Introduction 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 of her country's 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 state 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. How to Stand Up to a Dictator 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. 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. She maps a network of disinformation?a heinous web of cause and effect?that
has netted the globe: from Duterte's drug wars to America's Capitol Hill Britain's 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 Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to
recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms 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?
