Maria Ressa & Ramona Diaz SPOTLIGHT
Media TribeListen to Maria Ressa & Ramona Diaz on Spotify here.
Shaunagh talks to Maria Ressa & Ramona Diaz
This is the second of the Media Tribe Spotlight series. This episode features CEO and Editor of Rappler, Maria Ressa and award winning Filipino-American documentary filmmaker and director of 'A Thousand Cuts', Ramona Diaz.
In 2015 Maria Ressa interviewed Rodrigo Duterte, the now President of the Philippines, where he confessed to killing three people. When Duterte took office in 2016, Maria Ressa and her colleagues started reporting on the president's brutal war against drugs and the spread of disinformation on social media in the Philippines.
Maria has remained in Duterte's crosshairs as his crackdown on the press has intensified and she’s been accused of fraud, tax evasion and receiving money from the Central Intelligence Agency. She has been arrested twice and has posted bail nine times.
Maria is now the subject of the film ‘A Thousand Cuts’ directed by the indomitable Ramona Diaz, which premiered at Sundance last year and is now airing on PBS Frontline.
Episode credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
Shaunagh Connaire
Welcome to Media Tribe, the podcast that's on a mission to restore faith in journalism. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, an award-winning journalist with over 10 years of experience working for some of the biggest news outlets in the industry. Every week I'm going to introduce you to some of the world's most respected journalists, filmmakers and media executives. And you're going to hear the story behind the storyteller. You'll get a sense of the integrity and hard graft that's involved in journalism, and hopefully you'll go away feeling that this craft is worth valuing. The Spotlight episode is part of the Media Tribe's mission to have upfront and honest conversations about some of the most critical topics in our field.
Maria Ressa
What social media has done is it's made lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts. The fact that the platforms that distribute news are biased against facts is the core reason why the world is upside down.
Shaunagh Connaire
In 2015, Maria Ressa, the Editor of Rappler in the Philippines interviewed Rodrigo Duterte, the now President, where he confessed to killing three people. When Duterte took office in 2016, Maria and her colleagues started reporting on the President's brutal war against drugs and the spread of disinformation on social media in the Philippines. Maria has remained in Duterte's cross hairs as his crackdown on the press has intensified, and she's been accused of fraud, tax evasion and receiving money from the Central Intelligence Agency. She's been arrested twice and has posted bail nine times.
Maria is now the subject of the film, A Thousand Cuts, directed by the indomitable Ramona Diaz, which premiered at Sundance last year and is now airing on PBS Frontline. Maria Ressa and Ramona Diaz, welcome to the Media Tribe.
Ramona Diaz
Thanks for having us.
Maria Ressa
It's good to be here.
Shaunagh Connaire
Great. Well, Maria, I'm going to kick start the interview with a rather big question, but why do you continue to hold a lawless regime to account when you face significant jail time and the possibility of being killed?
Maria Ressa
Because I have to, because I'm in a... It's funny, I don't know whether I'm the luckiest or the most cursed, I guess, look, this time matters for us in the Philippines. If it was just me, maybe I could go be a hermit now to be honest, I'm tired. But again, Rappler's here, we're moving into the last two years of this administration. Elections are coming up as you know, in the United States, disinformation, social media platforms have become breeding ground for hate speech for disinformation, for conspiracy theories. That also by the way is the world's largest distributor of news. So this is a problem that is not just ours, but yours. And I think fixing it will be the biggest burden we'll have in the coming years.
Shaunagh Connaire
So do you, I mean, do you feel a personal responsibility that you just can't back off now and you have to keep going?
Maria Ressa
I think it's that I don't have a choice it's not even, so number one for Rappler, absolutely. I am responsible for my team, this is a wonderful team, we're holding the line at something that gets better with pressure, what is that? It's like a diamond now, when you exert so much pressure on something, forged in fire's another phrase, but then the other part is, in 2018, the government filed 11 cases against us, I just got my ninth arrest warrant, right? So I will fight these cases and win them because they're ludicrous. In the meantime, I also know that whether or not I go to jail will depend on what I do now. And as long as I have my rights, I will fight. I'm not voluntarily giving up my rights.
