names for themselves covering the People Power revolt that brought down President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the 1980s. They have described the current political landscape in the Philippines as tougher for journalists than the period under Mr. Marcos.
“To cut down press freedom in this way and to weaponize the law is a whole new level,” Ms. Ressa said. “It is something I haven’t seen since the days of Marcos. And to see it again is heartbreaking.”
In recent years Rappler has been at the forefront of exposing internet misinformation in the country, which has become so rampant that one Facebook executive called it “patient zero” in a global misinformation pandemic. In 2016, before the presidential election in the United States, Ms. Ressa met with Facebook executives to show them research indicating that the social media giant needed to take action against fake news spreading on their platform. It was only after the election that Facebook requested more of her data.
“The reason why this matters is that where the Philippines goes, America follows. Take the weaponization of social media, we were the test case before America,” Ms. Ressa said last week. “Online violence leads to real world violence,” she added.
Jason Gutierrez reported from Manila, and Alexandra Stevenson from Hong Kong.
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