I’m so incredibly DELIGHTED for @mariaressa but I also want to explain why this decision by @NobelPrize is so important at this moment (& why it’s more very bad news for Facebook)
She’s spent much of the last 5 years trying to warn the west what is coming for us.
How the firestorm of lies & distortions & fake news are a dictator’s best friend.
And how Silicon Valley’s failure to deal with it is a fundamental danger to democracy
In the Philippines, Duterte took over the information space first. Violence, intimidation, co-ordinated attacks took place online before the extra-judicial killings began.
Maria came under a systematic co-ordinated attack.
And it all happened on Facebook.
‘You cannot have integrity of elections, if you do not have integrity of facts’
And we don’t. We have neither.
@mariaressa has been beating this drum & trying to make us understand the existential assault on the truth. And where this leads
The election that brought Duterte to power was a month before Brexit.
We now know that in 2016, social media sites - but especially Facebook - were profoundly, deeply corrupted.
The Philippines was @mariaressa says ‘the first of the dominoes to fall’
@mariaressa has not just courageously risked her freedom to stand up to Duterte, she has used her situation to explain these wider truths.
And to hammer away at Facebook’s complicity time & again
Anyway, small thing, but I’m very very pleased that I got to raise what happened in the Philippines directly to the Facebook executive in charge of global elections at the time, this week.
The expression on her face..
And I hope it’s okay to share this. This was Maria’s message to our group yesterday. The situation in the Philippines is going from bad to worse.
This could not have come at a better time.
This is just too cute. The moment @mariaressa finds out she’s won the Nobel in the middle of a live seminar:
The online harassment @mariaressa faces & which has such awful real world consequences is not just harassment against her as a journalist but as a female journalist: the victim of a terrible confluence of authoritarianism & misogyny
NEW: I'm seeking permission to appeal in the Supreme Court. There's no meaningful free expression in this country if after proving your speech is lawful, you're hit with £££ costs: a devastating ruling that will chill public interest journalism
by @_EmmaGH theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/m…
This was filed today in the Court of Appeal. If the Supreme Court rejects it, we believe there’s a strong case to take it to the European Court of Human Rights.
Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights puts an obligation on states to ensure freedom of expression. According to the ruling in this case, it's very far from free: even if you can prove your speech is lawful, it'll still cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds...
It's been a long time but v happy to be back in @ObserverUK today with 2 pieces, both close to my heart. And to launch a new project with @allthecitizens.
1/ An astonishing new claim that MI5 refused to investigate Russian spy's infiltration of Tory party theguardian.com/politics/2023/…
2/ Delighted to profile the fierce & brilliant @pevchikh for @ObsNewReview. If you've seen the Navalny doc, she's the woman sitting by Navalny's side as he calls one of his FSB poisoners & gets him to confess to Novichoking his underpants. theguardian.com/world/2023/jan…
3/ Finally, the story of how the Kremlin captured Britain. And how the UK government covered it up. If you've wondered why no British broadcaster has told the real story behind the Russia Report, please watch this & consider contributing.
My jaw hit the floor when I discovered Boris Johnson left an emergency NATO meeting after the Kremlin’s chemical warfare attack on Britain & flew to an off-the-books meeting with an ex-KGB spy.
In July 2019, Johnson had just been made PM. And @nickhopkinsnews published 2 extraordinary stories about Foreign Secretary Johnson flying from a NATO meeting to a party in Italy at the height of the Skripal crisis.
The party was at Evgeny Lebedev’s villa. The owner of Independent & Evening Standard.
Hopkins’s first story suggested he’d given his security detail the slip to fly to Italy. Then a Guardian reader supplied photos of him leaving: hungover & dishevelled 3/
Thank you to the judge, my stellar legal team & the 29,000 people who contributed to my legal defence fund. I literally couldn’t have done it without you 🙏🙏🙏
I haven't read the judgment yet but what I can say that the last 3 years have been extraordinarily difficult. Fighting this has been a crushing, debilitating, all-consuming experience that I sincerely hope no other journalist ever has to go through. 2/ judiciary.uk/judgments/bank…
The fact that his case was brought clearly shows how our libel laws favour the rich & powerful. I was only able to defend myself because of the incredibly generous support of the public. But this judgment is a huge victory for public interest journalism.
3/