Shaunagh Connaire
Wow. Well, you're a very brave lady, as most of the world's knows. And Ramona, but do you want to kind of explain to our audience from your experience making A Thousand Cuts and you are of course, Filipino-American yourself, Ramona, what has the government so riled up with Maria's work and Rappler's work at large?
Ramona Diaz
Because they won't shut up, right? Because they call it out like it is. I think it started because they sort of broke the myth of this drug war. That's what it was, they called out the numbers. They called out impunity and Duterte was not too happy about it. The numbers that were the reality on the ground, and then the myths making that the administration was doing was there was a chasm between that, right? So Rappler unpacked that, Rappler unpack the numbers and what was really happening. And when you start shining light on these things in dark places, they don't usually like it, especially someone like President Duterte. And so that is a big question, "Why are they so afraid? Why are they so afraid of Maria, especially?" Look, the government tried to shut them down. They're still operating, shut them down, when? 2017 it's 2020, they're still fighting their closure and they're still doing the really difficult reports. So I think that's why Duterte is really afraid of them. I mean, fear is what he wants people to feel. And fear is what they're pushing back on.
Shaunagh Connaire
For context, Duterte came into power in 2016, promising vengeance and violence and a crackdown on drugs. And he was targeting poor people, really poor addicts, he wasn't going after the big dealers. Do you want to give us more context though, about your reporting and how you unveiled disinformation campaign, which is a key part as to why you and your team are being targeted like this?
Maria Ressa
Yeah. I mean, it's funny because the fact that the government keeps going after us makes me think that maybe we haven't done enough of the stories that they must want to hide, right? What haven't we touched? What else are they trying to protect that we, what are they hiding? On disinformation, it's critical because the foundation... If these times have taught us anything, it is that information is power. We've known that forever with disinformation what's happened is that technology has allowed the replacement of facts. If you repeat a lie a million times, it becomes a fact. And once that happens, when we have different sets of facts... I sit on the Real Facebook Oversight Board and Roger McNamee who wrote Zucked, he's one of the first investors in Facebook, he said, "Look, we're all living in our own Truman show." But I like using The Matrix because in many ways, what social media has done is it's made lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts.
Maria Ressa
It's biased against facts, right? That fact that the platforms that distribute news are biased against facts is the core reason why the world is upside down. So if you can make people believe the lies, then you can control them. And that's what's happened in the Philippines. I think the reason why we get targeted is because we give you the data. We give you the evidence of how you're being manipulated. And here's the funny thing, research actually shows that even if you know you're being manipulated, if it's aligned with your cognitive bias, you'll continue believing it. So this is the problem, right? And this is part of the reason also that even in the United States, after a Biden win the division, the way people think the way their minds have been conditioned, these are things that aren't going to go away.
Maria Ressa
So these are problems we're going to continue dealing with, we'll continue exposing. In the Philippines I watched from 2016 until now I watched our society splinter and by design, right? I say this all the time, the way the social media platforms grow, all of them is by recommending friends of friends. That's a tech choice when you recommend friends of friends, so in 2016, we didn't debate the facts, all the news groups agreed on that. But if you were pro Duterte after 2016 and you wanted to grow your network, you would move further right, if you're anti Duterte growing the network means you're going to move further left, and over time from 2016 to 2020 you'll just get splintered apart. And that's where we are. And then each group, if they believe their own facts, they're all a lie. So, that means we have no shared reality.
Shaunagh Connaire
They're believing their own version of the truth, that's the problem. And in your brilliant film, both of you say that at that time, when you kind of unveiled that Duterte's social media campaign were using fake accounts to spread this misinformation like wildfire, that you Maria, we're receiving 90 threats an hour on Facebook or insults, or can you both go into that? I mean, that's insane and it's terribly scary.
