Philippine Journalist Maria Ressa Convicted of ‘Cyber Libel’

(Bloomberg) -- Philippine journalist Maria Ressa who heads the news site Rappler Inc. has been found guilty of cyber libel in the country’s first conviction of its kind involving the media, a decision seen as a blow to press freedom in the Southeast Asian nation.

A Manila court on Monday convicted Ressa, who was accused by a businessman of cyber libel for publishing an allegedly defamatory article in 2012, according to a copy of the decision. Ressa and her co-accused, former researcher Reynaldo Santos, were sentenced to up to 6 years in jail, but can post bail and appeal the ruling.

“This is a blow to us, but it is also not unexpected,” Ressa, who’s also facing seven other criminal charges including for alleged tax evasion and media foreign ownership violation, said at a televised briefing after her conviction. “We are going to stand up against any kind of attack against press freedom.”

Duterte upholds free speech and has no hand in the court ruling, his spokesman Harry Roque said Monday. “The President isn’t behind the supposed repression of freedom of expression and of the press,” Roque said, adding that Duterte hasn’t filed any libel charges in his decades as a public official.

Rappler has long been a critic of Duterte’s policies -- in particular his so-called war on drugs that has resulted in thousands of deaths.

This marks the first time that journalists were found guilty of online libel in the Philippines. Even though the original report came out months before the law was enacted, the court ruled that it was republished in 2014, supposedly to correct a misspelling. It also said Rappler didn’t publish a clarification sent by the businessman who filed the case.

The court also ruled that the crime of online libel lapses in 12 years and is “more serious” compared to ordinary libel, which takes a year to lapse.

“The right of free speech and freedom of the press cannot and should not be used as a shield against accountability,” the court said in its decision. Free speech has to be balanced with the right against defamation, it added.

Ressa’s online libel case “sets a dangerous precedent” and “is seen deleterious to press freedom,” said journalism professor Danilo Arao from the University of the Philippines. It may also have a chilling effect on social media users critical of the government, he added.

Last month, the Philippines’ largest broadcaster ABS-CBN Corp., which Duterte has previously attacked, was ordered shut by the government after its permit lapsed. The Southeast Asian nation ranked 136th out of 180 nations this year in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, down two notches from its 2019 ranking.

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