Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, who heads the news site Rappler, has been found guilty of cyberlibel in the country’s first conviction of its kind involving the media, in a decision seen as a blow to press freedom in the Southeast Asian nation.
A Manila court yesterday convicted Ressa, who was accused by a businessman of cyberlibel for publishing an allegedly defamatory article in 2012 about his alleged ties to a then-judge on the nation’s top court.
The award-winning former CNN journalist and codefendant Reynaldo Santos, a former Rappler journalist, were sentenced to up to six years in jail.
Photo: Reuters
Ressa did not write the article and government investigators initially dismissed the businessman’s allegation, but state prosecutors later filed charges against her and Santos, who wrote it, under a controversial cybercrime statute aimed at online offenses such as stalking and child pornography.
Even though the original report came out months before the law was enacted, the court ruled that it was republished in 2014, supposedly to correct a misspelling.
The court ruled that the crime of online libel lapses in 12 years and is “more serious” compared with ordinary libel, which takes a year to lapse.
“The right of free speech and freedom of the press cannot and should not be used as a shield against accountability,” the court said in its ruling, adding that free speech has to be balanced with the right against defamation.
It was not immediately clear how long Ressa would actually have to serve if the conviction becomes final, and Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa allowed Ressa and Santos to remain free on bail pending an appeal.
“We are going to stand up against any kind of attacks against press freedom,” a defiant Ressa told journalists after the conviction was handed down.
“I began as a reporter in 1986 and I have worked in so many countries around the world, I have been shot at and threatened, but never this kind of death by a thousand cuts,” she said.
“This is a blow to us, but it is also not unexpected,” Ressa, who is also facing seven other criminal charges, including for alleged tax evasion and media foreign ownership violation, said later at a televised briefing. “We are going to stand up against any kind of attack against press freedom.”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte upholds free speech and has no hand in the court ruling, his spokesman Harry Roque said.
“The president isn’t behind the supposed repression of freedom of expression and of the press,” Roque said.
Ressa’s online libel case “sets a dangerous precedent” and “is seen deleterious to press freedom,” said Danilo Arao, a journalism professor at the University of the Philippines.
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