YouSaid · the spoken record

Maria Ressa

lines on the record: 103
first: 2018-11-26
most recent: 2018-11-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, absolutely. The personal threats are meant to pound you into silence. They're meant to make you insecure. And, you know, for a little bit, after we finished our propaganda series, I was getting 90 hate messages per hour. And when you do that, as a journalist, you're like, what? I tried to respond.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right Charges came out of that. So they're starting to raise issues about you and call into question which people who are reading this don't know the difference of. Exactly. But it's a coordinated attack.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Social media is the fertilizer. Right. And it's similar to what's happened to Rappler. We were, all of the cases that came up, foreign, the core account propaganda account said Maria and Rappler CIA. Question mark. That was a year before the foreign ownership charges came out of.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very personal, criminal. Actually, I will kill you, I will rape you, you are, I mean, I think I've been called every animal you can think of, every threat. And women were targeted. Our initial data is saying 10 times more than men. But, you know, right. And after you're targeted as a woman, the next step is a sexual attack. And we saw this play out in a senator who used to head the Human Rights Commission. Her name is Lila de Lima. She was one of the first ones to test this. She was attacked on social media and then put in prison a personal enemy of President Duterte. She's still in prison. A waiting trial”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We saw it. We documented it. We had the data. In August of 2016, I gave that data to Facebook and I said, this is really alarming. These people are targeting anyone who attacks, who asks questions about the drug war. The drug war began in July of 2016. It's targeting journalists. It's targeting anyone who's perceived to be critical of President Duterte. And those attacks are heinous. It brings out the worst of human materials.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. And we bought it. So he wins the elections in May 2016. A month later, you have Brexit, and then November you have Trump. The reason I focus on that is I think that this is Facebook, this is social media's impact, right? I think globally our values have changed so much. Change had come so fast with different leaders that people were looking for some sense of stability. That makes sense. When you put 2.3 billion people on a platform, all of a sudden you have no more boundaries of nation states. And one lie here spreads globally immediately. And so what happened in the Philippines is that all of the tactics that you're now seeing in the United States, you're calling it the Russian propaganda, right? Well, we had it.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said that he was going to fix all the problems. He didn't care about the details. And people didn't care about the details. They just wanted, he is somebody who was perceived as strong. He has a track record in Davao City. Davao people seemed happy. And he said things politicians didn't say. He was funny. He was charming. He threatened to kill. He also was extremely sexist and misogynistic in many ways, but his defenders would say, but look at what he did for women in Davao City.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is Duterte. He was a populist leader. He's a guy who says what he thinks in 2015. I interviewed him before he decided to run and he said, I am going to kill people. And then he said, I asked him, have you killed people? He said, I have killed people. And he admitted to killing three people. John Oliver uses this clip when he gets elected in May 2016. Why is the Philippines?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why don't I say I think the Philippines is the cautionary tale for the United States? I said that in December of 2016. I think we're the canary in the coal mine. In May 2016, President Duterte gets elected. Rudy Duterte gets elected. He tells people he's going to kill. Rudy Duterte since 1988 on and off has been mayor of Da Vao City. He is known for taking the law into his hands, for killing people. DDS, Da Vao death squad. That's how he rid the city of Crime.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take these young people. We wound up becoming the millennial site, but our core was investigative journalism. What got us in trouble with President Duterte is we focused on, we were the first two and a half years before the United States started talking about disinformation. We saw because of our partnership with Facebook, we saw this exponential attacks on social media that began in July of 2016. the same month that the drug war began.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ones that God is in trouble right now, right? So if you look, well, I'll go talk about our people, the core founders of Rappler have always looked at corruption. So the woman who wrote two books on corruption in the judiciary, the woman who wrote a book on corruption in the military, I looked at terrorism. We had spent our careers and we figured, you know, how do we solve these problems? How can we do better in the future? I guess suppose that's activism, but it just makes sense if you live in the country I live in, right? Then after that, what we wound up doing was...”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were the first in the Philippines to do native advertising in 2012. So at that point, it was new in the Philippines and we were able to take a large chunk of the new digital ad spend. My end goal was if I looked at that, I was like, if I take 1%, I'm going to be really happy because I can pay people. But we wound up taking 15%, which was actually okay outside of.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Okay. So you operate in both Indonesia and the Philippines and have gotten funding and stuff like that. We were talking about that. And so you took this investment. So that's about $5 million in investment now. And I know the economics of these things. And you make money how? We were the first.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Social news network is what we called ourselves at the very beginning, but our core is investigative journalism. And we have, I think, what makes us different from other news groups is we have a civic engagement arm.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he would at the journal. And then Pierre, I've known since he was at General Magic. I go way back with Pierre. Yeah. Oh, I know Pierre and Pam very well. And they meteor network is doing that. He opened the thing in Hawaii. He's been doing, trying this and obviously the Intercept and other things where he's been trying to have impact social good journalism really is what it is. I remember talking to him. I'm like, oh, you're going to, they're going to talk up at you, Pierre. You better get ready to be talked back to by your journalists. But that's his area. You be the perfect person for him to invest in.