Filipinos in Hawaii Ecstatic Over Maria Ressa Winning The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

Filipinos in Hawaii are thrilled and ecstatic over the prestigious honor awarded to their fellow countrywoman, journalist Maria Ressa who received the prestigious 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. This is the first time a Filipino is awarded a Nobel Prize.

Ressa, alongside her co-winner and fellow journalist Dmitry Muratov of Russia, received the award for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee who oversees the award.

Born in Manila, Philippines and moved to New Jersey at 10-years-old, the 58-year-old is a Princeton University cum laude graduate and University of the Philippines at Diliman Fulbright fellow.

She was CNN’s lead investigative reporter in Asia and served as the organization’s bureau chief in Manila (1987 – 1995) and Jakarta, Indonesia (1995 – 2005). In 2004, Ressa became the news division head of ABS-CBN, one of the Philippines’ biggest broadcasting networks.

In 2011, she co-founded Rappler, the top digital news site in the Philippines.

As a journalist for 35 years, she investigated terrorist networks and authored “Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center” in 2003 and “From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism” in 2013.

A multi-awarded journalist in the Philippines and abroad, she was included in Time’s Person of the Year in 2018 and 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2019.

East-West Center (EWC) in the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) honored Ressa as an EWC Journalist of Courage and Impact during the Center’s 2018 International Conference in Singapore. She gave a speech on the topic of “Undermining the Free Press in Asia.”

In 2020, she was also awarded the EWC Chaplin Fellow, a distinguished lectureship that recognizes journalists of extraordinary accomplishments in their professional careers. She delivered an address on “Press Freedom Under Fire.”

But a few years before that, the Philippine government had been hounding her for her relentless campaign against President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration’s “war on drugs” campaign.

Full article published on Hawaii Filipino Chronicle, a local English-language Filipino newspaper in Honolulu, Hawaii.