Wendy Via and Heidi Beirich Talk With Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa is one of the most courageous people the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has had the honor to work with. Through her award-winning journalism and advocacy, she has challenged authoritarian regimes who engage in disinformation and undermine democracies, especially through social media. As a consequence, she has experienced terrible threats of violence online and faces the possibility of being imprisoned for the rest of her life.

We had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Maria and Rafal Pankowski of Poland’s NEVER Again Association to discuss the release of our report Democracies Under Threat: How Loopholes for Trump’s Social Media Enabled The Global Rise of Far-Right Extremism earlier this year.

Maria has described the actions of the social media companies, “What we’re seeing is a death by a thousand cuts of our democracy. When you have enough of these cuts, you are so weakened that you will die.” Maria goes on to say, “We will not duck; we will not hide. We will hold the line.”

Here at Global Project Against Hate and extremism, we couldn’t agree more.