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are investors. And they're in the Philippines, in Rappler, they invested in something called Philippine Depository Receipts. It's a special class. They had to have believed in us a lot because they have absolutely no say in the way we run the business. They can't sit on the board. They can't tell us what to do. But they give us the money.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Technology for civic engagement. That was what we were after. And I wanted to build. So I raised another, maybe it's about $3 million. And these were our foreign, they came in through a legitimate constitutionally recognized investors.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So In 2014, what I did is I wanted to grow to Indonesia. I spent a decade in Indonesia and I felt here's what the Philippines and Indonesia has, right? The Philippines is 100 million people, the median age is 23 years old. It's a young population and we are all on cell phones. The cell phone reaches 114%. Indonesia is the same. 230 to 250 million people and the median age is 22 to 23 years old. So I was like, I want to grow in Indonesia and how am I going to do that? I can take money from local tycoons in the Philippines who will have political interests.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Likes us so much. So, which is to say he hates you. So we'll get to that in a minute because I do want to have a serious discussion about that. So you get funding from outside because that leads to where we are today. You got funding from the 24th.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So initially, there were four or five of us above 40, and we had, you know, one of our, when we all came together, we were mid-career and senior. And so we chipped in. We raised among ourselves our seed fund is $2 million. And then after that, we were shocked. We started with 12 people. And in a year and a half, we grew to 75 people and we became the third top online news site. And I was like, oh my God. And then we bought into this tech idea of you have pump prime growth by growing, bringing in more people. So we capped it. I capped it at about 100 people in Rappler. That's still where we are today. And the impact has been, you know,”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. That's a fair point. So a website would have been that, and getting, I find it pointless to have websites anymore. I said that the other day and all my staff just, I'm like, what do you have a website? What's the point of it? And they're like, what? I'm like, well, there's other ways to get your work out. And that's what I was trying to get at. It's like you have to think really hard about where your work's getting out. So you do this, you get funding. You do initially was a not, right? Is that correct?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2011. For six months, we tried Facebook, but it was chaotic. There was no search. So I knew that this is while we were building our own platform. But for me, if Facebook could have done it, I would have done, I would have stayed there because in the end, it was about education. Yes. You know, after you work for CNN where you're reaching 200 million people, I was.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the idea of Rappler, and we were able to Facebook. We were able to help Facebook grow. Social media for social good. That was the beginning of it. Right to that. A little bit, but Facebook also helped us”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reporting is what you feed your communities of action. Because in the end, the end goal is, I mean, people don't just read this stuff and don't do anything with it. So if you're doing a story on climate change, what are you going to do? Are you going to sit there?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rap 80s. I grew up in the 80s to talk plus ripple to make waves. I see. Okay. And in our first few years, we were growing 100 to 300%. We were creating these communities. Social media for social good.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the 8 I wrote, my second book is from bin Laden to Facebook. In 2011, I was writing about how I mean, it was before ISIS, but it was exactly what ISIS was doing. And the ideas that I explored then are the same ideas that are inside Rappler.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. You become an expert. Right, exactly. Like, let me tell you what's actually happening here. So why did you call it Rappler? So you leave your bigger group, your bigger job again, once again.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think journalism was doing that, but they were pretending they weren't. You know what I mean? I mean, I always came up in the Watergate that things happened because Someone decided to be really irritating and persistent. And the same thing, whether you're covering technology or healthcare or whatever it is. I think at a certain point”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But isn't so originally that was the idea of journalism, right? We do these stories and they're supposed to impact our world. But when I was with CNN, I do these stories and they go into a black box and then it's partly positioned in a Western way that when it hits my audience where I am, they don't necessarily see it that way.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have been forced to be activists now. But see, the word activism is so loaded. I think it's more impact, impact journalism or live journalism impact journalism. Things happen from your work. And I think that's the part I'm interested in.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guard, right? Right. Well, it was an interesting, the reason I'm asking is because I think I'm the latter both. Like not a social activist, but an activist in some way. Like I want to have my stuff to have impact.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the idea behind Rappler was we're going to use this new technology and journalism to build communities of action. We live in a country that has endemic corruption, where institutions are extremely weak, leadership is personalistic. And here are all these people who just want a better life. Why can we not use this technology to build synergy?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With the Abu Sayyaf and Al Qaeda link group. So I went to TNN. I did terrorists. The growth of terrorism in Southeast Asia. And looking at these social networks, social network analysis is actually the foundation of Rappler. If you can chart, if people can spread this evil ideology that will make people kill themselves, become suicide bombers. Why can't the good guys use social networks to spread ideas?