Ramona Diaz
I think the first thing Maria is going to say is, it wasn't misinformation, it was disinformation because it was intended, right? It's intended. It's not unintentional, but yeah, Maria?
Maria Ressa
90 hate messages an hour, that was an average. And that was meant to pound me to silence. And for a little bit, they succeeded, because I had to figure out, "Oh my God..." At the beginning, I was trying to respond and it was coming so fast I couldn't respond to it. And they weren't interested in a conversation, but I was foolish enough to think... We were so naive in 2016. And then I realized that by gathering data, and this is connected to your first question, when you gather the data, you begin to see the picture and then you begin to see you realize you shouldn't be looking at the content, but at the networks, the disinformation networks.
Maria Ressa
And then we began treating disinformation networks like terrorist networks. And then the last thing that we did once we had a database where we could actually look at the entire information ecosystem, we started using natural language processing to take a look at the attacks and then cluster the attacks. This is a weird way of looking at it, but when you distance it from yourself, then frankly, I've developed a very thick skin now. It doesn't bother me. I mean, it still does...
Shaunagh Connaire
I mean, give us an example of what these people were saying on social media?
Maria Ressa
I mean, you saw some in the film, right? "Behead them," "Shoot them dead," "Line them up like a firing squad." In my case, they tried to think of the thing I would be most vulnerable to. So one of the things they've done is I have dry skin and it always, strangely it always shows in my face I've eczema and so, one of the names they'd call me as scrotum face. It's gendered attacks they are sexualized and it is vicious. And so the first time I saw it, of course, it's like you get... And they have drawings that de-humanize you so I'll see my face on top of things. Right? You can imagine what a scrotum face looks like. And the hard part is, I mean, to even say that, well, the point is it's meant to make you feel bad.
Maria Ressa
So you stop and you move forward. And I think that's part of the reason I'm working very hard to try to figure out how to prevent things like this from happening. Because especially after the verdict, June 15th this year, the attacks have switched from attacking credibility, which was in the beginning to calling you corrupt, to calling you all of the things. Then it becomes about how you look, what you sound like, and now it's about dehumanizing you. And the problem with attacks that dehumanize is that when you repeat them often enough, you become a target of violence. And I think this is a problem that social media platforms are going to have to deal with. But in general, there's a report that was just released by UNESCO with ICFJ that that shows you that women journalists are attacked a lot more and they react in different ways, many of them losing their voices. In the Philippines, women are attacked at least 10 times more than men.
Shaunagh Connaire
Wow. Just to take you back to 2015, when you did that now infamous interview where the now President Duterte admitted to killing people. Do you think that was a turning point in his kind of hatred towards you and your work?
Maria Ressa
Not at all, not at all. I interviewed him again after he was President in the palace and the Presidential Palace, there were four of us. He gave four interviews and I still got one of those four, right, in December of 2016, but there are too many parallels to the Marcos years, right? What happened, I think is President Duterte has a ring of people around him who have their own search for power and money, their own vested interests. And over time the bloggers, so this would be kind of the alternative news sites that were being created with the aid of Facebook, we then became a target. So that by the time we came out with the propaganda machine, it was very, very clear that the entire government would soon be turning against us. President Duterte, I think you captured this in 2017, when he attacked Rappler in his State of the Nation Address, we had our first subpoena a week after that. So that was like a signal to the government, run after them. And we weren't the first news group to be attacked. We're just the loudest to fight back.
Shaunagh Connaire
How was it for you, Ramona, following a person who has a target on their back in the Philippines as a female director, a journalist? And I just wanted to add in, I have read that you guys at Rappler considered putting in bulletproof glass on your windows, that's how dangerous we're talking, just in case the audience isn't familiar with how lethal the situation is. If you want to take that question, Ramona?
