Editors Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their fight for a free and independent press in a major boost to journalists amid increasing pressures on freedom of expression around the world.
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Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, praised the journalists from the Philippines and Russia for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which she called “a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Reiss-Andersen also alluded to the rise of authoritarianism and fake news around the world.
“Giving the peace prize to two very courageous outstanding journalists that have proved excellent in their profession really illustrates what it means to be a journalist and how you exercise freedom of expression even under the most difficult and destructive circumstances,” she said.
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In a tearful interview right after the award was announced, Ressa described it as “a recognition of the difficulties, but also hopefully of how we’re going to win the battle for truth, the battle for facts: We hold the line.”
In a subsequent interview, she added that “the fact that a journalist from the Philippines and Russia won the Nobel Peace Prize tells you about the state of the world today.”
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Muratov, for his part, said the prize was a tribute to the courage of the newspaper’s journalists, not to him.
“I’ll tell you this: This is not my merit. This is Novaya Gazeta. It is for those who died defending the right of people to freedom of speech. Since they are not with us, they [the Nobel Committee] apparently decided that I should speak for them,” he told Tass news agency.
The committee’s statement called them “representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”
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Joel Simon, executive director of the press watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists, itself a nominee this year, called it “a powerful recognition of their tireless work, and that of journalists all around the world. Their struggle is our struggle.”
Muratov, who founded Novaya Gazeta in 1993, has for decades “defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions,” the committee said.
Independent news media in Russia face a sweeping crackdown as President Vladimir Putin consolidates power and crushes opposition members, activists, human rights lawyers and civil society in the run-up to 2024 presidential election.
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Russian authorities have labeled many independent media “foreign agents,” threatening their survival, and have harassed and arrested journalists, many of whom have fled the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was pleased to congratulate Muratov for the award and described him as “talented and brave” and “committed to his ideals.”
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The award could possibly extend some kind of protection to Russia’s broader community of journalists, said independent journalist and political analyst Yevgenia Albats.
“I hope that this status of Muratov will protect Novaya Gazeta from being designated a foreign agent,” she said, in comments to Russian media. “I hope it will help Russian journalism to survive in these difficult conditions.”
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Since its founding, six journalists from Novaya Gazeta have been killed, including Anna Politkovskaya, who reported fearlessly on human rights abuses in Chechnya and was shot dead outside her apartment in 2006.
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Yuri Shchekochikhin was investigating Russian authorities’ role in a series of 1999 apartment bombings for Novaya Gazeta when he contracted a mysterious illness in July 2003 and died suddenly. His medical documents were deemed classified by Russian authorities.
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Natalia Estemirova, a close friend of Politkovskaya, investigated and exposed the torture, enforced disappearances and murders of civilians in Chechnya. In 2009, she was kidnapped outside her apartment in Grozny, Chechnya, and her body was found in neighboring Ingushetia. She was fatally shot execution-style.
The newspaper has reported on corruption, electoral fraud, police violence, Russian military actions and the presence of Russian mercenaries in Syria, Africa and elsewhere.
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In the case of Ressa, the Nobel committee’s statement said she exposed abuses of power, the use of violence and the “growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines.”
Ressa, 58, is the chief executive of the Rappler news website, which she co-founded in 2011 after covering Southeast Asia for two decades for CNN.
Under the administration of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa herself and her news organization have repeatedly been targeted through campaigns of online harassment and criminal charges, which have been widely seen as politically motivated. Time magazine named her, along with other journalists, a “person of the year” in 2018.
Ressa was found guilty of cyber libel in June 2020 and has spent recent years shuttling back and forth to courts in the Philippines, defending herself and her news organization against a litany of charges.
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Ten arrest warrants were issued for her in less than two years, and she is fighting nine separate cases. Throughout, she has remained a staunch advocate of freedom of the press. After her conviction last year, she said the case was not about Rappler but about every Filipino, “because freedom of the press is the foundation of every single right you have as a Filipino citizen.”
She has also emerged as a strong opponent of violence against female journalists more broadly, and along with Rappler has done pioneering reporting on cyber harassment, online trolls and disinformation and misinformation campaigns.
Ressa repeatedly warned Facebook about the dangers of misinformation campaigns in her home country and elsewhere. She noted in a Washington Post op-ed in May that she first wrote about Facebook’s problematic algorithms in 2016, arguing that they have only gotten worse five years later.
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“When we live in a world where facts are debatable, where the world’s largest distributor of news prioritizes the spread of lies laced with anger and hate and spreads it faster and further than facts, then journalism becomes activism,” she said Friday in an interview.
At the height of online harassment against her, likely the work of paid troll farms, Ressa recorded 90 hate messages an hour sent to her on social media — after Rappler ran an investigative series on the weaponizing of social media.
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Philippine activists and journalists celebrated Ressa’s win as a step toward ending a culture of impunity within the country. The Philippines under Duterte has been devastated by a brutal “war on drugs,” itself fueled by social media and sophisticated online propaganda.
Maria Ressa, joint winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, said she was "in shock" on Friday on hearing the news. (Reuters)
The Duterte administration has repeatedly pushed back against accusations of human rights abuses and says it does not oppose the free press. Duterte has called Ressa a “fraud.” Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. said, in a tweet responding to the Nobel honor, “it was a fight and she won.” He previously defended her arrest and said Ressa had “failed to defend herself” in court.
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In 2020, the Nobel Peace Prize went to the United Nations’ World Food Program for its role in addressing food-supply crises and trying to improve conditions in conflict zones. The agency was also at the forefront of dealing with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic around the world and the accompanying rise in hunger.
The prize is a gold medal and an award of $1.14 million dollars.
It was set up by the will of Swedish businessman and inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895 with the aim of celebrating the people or organizations working for “fraternity between nations,” reducing standing armies and promoting “peace congresses.” Over the years, those criteria have been interpreted to also include the promotion of human rights.
Nobel also endowed prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature.
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Unlike the other prizes, which are selected and awarded in Sweden, Nobel chose a Norwegian committee, selected by that country’s parliament, to administer the peace prize.
Schemm reported from London, Mahtani from Hong Kong and Dixon from Moscow. Regine Cabato in Manila contributed to this report.
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