Toms River Grad Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize

TOMS RIVER, NJ — In high school, Maria Ressa was voted "Most Likely To Succeed" by her classmates. Now the Toms River High School North graduate is among the nominees for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ressa, a 1982 graduate of Toms River North, has been nominated for the prize along with two journalism organizations, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, according to the Norsk Journalistlag, a Norwegian news organization. She was nominated by Jonas Gahr Støre, a Norwegian politician and head of the country's Labor Party.

Ressa was president of her class at Toms River North for three years, and while she was in high school she participated in chorus, orchestra and the theatre club. She also played basketball and softball.

"Not surprisingly, she was voted most likely to succeed," Interim Superintendent Thomas Gialanella said Wednesday evening during the Toms River Regional Board of Education meeting.

"We proudly congratulate her on her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize," Gialanella said.

Ressa also is the founder and CEO of Rappler, a digital news site in the Philippines that is fighting for press freedom in that country, according to the Rappler website. She has been working as a journalist in Asia for 35 years, including starting CNN’s Manila Bureau, which she ran for almost 10 years before opening the network’s Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She focused on investigating terrorism and wrote two books, "Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia" and "From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism."

Her reporting in the Philippines on President Rodrigo Duterte has landed her in jail several times, and Rappler’s work is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, "A Thousand Cuts," which can be seen on the PBS website, the Rappler site says.

Ressa also has been honored among the journalists named Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, and was on the 100 Most Influential People of 2019 list and among Time’s Most Influential Women of the Century. She has been honored by BBC and has received several journalism honors for her work reporting on corruption and terrorism.

"Free and independent reporting not only does 'humanity great benefit,' as emphasized in Alfred Nobel's will, but is crucial in order to prevent and prevent war and conflict," Støre wrote, according to the Norwegian news site. "In recent years, Ressa has been harassed, persecuted and arrested numerous times - due to her coverage of corruption, especially about business people linked to President Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa has for years lived with death threats and harassment on social media."

"She is thus both a symbol and a representative of thousands of journalists around the world," Støre wrote.

The award winners are announced in December.

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