Ramona Diaz
You know, as a documentary filmmaker who actually lives in the US, I guess I go back and forth, right? I do most of my work in the Philippines, but I'm based here. And this instance, this film, the administration knew I was making the film. They knew because I needed to get permission from them to film the President closely, right. In the pit, during the rallies. And I think because they knew I was making the film, they were less likely to... It was safer for us, I think, because I was trying, I was giving them that knowledge, right. If they had found out and then it would seem like I was hiding, that was then scarier. So I think for me, it was important to be very visible also because in the film, as you see, I filmed the General, Dela Rosa, Bato, who was the first implementer of the drug war.
Ramona Diaz
So very allied with Duterte and Mocha Uson, the pop star turned politician, very big supporter Duterte. So also very close to the President. And they knew I was following Maria because you couldn't help but know, every time she got arrested, we were on television with her, we were not hiding. And I think because we were not hiding, it was safer for us. And the real danger is really, as you see in the film, it's not from the administration, it's from the crazies who show up at Rappler, the ones who think they are going to... On behalf of Duterte. It's also what he enables, obviously, because of his rhetoric. So that's the real danger and that you can't really predict, or you can't know what's going to happen and you just have, okay, you're following someone who has to wear a bulletproof vest.
Ramona Diaz
Do you then also wear a bulletproof... But we cannot do our work with it. It's very tough. So we just decided we're just going to do it or what? Not do it. Right. It's either do it or not do it. It's like Maria is, like, "Do we have a choice?" I suppose we have a choice, but I think it would always haunt me not to make this story. What am I a documentary filmmaker for? And Maria being so brave, it is almost like a challenge. "Oh, [inaudible 00:17:53] awesome. We're also brave. We're also going to do this"
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, good for you, Ramona. And it's an extraordinary film and I really, really urge everybody to go and watch it on PBS Frontline. It's called A Thousand Cuts and I would love to kind of actually just tap into why it's called A Thousand Cuts. I know there's a beautiful line in the film, either of you can take that question. Can you explain what A Thousand Cuts means?
Ramona Diaz
It's Maria who says that line in the film. So I think Maria should explain.
Maria Ressa
Look, I'll give you a little bit longish for where it comes from. When I was with CNN, after 9/11, I became kind of the Southeast-Asian investigative reporter for the links to Al Qaeda and how their ideology that virulent ideology spread in our region. And that phrase, death by a thousand cuts, came from Al-Qaeda's mantra. Their magazine's called Inspire Magazine. And it was about asymmetrical warfare, this is how they were going to fight huge power, except in our case, it's huge power that is actually in plain sight, the asymmetrical warfare is turned upside down in plain sight, they're cutting democracy down. And the other way I thought about it, which is what Ramona captured in the film is, literally it's like you're getting cuts and you're bleeding out and each little cut doesn't seem so deep, but you put them all together you will hemorrhage and die. And that's what's happening to our democracy. In the United States it's slower because your institutions are stronger. In the Philippines I would say our checks and balances, they collapsed within six months.
Shaunagh Connaire
Of Duterte coming to power. So sticking to your story, Maria, just for one more question, before we kind of move on to that story at large, when it comes to press freedom and the erosion of democracies all around the world, do you think you might end up in jail? Does that feel realistic?
Maria Ressa
Sure. It's a possibility. Yeah. It's one of many. So I say this all the time, whether I go to jail or not is dependent on what I do now, right? Will I fight? I have no choice because I will fight. And I now have firsthand knowledge of how power is abused. I don't have to talk to the victim, I am. Right. And then the other part of it, I can't tell where it's going to go and I can't lay my life like I know where the end will go, but I do know that every day I live by my ideals, I work with a great group of people who do the best journalism we can do to hold power to account.
Shaunagh Connaire
And are you scared?
Maria Ressa
Of course there are moments, of course, right. And I think the way I dealt with this is I like combining Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, you remember your Star Trek, Kirk and Spock. Right? So-
Shaunagh Connaire
Of course.
