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Sign up todayHow to Stand Up to a Dictator
This audiobook uses AI narration.
Weāre taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIntroduction by Amal Clooney
From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, an impassioned and inspiring memoir of a career spent holding power to account.
Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections.
But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy ofĀ her countryāsĀ most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the stateĀ and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines.
There is another adversary Ressa is battling.Ā How to Stand Up to a DictatorĀ is also the story of how the creep towards authoritarianism, in the Phillipines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies.Ā Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world. SheĀ maps a network of disinformationāa heinous web of cause and effectāthat has netted the globe: from Duterteās drug wars to America's Capitol Hill; Britainās Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes.
Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a DictatorĀ is anĀ urgent cry for Western readers toĀ recognize and understand the dangers to our freedomsĀ before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Maria RessaĀ is the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending freedom of expression and democracy. She is CEO, cofounder, and president of Rappler, the Philippinesā top digital news site, and has been a journalist in Asia for over thirty-six years. She was TIME Magazineās Person of the Year in 2018 and won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2021. Among the many other awards she has received are the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. She grew up in the Philippines and the United States and currently lives in Manila.
Maria RessaĀ is the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending freedom of expression and democracy. She is CEO, cofounder, and president of Rappler, the Philippinesā top digital news site, and has been a journalist in Asia for over thirty-six years. She was TIME Magazineās Person of the Year in 2018 and won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2021. Among the many other awards she has received are the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. She grew up in the Philippines and the United States and currently lives in Manila.