Much-hyped Ressa

Libel cases are indeed the bane of news organizations and journalists which are not unique to Ressa and Rappler.

It is amazing how Maria Ressa, founder of anti-Duterte online news outfit Rappler, keeps up the lie that she is the target of state persecution as a result of the court cases she and Rappler are facing.

In launching her defense on a cyber libel case filed by a businessman, Ressa said she would not be cowed to silence in her news site’s critical coverage of President Rody Duterte.

For a journalist to say what Ressa has been saying means harboring an agenda since it is an admission of casting aside objectivity by taking a mostly critical role against the administration.

“I can go to jail for 12 years for this (case)… That is the maximum sentence,” Ressa noted.

“From track record you can see the political goals to shut Rappler up… but we haven’t shut up yet,” she insisted.

Ressa is making a splash abroad as she becomes the toast of rights groups and critics of Rody by spreading her crock about being persecuted. She even claimed that her ordeal was even worse than when she was covering a warzone.

For the lies she maintained in her foreign tour, she was named a Time Person of the Year in 2018.

The cyber libel case against her, however, centers on a Rappler report in 2012 which a local businessman filed.

Trader Wilfredo Keng filed cyber libel charges against Ressa and the online news outfit’s former writer Reynaldo Santos Jr. for naming him in a 2012 report as having lent his sports utility vehicle for the use of then Chief Justice Renato Corona, who was facing impeachment.

The Manila court handling the case said, “The evidence for the prosecution is competent and sufficient to sustain the indictment” in upholding a trial for the cyber libel case.

The court also noted the prosecution’s argument that it “should disregard any attempt made by the accused to explain that they were merely quoting an intelligence report which, it bears stressing, is unconfirmed.”

“The alleged intelligence report cited in the subject article is not only unverified, but it is also even clearly nonexistent,” the court noted.

Ressa’s canard even merited a United States Senate panel resolution calling for the immediate dropping of the charges against her and lately a citation from rockstar Bono.

In the resolution, it condemned the Philippine government for the “harassment, arrest and unjustified judicial proceedings against the media and journalists, in particular, the proceeding against Rappler and Maria Ressa.”

The Palace in responding to Ressa said that she is under investigation and not under attack as she has been claiming.

Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar noted the violation of the Anti-Dummy Law, tax evasion charges, and the cyber libel case she faces all have “nothing to do with the administration.”

“The environment for journalists perceived by Ms. Ressa isn’t reflective of the actual environment for journalists in the Philippines,” Andanar said.

Ressa who claims to be a veteran in the trade should know that criminal liabilities exempt no one, not even members of the press.

Andanar indicated that Ressa’s cases are not an issue involving press freedom, but are about the violation of Philippine laws which undergo the normal judicial process.

Libel cases are indeed the bane of news organizations and journalists which are not unique to Ressa and Rappler.

The only aberration in the whole charade is Ressa’s insistence that she is being singled out.