Journalist

Constitutionally you can't have a law go retroactively.

I always felt that I wasn't as American as Americans and then I realised when I got back to the Philippines that I was not Filipino.

Without facts you can't have truth.

When you're on social media, your brain is being rewired.

Enshrined in the Philippine constitution, which is similar to the United States, is the bill of rights: freedom of expression, freedom of the press. These are enshrined. And yet, freedom of the press has been curtailed.

Technology enabled Rappler's fast growth starting in 2012, but we were also among the first victims when social media was weaponized in 2016.

Investigative journalism is never mass-based; it's very focused, and you want people who are passionate about it to take it.

I don't think we have wrapped our heads around how much technology has allowed the manipulation of individuals and democracies.

If you can make people believe lies are the facts, then you can control them.

Press freedom is not just about journalists, right? It's not just about us, it's not just about me, it's not just about Rappler. Press freedom is... the foundation of every single right of every single Filipino to the truth, so that we can hold the powerful to account.

If I lose these tax-evasion cases and others filed by the Philippine government, I could go to jail for 10 to 15 years.

Truth matters. Checks and balances matter.

I'm banking on the fact that there are still good people in government who will prevent this. I've been a journalist for more than 33 years, and at Rappler we refuse to change, I refuse to be bullied.

Let me go back to a fundamental thing we all used to agree on: information is power. That's why we became journalists in the first place.

Embrace your fear. Imagine what you're most afraid of, touch it and hold it so that you rob it of its power.

After living a decade in Jakarta, I chose. I chose Manila, the Philippines, for better or worse.

Journalism has a check-and-balance effect to those in power, and those in power submitted themselves to it.

The seed idea for Rappler really is looking at information cascades. If you think about it, the end goal - when I was raising money for Rappler, I didn't talk about investigative journalism, even though that's our core.

If you want to rip the heart out of a democracy, you go after the facts. That's what modern authoritarians do. You lie. All the time. Then, you say it's your opponents and the journalists who lie.

We know firsthand how social media and the law have been weaponized against perceived critics of the Duterte administration. We've been reporting on it from the start.