Maria Ressa
So that's really what I want to be, and breaking news, working for CNN for 20 years and doing breaking news on camera, forces you to take whatever emotion you have, no matter what's going on around you and stifle it, push it down to the bottom of your stomach so that your brain is clear. And then I almost automatically lower my voice because when I do that, then the clear thoughts for my brain can come out of my mouth. And my best friend sometimes calls me a stoic but it's not the stoic of, I don't feel it, it's that I want to process it and understand it. So the phrase I always use is I want to embrace my fear. I want to think of the worst case scenario that can happen and then really imagine it, workflow it, if I need to and embrace it so that I can rob it of its sting. And then if I can accept the worst case scenario then everything is okay.
Shaunagh Connaire
Wow. I'm sure you're... I can see your jaw nearly on the table as well, Ramona.
Ramona Diaz
My observation with her is a little bit opposite. It's not stepping in, it's not embracing it, it is actually stepping back. It's more an observer thing she does, but I think it's also because of her training as a journalist, right? She steps back. And even if she is the story, she still has Maria. It's weird, she's in the room, but-
Maria Ressa
It's okay, you can talk about me.
Ramona Diaz
She still has this capability of stepping back and looking at it from a vantage point that she can then see clearly.
Maria Ressa
Mr. Spock, I keep telling you.
Ramona Diaz
It's the observer. She becomes the observer of her own narrative.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, you've put that really beautifully, actually, Ramona and the thing is no journalist ever wants to become the story, but you categorically are the story, unfortunately, Maria and I think we should move on to press freedom, the lack thereof. Certainly in the Philippines and around the world. And I just want to let our audience know if they don't know, but Duterte has accused reporters of being spies and sons of bitches. And he's also said that reporters should not be exempted from assassination. Do Filipinos agree with that?
Maria Ressa
Obviously I will say no, but when you... It's kind of like President Trump and the statements that come out of him, do Americans agree with it? Some do, right? Significant. It plays on your anger, your fear. It creates an, us against them, world. It makes you... If you feel like you're at the losing end of something, you want to punch back in the film, Patricia calls it revenge, that's what President Duterte offers.
Maria Ressa
I think that it's very difficult when the most powerful person in the country says things that you know are just wrong. We call out the lies, we learned to do that in 2016, watching America go through it is interesting to us, but now it has changed Filipinos. And again, I blame technology because it wouldn't have happened so quickly if the social media platforms weren't designed in a particular way, but now we're forever changed. And I worry all the time of how we get back to a point where anger and hate, where this kind of violence, both spoken and in the real world where that is not the world we live in, because it isn't the Philippines, especially, right, this is not a country. If you had asked me before 2016, whether Filipinos can be writing or saying or screaming these things, I would have said, that's impossible.
Maria Ressa
In fact, I did. Someone asked me that in 2016, right before the elections, one of the analysts said, "Do you think that there could ever be a coupe or a government could take over?" And I was like, "No way, we have social media." Little did I know and that's the biggest problem. The world is turned upside down because our information ecosystem is turned upside down.
Shaunagh Connaire
And Ramona, I think in 2019, three journalists were killed according to Reporters Without Borders in the Philippines. I know you wanted to capture Maria's journey and Maria's story, but was there kind of a greater good to the inspiration behind this film to showcase how bad things can get?
Ramona Diaz
Well, to me, it was more personal than that actually because I was raised under martial law. I grew up in the Philippines. So I knew what that felt like. So the rise of Duterte, when Duterte became President in 2016, it seemed regressive to me. And I knew what it took to build all the democratic institutions over years and years and years. And suddenly we were going back in time it felt like to me, even as I watched the drug war happen from the US. And so that's what took me back to the Philippines. I just wanted to see what is going on and this sort of vague notion of making a film about the Philippines under Duterte. And of course the initial impulse was the drug war, because that was what was gaining global attention.
