Tag: libel

On the Ressa verdict

June 20, 2020 by
O

by Andrew Fornier

Well. I think we all saw that coming, much as we hoped against hope that the verdict would be different somehow. I guess it was like walking into a McDonald’s and expecting to find Chickenjoy on sale. I mean, there are some very specific elements that would have to converge for it to happen, and it isn’t exactly impossible, but you wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to come up empty-handed.

I should preface this by saying that I’m not a Ressa fan. (This is important.) I have little patience for the kind of journalism she has represented, in which the reporter is a celebrity of greater importance than the stories she has to tell. There’s a constant undercurrent of arrogance that oozes from the paragraphs of Rappler, particularly from its opinion pieces, which seems content to berate the common citizen for their “ignorance” and proclaim, in all self-righteousness, that there is only one way to look at the news.