Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, CEO of online news site Rappler, waves from a vehicle outside the Court of Tax Appeals in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, on Wednesday. The tax court acquitted Ressa and Rappler Holdings Corporation of four tax evasion charges that were filed in 2018 during the term of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA-EFE
Jan. 18 (UPI) — Philippine journalist Maria Ressa and the news site she founded, Rappler, were acquitted Wednesday of tax evasion charges filed under the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte in what supporters said were politically motivated efforts to stifle media criticism.
“Today, facts win, truth wins, justice wins,” a tearful Ressa said outside the courthouse after the verdict.
“This acquittal is not just for Rappler, it is for every Filipino who has ever been unjustly accused.”
The Philippines’ Court of Tax Appeals cleared Ressa and Rappler’s holding company of four charges of evading taxes after they raised funding through partnerships with two foreign investors.
The Court’s decision cited “failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” putting the four-year-old case to rest.
Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov. Rappler, the digital news organization she founded in 2012, reported critically on the Duterte administration and its brutal war on drugs that left thousands dead.
Rights groups and journalism advocates praised the court’s decision and said it delivered a larger message about the role of the media in the archipelago nation.
“It is a victory for press freedom in the Philippines,” Carlos Conde, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter. “We have always maintained that these [charges] were bogus and politically motivated.”
“This is also a repudiation of Duterte’s vindictive and cynical politics,” he added.
Ressa and Rappler are still facing a handful of legal cases, including a Supreme Court appeal over a cyber libel conviction, which could land the 59-year-old journalist in prison for six years if upheld.
Reporters Without Borders ranked the Philippines 147 out of 180 countries in its 2022 World Press Freedom Index, saying the Duterte government had conducted “targeted attacks and constant harassment … of journalists and media outlets that are too critical.”
The Philippines has also faced waves of coordinated misinformation and disinformation campaigns, including a massive effort during the May 2022 election of Duterte’s successor as president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Marcos Jr. was boosted by falsehoods that spun his dictator father’s brutal period of martial law and plunder as a golden era for the Philippines, according to fact checkers and media watchdogs.
At the time, Ressa told UPI that the Philippines had been “ground zero” for online disinformation dating back to the 2016 election of Duterte.
Ressa said the election, which Marcos won in a landslide, was “emblematic of the corrosive impact of disinformation, how it tears a democracy apart by going person to person and literally making people believe lies.”
The International Center for Journalists and the Hold the Line coalition praised the acquittal and called for the remaining cases facing Ressa and Rappler to be dropped.
“This verdict indicates that it is possible for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to hit reset on his predecessors’ vast campaign of media repression,” the coalition’s steering committee said in a statement.
“We hope we are seeing the beginning of an end to the previous administration’s strategy to instrumentalize the courts as a means to undermine independent news organizations and damage journalists’ credibility,” it said.
Ressa on Wednesday called the charges against her “a brazen abuse of power … meant to stop journalists.”
“We need independent media that will hold power to account,” she said.
In November, Ressa published How to Stand Up to a Dictator, a memoir and a call to protect journalistic integrity and safeguard democracy.