Ramona Diaz
But when I got on the ground, a lot of people were making that film already because obviously right, what drew me to it drew a lot of people to it. So I looked around, I looked around and there was Maria Ressa and Rappler, right? Not only calling out impunity, the impunity of the President and talking about how wrong the drug war was, but Maria was also connecting it to disinformation, the weaponization of social media. And to me that made it more global story. And then around that it was sort of a circuitous way to get to press freedom then because it's all connected, there's intersectionality. So that's how it all happened. And the way I make my films is I let the story unfold in front of the lens. And I follow the story and this is my fifth film, so it's very intuitive in a way. So, I always say, when the documentary gods tell you, this is your story now, you must listen to that. And so that's how Maria became sort of the center of the film.
Shaunagh Connaire
It feels like you potentially, Ramona, could make this film in many other countries now. So do you, Maria, maybe want to talk about how the Philippines in your words is kind of being used as a little test lab as to how disinformation can fray a democracy and how things can really get out of control. Do you want to kind of talk about the world at large and really why we should be concerned?
Maria Ressa
I mean, you're seeing it play out right? The methodology is simple, they're bottom up attacks exponential death by a thousand cuts, right? This is like fertilizer when it's disinformation or conspiracy theories. And then the same narrative comes top down and slowly you take over then it becomes using the full power of the state against you. In my case, bottom up 2016, top down 2017, 11 cases and investigations, 11 cases in 2018, eight arrest warrants in 2019 and 2020 a conviction and a ninth arrest warrant. Look at the other countries around the world, it's interesting because even as disinformation has risen, so have protests, Hong Kong, we are watching Hong Kong very, very closely because three young people who were just protesting were just were sentenced to jail.
Maria Ressa
Again, Joshua Wong, this is his third time going to jail for speaking, you have an owner, a very respected owner of Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai has just been brought to court in chains. I mean, there's an instance, actually, when I was arrested where they picked me up from the airport shoot, and then I had a debate with the officers. There were a lot of them, but they were still respectful because they said, "Ma'am please put your jacket over your hands and pretend we handcuffed you." "I'm not going to pretend you handcuffed me, handcuff me. If you're going to handcuff me, handcuff me." Then I watched Jimmy Lai, and he was not just... He was handcuffed, he couldn't really walk. So Hong Kong is a battle that if Hong Kong falls, then that something that will go through our region.
Maria Ressa
This is the strength of China. Belarus, I mean, I can name all of these countries around the world, but let me put it this way. After we had sounded the alarm in 2016, in November of 2017, the first research report team out, and it was Freedom House. They said that cheap armies on social media were rolling back democracy in 27 countries around the world, in 2018, that nearly doubled to 42. And then in 2019, it came to over 72. We don't have the numbers yet for 2020, but with the pandemic in 2020, it gave many governments around the world time to consolidate power, like President Duterte did in the Philippines, plus it gave money. So tremendous control, tremendous money. So early on in March, I wrote something that I was hoping that this virus would not infect democracy, but it has. And so that's another problem we're going to have to deal with once we have a vaccine and we come out and recreate our world.
Shaunagh Connaire
And again, this is a question for both of you, obviously, Maria, you have experienced what you have experienced over the last four to five years. And Ramona, you have watched Maria and watch the story unfold. Are there solutions? What are the fixes? What can the public do to help? What can people listening to this podcast do to help? What can the mainstream media do to help? What can politicians do to help? And most importantly, what can big tech do to help?
Maria Ressa
You're giving to me, Ramona, I'll start, I'll start. Because of course, I've had to think this through because where do I spend my time? I tried to do that Pareto principle, where you take 20%, that will yield 80%. Right? And to me, I think about how do we fix this? Number one, stop the poison, or stop the virus, because the virus of lies is as potent as COVID, right now, it is killing our democracy. So that's the first, it's a tech problem. The pillars of Rappler are tech and journalism and community. So in all these pillars the first is regulations now, because I don't believe tech is capable of self-regulation anymore. And that changed during course of the filming of the film. I just finished on November 12th I co-chaired something for the Forum on Information and Democracy with my co-chairs Marietje Schaake the former EU parliament member.