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you're managing the largest, as if you're managing the largest news group in any country, right, power, you have a pact with power as you have a social pact with the people. And that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to do stories. I wanted to have impact. I wanted to, and it wasn't just me. There were enough of us that at a certain point I said, oh, here's the, I negotiated.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in the end, then it comes down to money. And at a certain point when we were optimized, I was like, I'm I don't want to make money. I'm kind of bored. And then here's this internet that nobody was looking at because you put all your best people in your primetime newscast. And your third wrong people are the ones on the internet.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I went to ABS EBN and I went home. I took all my dollars and I turned it to Peso as I decided I was going to be Filipino and I took back my Filipino passport. And I did that for six years. And I loved it. But when you're managing a traditional news group.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, please. Sorry, I'm certain. But I was fascinated by how leaders worked. How they made decisions, how they put their individual ideas with their emotions and how values ultimately determine the structure of the society they created”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you have a vision. And then without ABS-CBN, which is that was the news group that I ran. It had multimedia platforms. I had to learn how to do cable, radio, television. And the difference between business and mission”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's yes and no. Most of my immediate families in the United States. But for me, I made the choice to be Filipino because I thought it was a country putting itself together. And I felt like the impact, partly education and thinking and the things that I had learned from CNN when I was offered the top job in the top television network there, I was like, I can do a lot of things. Imagine going from a reporter, a bureau chief with four people to managing a thousand people. That's a huge responsibility. I was able to revamp standards and ethics manuals. We were able to do training for a lot. It was amazing. My exponential learning curve, you know, it was.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I just mean, we write and talk to amazing people, right? You get jealous. Like, after all, if it's over, is it just air? Especially if you do television, right? And so for me, it was like, it was also an identity. I wanted to decide, am I American or am I Filipino? Who am I really? And where am I going to live? Right.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Huge. I loved it. I learned. I felt like I was at the front line of history literally when people I was a conflict reporter. I worked in war zones. There's an adrenaline for that, right? Sure. And it's addictive. And yet at the same time, at a certain point, after maybe, I don't know, 16, 17, 18 years, I was like, Up, but I'm not building anything myself. You know how I keep writing about how everyone else is doing these great things, but I want to build something.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I stayed with C. I joined CNN first as a freelancer, then I became Manila Bureau chief. And then that lasted a decade. And then I became Jakarta Bureau chief. And I wound up covering every single transition of Southeast Asian countries from autocratic one-man rule to democracy. And of course, the irony now is, am I covering the pendulum swing?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I walked into a television station and I learned journalism by doing it. It was amazing. And so we started this little startup before it was called a startup. We just called it an independent production house, Probe that is still alive today. And at the same time, that same year, CNN came and said, we want you to be our reporter. And when I taped a standup because they wanted to see what it looked like, my boss at that time then sent it back and said, put makeup on, wear a suit, and go drink some brandy so your voice gets deeper. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. It's really funny. Right. Yeah.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I started first before I did CNN with a friend who hired me said stay in the Philippines. And we started something that was like our local version of 60 Minutes. We wanted the anchor who was doing it. I was a producer director behind the scenes.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Running after the Marcos who were already outside. Sure. We began a process. And that process just ended like last week when Emel de Marcos now is found guilty of setting up Swiss bank accounts, foundations that How long did that take? 30 some odd years, 33 years.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then voted in as president contested elections, and then Marcos was flown out by the United States. And then all of a sudden she was president. So this is a housewife who'd never run a country. We had tons of debts. While she was a moral leader, there were lots of things that had lots of problems that needed to be solved.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, 3,200 plus people killed in nine years, but that's now rivaled by the casualties in the drug war, which Philippine police claim they've killed 5,000 people in the drug war. But human rights activists put that number at 12,000 plus, plus, plus, plus, plus.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This wife and all the shoes, right? His son now ran for vice president, became a senator. His mother is a congresswoman in the Philippines. They're back in power. He's contesting that he's vice president, and that recount is going on. But for me, it was going back to the Philippines and then feeling this rush, trying to figure out identity.”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was supposed to go to law school. I had a corporate job waiting. I was waiting. I mean, I didn't know really know what I wanted to be. And all of a sudden I was caught up in this fever of people power. It was amazing. And I thought that Oh my gosh. And that, I think, fueled my entire career. So in”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had they done previously? My mother was working for government at that point, and then my father, my stepfather is Italian American. So he adopted me. That's the name Ressa. So when I grew up here, I was like, I got to figure out who I am because, you know, I grew up in a neighborhood where no one was really brown. I mean, there were two families who were Filipino. So I applied for Fulbright. I went back to the Philippines in 1986, the People Power Movement. And at that point, that was Juan Aquino. Corazan Aquino. And that people power movement triggered all of these pro-democracy movements all around the world, right? And then at that point, CNN, I had very little reporting experience. And they said, did you?”
2018-11-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: How disinformation poisoned a ‘Facebook nation’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT