Journalist To Discuss Threats to Press Freedom In UConn Series

STORRS, CT — Journalist and human rights activist Maria Ressa joins the UConn Human Rights Film+ Series on Thursday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. for an online forum to discuss the role of press freedom in the global struggle for truth and democracy.

Ressa, chief executive of the independent news site Rappler, has been a leading human rights advocate pressing Philippines President Duterte and his government for accountability over its violent war on drugs.

Duterte has revoked Rappler's press license, and Ressa has been charged with "cyber libel" in three separate cases in the Philippines, including a case filed in January 2021. Ressa was CNN’s lead investigative reporter for Southeast Asia for 20 years. In 2020, she won the National Press Club’s International Press Freedom Award, and Rappler won the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award in 2018.

Filmmaker Ramona Diaz’s new documentary, "A Thousand Cuts," follows Ressa and her journalist colleagues as they work to expose the truth of Duterte's violent campaign and face harassment and intimidation from the Filipino president and his allies. The film is currently long-listed for an Academy Award nomination, and is available to stream from PBS Frontline. At Thursday’s online event, Ressa and Diaz will be joined by UConn legal and human rights scholar Richard Ashby Wilson to discuss the film and how online propaganda campaigns threaten and denigrate human rights defenders through new forms of digital authoritarianism.

Ramona S. Diaz is an award-winning Asian American filmmaker whose films have screened at Sundance, the Berlinale, Tribeca, the Viennale, IDFA, and many other top-tier film festivals. She is a current recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship.

Richard Ashby Wilson is the Gladstein Distinguished Chair of Human Rights and Professor of Law and Anthropology at UConn School of Law, and founding director of the Human Rights Institute at UConn. Wilson’s current research is on digital authoritarianism and how governments and state-aligned actors coordinate online propaganda campaigns to threaten and denigrate human rights defenders. Wilson currently serves as the School of Law’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Intellectual Life. His recent OpEd "The Crime Trump Committed in Stirring Up His Mob" appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Glenn Mitoma, Director of Dodd Human Rights Impact. For more info and to register for the event: https://events.uconn.edu/event/83023/2021-02-11

This event is free and open to the public.