Maria Ressa
And we came out with 12 strategic ways of attacking this. So you're not playing whack-a-mole, attacking the problems and gave recommendations up to 250 of them for tech, for governments, for civil society. The other thing is we're building our own tech because tech in the hands of journalists is different. And so we rolled out a new tech platform for Rappler. The second thing is we need to strengthen in journalism. We need to help the gatekeepers, especially at a time of COVID when so many news groups are closing shop, right? And then beyond that, there have to be ways to protect journalists on the front line, I know this firsthand. And so it's always a joy to work with Keelan Gallagher and Amal Clooney, who's on the high level legal panel that was put together by Canada and Britain. They've come out with papers and recommendations for what countries that believe in democracies, what they should be doing.
Maria Ressa
And there's three major papers that were just released in November. Finally, the last one is civil society, community. If you voted, you got to do more because these times demand much more. And so what can you do to help protect your democracy? Because the battle for truth is the first one that is deeply connected to the climate battle that is deeply connected to health, right? If we don't protect our earth, it's going to bring you new viruses. So these are all intertwined, but they're huge problems that not one group, not one country can solve. So the irony is, as the world tries to come together to solve huge problems, the very platforms that we actually use to supposedly connect, the ones that distribute news are the ones that are dividing us. So this has got to change.
Shaunagh Connaire
I mean, everything you've said there is so valid and I hope we're slowly beginning to realize what needs to happen. And Ramona, I'm sure you have a very strong say on what media can do and what filmmakers like yourselves can do. It feels like it's not just enough to create awareness anymore. There does seem to be, and I know it's controversial to say this as a journalist, but there does seem to be an overlap between journalism and activism. We all need to go that bit further. I'm sure I'll never get a job again for having said that. However, I really, really firmly believe it.
Ramona Diaz
Yes. I mean, listen, what we do is tell stories and I think we should be telling more of these stories. It's important. It's daylight upon magic, right? We have to tell people what's happening and the more we do the more they'll listen. And I think the idea of being a good digital citizen is really important. Right? You can do something yourself right now without feeling overwhelmed, especially with a pandemic. Stop sharing that article you have not read and really look at the sources, you can do it right now, you can do your part. It's the little things, right? So I think with films like A Thousand Cuts and other films that are now talking about the weaponization of social media, how the engineering works, I think that's really important. And just to keep saying it and just to keep talking about it, because it will reach the mainstream after a while.
Ramona Diaz
I think it has already, there is another film, Social Dilemma, that's really unpacks this. Right? My daughter who's in her early twenties actually said, "Mom, have you seen the Social Dilemma?" I'm like, "Why are you telling me about documentaries?" I mean, that was something new. I mean, the fact that she had heard about it is something else. And also my aunt in the Philippines said, "You should really watch the Social Dilemma." I'm like, "Yes, Tita." [inaudible 00:36:58] held at Sundance last year so you know something's happening. So I think it's key to keep on telling the stories
Shaunagh Connaire
Exactly. Well, we all need to use our voices, not just rely on the likes of Maria to use hers. And everybody listening to this podcast will go and watch PBS Frontline. Somehow we'll figure out a way for audiences outside of the States to get their hands on it. We've certainly linked to this on this podcast, when we released this episode, but I huge thank you to both of you, Maria and Ramona for joining me from the Philippines and from the States, Ramona, a sincere thanks to both of you for all that you do, and your work as journalists and filmmakers, it's so appreciated and respected and we're all so, so grateful. Thank you.
Ramona Diaz
Thank you.
Shaunagh Connaire
If you like what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, that's very good news because I'm going to be dropping new shows every week and every month on my new Media Tribe Spotlight series. Also, if you haven't already, make sure to take a listen to previous shows with some legendary folk in the industry and as ever, please, please, please do leave me a rating and review as it really does help other people find this podcast. Finally, if you do have any guest suggestions, drop me a note on Twitter. I'm @shaunagh with a G-H or @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram, and again, that's with the G-H. Right, that's it. See you soon.
Shaunagh Connaire
This episode was edited by Ryan Ferguson.
